Page 34 of The Ripple Effect

Trust McHuge to be a better person before breakfast than I am at any hour. Trust him to be relentlessly analog, writing on recycled trees instead of a device.

“Taking notes?”

“Nope. Making lesson plans. Remember the Class 1 rapid with friendly eddies a kilometer or so downstream? We can split the clients into two groups and still be close enough to help each other with rescues. In the debrief, we can talk abouthopping from safe haven to more dangerous waters and back to the next safe haven in your marriage, the same way you hop from eddy to eddy in whitewater.”

“McHuge,” I say carefully. “You’re notmaking this upas we go along, are you? Is that why there’s no printed curriculum?” Last time I worked as a guide, our trips were planned down to the exact weight of the food. I assumed the Love Boat didn’t give out reading material for the usual McHuge reasons, likeexpanding to fill the present moment, orpaddling your own river. But this sounds like not evenheknows what we’re doing.

He squints up at the roof of the tent, then switches off his headlamp and reaches for his pack. I refuse to feel regret when his navel disappears under a well-worn Rolling Stones T-shirt.

“I once lived with someone who shopped for food every day, instead of once a week. Arie’s explanation wasHow do you know on Sunday what you want to eat on Thursday?Likewise, I don’t know what our guests will need tomorrow until I see what they learn today. I also need to accommodate my coworkers, the weather, the terrain. So I shop for lessons every day.”

“Arie was your girlfriend?” I have no reason to be sour about any of his partners, past or present. No standing to be jealous of a woman who picked him the freshest fish for that night’s dinner.

“Boyfriend.”

“Oh! I didn’t know you were…”

“Pan,” he supplies. “And poly. But I don’t know if I’ll look for a polycule again. You know, your identity evolves over time, and sometimes you can’t predict where it’s going until you get there.”

“Yeah, totally.” That would be the “free love” bit from Brent’s article, I guess. I did not have “discuss the many facets of queerness with a guy I thought was cishet” on my bingo card fortoday. It’s uncomfortable to discover my assumptions about him were wrong.

“I should put the hot water on.” I wriggle out of my sleeping bag, trying to act nonchalant. He didn’t care if I saw him in just shorts, feet bare. What do I care if he sees me in my Leia T-shirt? My boobs are small enough that a bra is optional, anyway.

“I’ll give you a hand,” he says, tossing the books onto his cot, then pushing himself out of the chair. He takes off his glasses and rummages around in his backpack for a good minute before coming up with the case.

“Shouldn’t you put your field notes somewhere safer? Maybe type them into your phone and back them up to the cloud once in a while?”

“I’m not good at typing,” he says, wiggling his thumbs. He doesn’t have to say they’re too big. I look away and try to breathe normally.

“Besides,” he continues, “what do I need to protect them from?”

“Your tendency to misplace things. Bears. People whose names start withBwho’ve already tried to invade our privacy.”

He laughs. “No one wants my notes, Stellar.”

I shake my head. “You should take better care of your intellectual property, and not just because it’smyfuture intellectual property. You had a best-selling book last year. Your ideas are worth more than you think.”

“You can’t copyright an idea, only a method. And my methods are only worth anything if I sell a book proposal or Renee decides to partner with us, in which case the lawyers take care of that. Our guests are ordinary people. With the exception of Sloane and Dereck, who presumably have better things to do than sneak around.”

The fact that McHuge thinks Sloane is automatically trustworthy pokes me in a spot that I would dearly like not to be sore. Maybe that’s why I snap, “And the exception of Brent, who has tons of incentive to sneak around, collecting dirt for another clickbait article. You’ve seen how he treats Willow—what makes you think he’ll treat us any better?”

“I wasn’t under the illusion that only unproblematic people would come on this course, Stellar. And you’re right, their dynamic is a yellow flag.”

“But,” I prompt, when he stops.

“And,” he replies, giving the word a little heat, like a pitcher warming up his arm, “it’s not yet a red flag. Right? There are a lot of reasons someone might not be their best self on the first day. They’re feeling vulnerable. They’re worried they’ll be the worst paddlers. They can’t see each other’s faces in the canoe, so they lose that avenue of communication. They’re afraid, so it comes out as safer emotions—anger or judgment. We can’t know what’s inside other people’s marriages, Stellar. We can’t know what’s inside their hearts.”

I don’t know whether he purposely raises his crooked eyebrow, but that fractured arch, split on the day he decided to become the person he is, saysAs both of us should knowbetter than any words.

“But what if what’s inside their marriages is bad?”What if what’s inside theirheartsis bad, my brain howls.

We had this saying in the ER:For you, it’s a regular day, but for the patient, it’s the worst day of their life.It’s supposed to help us not take bad behavior personally. Toward the end, I questioned that wisdom. What does it do to people to work in a place where the person who’s allowed to be having their worst day is never you? What do you do when you’re supposedto reset the bad behavior column to zero every day, but for you, everything keeps adding up?

At some point, the balance tips, and I never again want to be surprised when that moment comes.

“Then we can help them,” McHuge replies. “Ifwe stay curious, not judgmental. I’m curious about you, actually. I’m thinking your reaction has more to do with Stellar than it does with Brent and Willow.”

“Always the psychologist, McHuge,” I say, yanking open my pack and pulling out fresh day clothes. “So I’ll be the ER doc: Sometimes danger signs don’t mean anything. But I take them seriously anyway. Check and double-check them, get ready to react in case theydomean something.”

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