Page 47 of Shifting Gears

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The duck race is strangelylessstrange than Nora thought it would be. Nobody takes it too seriously—it’s a day of fun, where the ice cream shop gives out half-priced cones and serves specialty slushies to kids. Main Street shuts down for pedestrians, people sell trinkets from streetside tables, and a town full of adults gets excited over rubber duckies being dumped into the river.

The most excited of them all is Dani, who spends no less than eighteen minutes picking the perfect duck out of a pile of identical dollar-store toys with numbers painted on the back. When the dump truck bearing hundreds of rubber ducks empties into the water, Dani is practically vibrating, watching their slow progression under the bridge and down toward the finish line, where they’re caught in a big net. When Dani gets so excited about her duck winning tenth place—she chose numbereighty-nine due to its slightly crooked, wonky eyes—Nora knows she made the right choice in attending.

Dani names the duck Mortimer. She puts it in a place of honour on her truck’s dash and promises to treat Nora to lunch with the hundred-dollar cash prize.

“I still don’t really understand the point of all this,” Nora says, looking around at the sheer number of people who turned out for the event.

“It’s an excuse to socialize,” Dani explains. She waves at a group of people Nora doesn’t recognize gathered by the river and gives Mila a fist bump as she passes by. “People like having something to look forward to. It brings us together as a community.”

It’s a deeper answer than Nora was expecting.

“And lawn mower races also bring the community together?” Nora is aiming for sarcasm, but Dani nods excitedly. She’s completely genuine, as per usual.

“Exactly!”

Said race starts just after four o’clock, when all the ducks have been fished out of the river and all the ice cream consumed. Everyone seems to know it’s coming—they line up on the sidewalks all along the main street, some people in the front rows even producing lawn chairs or pillows to sit on. Dani leaves Nora with Sarah while she disappears to get ready.

Sarah finds a spot near the makeshift finish line—a long piece of duct tape stretched across the road and affixed to two street lamps—and Nora shifts from foot to foot, wondering when Dani will appear.

Sarah seems to take her restlessness as boredom.

“It’s good of you to play along,” Sarah says, peering over the heads of the crowd in front of them. “You’re probably used to bigger excitement.”

Nora snorts. “The only excitement I ever had back home was when I got to leave the office before midnight. This is much more fun.”

Sarah’s brow knits. “You worked until midnight?”

“Usually later,” Nora says. Sarah’s concern is eerily reminiscent of Kayla and Ash. “And then got up before six to do it all again. I had a couch put in my office so that I could sleep there when I needed to.”

Sarah whistles, shaking her head. “Shit, Nora. What job could have been that important?”

“At the time it seemed life or death, but now…” Nora trails off. It’s always felt like if she didn’t do the work, if she didn’t dedicate every waking moment to her job, she’d be failing. Here, it all seems so silly. Unimportant. Unnecessary.

And soon she has to go back.

It’s the first time in weeks that Nora has thought about what going home truly means, exactly what she’ll be going back to. The shocked, slightly pitying look on Sarah’s face is a stark reminder.

Nora will be returning to sleeping in the office, working herself to the bone, and going to meeting after meeting, only to be talked down to by Renée and her army of condescending old men. She’ll be returning to present her suggestions for improvements to Bracken County, after which Riverwalk will be quite different from the town she’s come to like so much. It’s hard to ignore the truth now that she’s spent half a summer away from it all:

Nora hates her job.

“I guess try to enjoy the vacation while you can, right?” Sarah says.

Before Nora can reply, there’s a mechanical roar from down the road, and everyone turns to see the commotion.

Rolling down the pavement come six lawn mowers. But they almost aren’t recognizable as lawn mowers anymore—each is modified in some way, from exposed engines to tire blades to what looks like a makeshift flame-thrower on a back tailpipe. Dani is front and centre, standing up on a red-and-gold-painted lawn mower with lights illuminating the undercarriage and spinning tire rims.

DANI’S DEATH MACHINEis scrawled on the hood in spray paint.

Sarah laughs. “She’s such a goofball.”

Even though her mind is occupied with this newest inconvenient realization, Nora smiles, too, watching Dani wave at the crowd and rev her engine dramatically. Beside her, Owen is showing off the oversized monster tires on his machine.

“They always like to show off first. The race starts when the flare gun goes,” Sarah explains, and sure enough, the competitors quiet a few moments later when someone approaches the starting line with said flare gun in hand.

As soon as it goes off, there’s a noise so loud that Nora actually covers her ears. The mowers are making a commotion, but when Nora looks at the group, they’re moving at a snail’s pace.

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