Lay-ups and Long Shots Read Online Free PDF Page B

middle, where the deck is high enough to fit your knees under.
    It wasn’t long before I mostly got over being nervous. We were careful. We would paddle one rapid at a time, then get out to look over the next one. This made it easy for Melissa, who was on foot, to keep up.
    There was no path, so she was scrambling along the bank, ducking under branches, hopping from rock to rock. Some people would have been annoyed, or bored, or both, but no, she was into it, clapping and cheering us on in the harder rapids. She was wearing hiking boots, and khaki shorts, and a flannel shirt with the sleeves cut off, and she looked pretty great.
    Near the end of the run we came to the biggest rapid, the one we called “Barbed Wire,” because of a stretch of old fence along the shore. We got out of our kayaks and climbed up the bank to take a look. The water slid over a smooth, wide ledge of stone, fell at about a forty-five degree angle, then kicked up into a couple of good-sized waves as it flowed into the deep pool below. It was a good drop, though pretty straightforward.
    But I saw another possibility. “Hey, look,” I said, pointing. “The water’s high enough, you could take that route on the left.”
    “Straight into the shore,” said Jodie.
    “No, you make a big turn, then down that sort of ramp, there.”
    “Maybe,” said Jodie. “I like the straight way. Direct. That’s the kind of girl I am.”
    We laughed. Jodie was short, and muscular, and athletic, and yes, pretty direct.
    Justin and Melissa and I watched as Jodie launched herself off the drop, disappeared for a moment into the big wave at the bottom, and then surfaced in the slower water.
    “Yee-ha!” shouted Jodie, raising her paddle over her head.
    “My turn,” said Justin as he fitted himself into his kayak. And then over he went, too, down the drop, through the wave, into the pool below.
    “They make it look easy,” Melissa said to me.
    “Yeah. It is pretty easy.”
    “Are you going to try that other way?”
    I hadn’t planned to, until she asked. But she sounded so hopeful.
    “Sure. I don’t want you to get bored,” I said.
    “All right!” she said, nodding.
    I was feeling happy and excited as I slid into the cockpit of my kayak and snapped on my sprayskirt. I didn’t say, “Okay, watch this!” as I pushed off into the current. I was thinking it, though.
    It’s hard to say why I wanted to impress Melissa. She was Justin’s age, two years older than I was. And she was only visiting for a week or two. So I didn’t have the slightest thought that I was going to go out with her or anything. But, well, I just did, I wanted to impress her. I wanted to do something different. Something just a little bit daring.
    I’d never had anybody to impress before, kayaking. It didn’t do any good to try to impress Jodie; she was a lot better than I was.
    I gave Melissa a casual little wave as I started across. Then I tried to forget all about her. I tried to concentrate on the job at hand.
    I was heading across the narrow river, aiming almost at the opposite bank. I got myself on the jet of current that was flowing that way and let it carry me with it. Easy enough. But then the current slowed down and doubled back on itself, turning almost 180 degrees. I took a big back stroke that spun me around, too.
    As I turned I could feel the back of my boat go underwater. I could feel this because it changed the way the rest of the boat felt; it made the bow rise and wobble. But this didn’t matter—I thought—because I was sure the stern would pop up again in a moment, and I would go merrily on my way.
    But the stern didn’t pop up. In fact, it went further down. And then my bow sank, too.
    I couldn’t understand it. Somehow my whole boat was sinking. At first I thought my sprayskirt must have popped off. But no—there was no water in the boat. My legs were still dry.
    And yet now I had water flowing right over my head! I couldn’t sink any more because I was