Page 49 of The Last Time I Lied

“Don’t know how,” Sasha says.

“I can teach you sometime, if you want.”

Sasha wrinkles her nose, her glasses rising and falling. “In that dirty water? No thank you.”

“Where are you going?” Krystal asks, eyeing my backpack.

“Canoe trip.”

“Alone?” Sasha says.

“That’s the plan.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea? Each year, an average of eighty-seven people die in canoe and kayak accidents. I looked it up.”

“I’m a good swimmer. I think I’ll be okay.”

“It’s probably safer if someone is with you.”

Next to her, Krystal slaps her comic book shut and sighs. “What Miss Wikipedia here is trying to say is that we want to come along. We’re bored, and we’ve never been canoeing.”

“Yeah,” Sasha says. “That’s what I meant.”

“That’s not a good idea. It’s a long trip. And there’ll be hiking involved.”

“I’ve never hiked, either,” Krystal says. “Please, can we come?”

Sasha bats her eyes at me, the lashes fluttering behind her glasses. “Pretty please?”

My plan was to cross the lake, find the spot marked on Vivian’s map, and proceed from there. Sasha and Krystal will only slow me down. Nevertheless, a sense of duty tugs at me. Franny told me the purpose of reopening Camp Nightingale was to give the campers new experiences. That remains true, even if I’m currently pissed at Franny.

“Fine,” I tell them. “Put on life vests and help me with the canoe.”

The girls do as they’re told, grabbing dirty life vests that hang from the sides of the canoe racks. They slip them on and help me lift a canoe off one of the racks. It’s heavier than it looks and so unwieldy that we come close to dropping it. We remain a sorry sight as we awkwardly carry the canoe to the lake’s edge, Krystal holding up the front and me taking the rear. Sasha is in the middle, hidden beneath the overturned boat, just a pair of knobby legs shuffling toward the water.

Our struggle is enough to tear Miranda’s attention away from Chet. She trots over to us and says, “Where are you going?”

“Canoeing,” Sasha says.

“And hiking,” I add, hoping they’ll be dissuaded by the fact that there’s more to this trip than just paddling across the lake.

Instead, Miranda frowns. “Without me?”

“Do you want to come along?”

“Not really, but...”

Her voice trails off, the sentence unfinished but its meaning perfectly clear. She doesn’t want to be the only one left behind. I know the feeling.

“Go get changed,” I tell her. “We’ll wait for you.”

Another person means another canoe. So while Miranda runs back to the cabin to fetch shorts and a pair of sneakers, Krystal,Sasha, and I wrangle a second canoe to the water’s edge. When Miranda returns, we climb in, she and Krystal in one canoe, Sasha and me in the other. Using oars, we push off and start to drift out onto the lake.

The bulk of the rowing in my boat falls to me. I sit in the back, paddling on alternating sides of the canoe. Sasha sits up front, her own paddle across her lap, dipping it into the water whenever I need to straighten things out.

“How deep do you think it is here?” she says.

“Pretty deep in parts.”

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