“Thank you,” I say. “You’re right.” Because what are imagined threats compared with the venom that’s stolen my family, my Birch, my life? This should be nothing.
We dip our paddles into the water. Lonan’s at the bow, for optimal rowing power, while I sit stern, in the steering position. Hope is between us, our lookout. Every slice of our paddles pulls us farther from the relative safety of our plank walkway, and closer to whatever waits for us around the bend. Water surrounds our canoe on all sides now, with trees and leaves and every shade of green spilling over the banks. This canal isn’t the widest I’ve ever seen—it’s two canoe lengths across, at most—but still, it is oppressive. Mind over fear, I remind myself. My mind is stronger than my circumstances. There are no snakes.
The foliage is so thick and steep between our canal and the lodge that from this angle it’s hard to see much of the lodge at all. Only the top tier is completely visible, warm yellow lights glowing through the windows underneath the thatched roof. Soon, the sun will set, and we’ll see even less.
We paddle, on and on until we’ve made almost a half circle from where we started, but we don’t find the obvious entrance we hope for. The canal bends slightly away from the lodge and into a stony, moss-covered cave; the roof is so low we will barely be able to sit straight up, let alone stand. I have a sudden flashback to the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disney World—the panic attack I had, at age seven, when I saw we’d stood in line forever just to ride boats in dark water that went to places I couldn’t see.
A faint, high-pitched beep comes in over Lonan’s two-way radio. He stops paddling, and so do I, just outside the cave.
He pries the radio from his waistband, and I get a flash of skin just before his T-shirt falls again. A blue light turns on when he speaks. “Lonan here. Find something?”
The radio crackles. “Yeah,” the voice comes through. I’m pretty sure it’s Phoenix. “We’re past the foliage barrier and we can see the entrance, but it’s impossible to get there from here.” Between the crackling and the way he’s borderline whispering, it’s a wonder his message makes it through as clearly as it does. “I think you may have a shot, though. Looks like your water goes straight to the door of this huge main room, but both the bottom level of the room and the canal are partially underground, somehow. Does that line up with what you see there?”
Panic attacks begin the same way at age seventeen as they do at age seven, it turns out. We’re going to have to go in this cave. There’s no way around it. Breathe, Eden.
“Yes,” Lonan affirms, apparently not fazed at all by the idea of canoeing to our murky doom. “We’ll check it out. Keep your guard up, though—just because you can’t get in from where you are doesn’t mean they’re not prepared to keep you from trying. They’ve got eyes everywhere—remind Cass.”
Lonan glances at me over his shoulder as he says the last line, and I am certain it’s another bit of their codespeak. Either it’s not encrypted enough or I’ve become fluent, because I can easily translate it to mean Remember, they know exactly where you are, because Cass is with you and they can spy through him.
“Will do,” Phoenix says.
Lonan clips the radio back in place and picks his paddle up. “Ready?”
“Ready for anything, if it gets us closer to Finnley,” Hope says.
I open my mouth, but words don’t come out like they should.
Lonan turns all the way around to face me. “Eden? Ready?” He looks like he’s on the verge of losing patience. He doesn’t understand—and why should he? I conquered my fear of heights today, numerous times, and I’ve been fine in the caves. And he already gave me his easy-fix mind-over-matter advice. My mind may be strong, but my body doesn’t want to hear about it.
“I . . .” They’re both staring at me now. “I don’t do well with this kind of water. Especially in dark caves. Especially if there might be, uh . . . water moccasins.” It sounds so stupid to say it out loud. I am a five-year-old in a seventeen-year-old’s body. “And it’s really dark in there.”
Lonan’s jaw twitches. “Hate to break it to you, but it’s only going to get darker the longer we wait.”
“Seriously? That makes me feel better, thanks.”
“Well, what do you suggest we do? I thought you were stronger than this, Eden. I know you are stronger than this.”
Such a compliment has never made my blood boil so furiously. “You don’t know me. You’re wrong.”
All strong people break, eventually.
Hope averts her eyes, studies her hands. Sorry, Hope. You are stuck in a canoe with the perfect example of humanity when it’s pushed to its fracture point.
“I’ve been wrong about a lot of things in my life, but this is not one of them,” he says. No one has ever pressed me this hard, and it ties up my ability to fight back. “You can do this. I refuse to watch someone with such strength utterly crater in the face of fear.”
“You’re kind of diminishing my fear by acting like it’s the easiest thing in the world—like I should be able to just get over it.”
“No,” he says. “The more difficult something is, the stronger you prove yourself when you overcome it. I absolutely believe this is terrifying you—you’re white as the moon; you’re not breathing right. I don’t think it will be easy for you, but I do believe you’re strong enough to conquer it.”
Again, the image of him scrubbing bloodstains from his kitchen floor shames me. He doesn’t bring it up—he doesn’t have to. It’s written all over his face, the memories he sees every time he has to summon his own strength. Every time he summons mine.
Something clicks: he’s not trying to hurt me with his words, I know this, but I assumed he was trying to tell me I should just pretend the fear away when things get rough. Pretend nothing is ever painful, nothing is ever misery.
Now I’m certain that’s not it—those things don’t have to work against me, I realize.
He’s trying to show me how to thrive on them.
I collect myself, all the parts of me that are trying to escape this boat and the responsibility that comes with it. “Okay,” I say. And again: “Okay.”
We dip our paddles into the black, black water.
FIFTY-SEVEN
WE ARE FLYING through clouds, we are sliding down rainbows.
These are the things I tell myself as my world turns black and breathless.
It helps enough, in that I am still paddling. Still alive, still moving forward.
Our breaths echo. The dips of our paddles, the drips of the water: they echo, too. This is the sound of fear being killed, I tell myself. I carve my paddle hard into the water. I breathe.
Lonan’s radio beeps, the sound amplified by the hardness of this space. It is so dark in here the blue light looks like a neon sign. It stays firmly at his hip.
“You going to answer that?” I ask.
“I’m otherwise occupied right now,” he says.
“It might be urgent.”
“I won’t be able to do anything about it. And for your sake, I want you to know I’m prepared in case things become urgent here.”