Page 47 of The Ripple Effect

For a second I think he’s going to lean down, and I’m going to pull myself up, and we’re going to make that first kiss irrelevant, right here, right now.

And that’s when I spot a one-person kayak heading our way.

My asshole detector starts alarming. No one should be coming down the rapids when we’re in the water. We’re not blocking their line of descent, but even so, they should give us a chance to get clear, for safety.

The paddler parks their boat in an eddy, then positions a a long-lensed camera to capture action shots for a flotilla of bright-blue boats assembling above the rapids. Their optic-yellow safety gear shows beautifully against the pale foaming water, the dark-green forest, and the gray rocks. Even their paddles have blue shafts and yellow blades.

Until now, I liked how Lyle’s aversion to photos made the Love Boat feel less performative than other expeditions I’d worked on. I’d seen people’s faces fall when the photos weren’t what they’d hoped, as if one image of themselves making an awkward move had the power to erase every moment of joy they’d had in the boat.

Up against the other group’s sunny, unified colors, our rainbow fleet looks amateurish. A little like we bought the canoes secondhand and couldn’t get them all the same color.

I shake the water out of my whistle and give one long blast.

The water fight dries up when people realize what’s happening, and the fun evaporates completely after the first two-person kayak successfully challenges the rapids. The paddlers have the inefficient movements of beginners, but kayaks are nimbler than canoes. The Rolling Stones look a lot easier for these people than they did for us, with our switched-up boat positions, bad timing, and sketchy communication.

At the outwash, the paddlers’ heads turn to our bunch, soaked and shivering, half the boats still not retrieved. Much like the unfortunate action shots I’d seen on other expeditions, their pitying frowns show us what we look like.

Sloane limply tosses Brent’s shoe at him and wades toward land. Brent swipes for the shoe, misses, and has to swim after it. On the shore, Dereck strips off his sodden shirt, balls it up, and throws it to the sand like he’s done with this forever. Even Lori takes an apprehensive step back, joining Mitch at the forest’s edge.

When the next kayak reaches the outwash, Lyle shudders like theTitanicthrowing its engines into reverse. “Stellar. I need you to get back in your boat and rescue the canoes. Make it look like we meant to stop here. Please. As fast as you can.”

“What’s wrong?” He so rarely asks for anything. To hear him sound unnerved… it’s unnerving.

“No time. Go,” he says, a desperate undercurrent in his voice.

My boat is near the sandy bank. It’ll take me a couple of minutes to swim over and get back in with no help.

A third kayak arrives in the wash, bearing an instructor type and a straight-backed person who’s not paddling particularly hard.

“Having some trouble,Mr.McHugh?” the stiff man enunciates over the rush of whitewater, pale lips pursed in satisfaction. The man’s voice is pleasant, yet I’ve never heard so many insults packed into so few words. His diction is precise in the way of people who want you to know their vocabulary words have more syllables than yours.

It can’t be. Then again, who else but Lyle’s douchecanoe of a PhD advisor would call Lyle “Mister” with the same malice he flaunted in Brent’s article?

I pause my life jacket–hampered front crawl to take a closer look at the one human on earth who truly, deeply hates Lyle.

He’s maybe fifty-five or sixty, villainous in a picky, particular way: navy wool shirt double-buttoned at the wrist, hollowed cheeks, fresh shave. Yellow sport lenses shield his flat, dead eyes. Somehow, he gives a neon whitewater helmet the vibe of a Tilley hat with the chin strap pulled tight.

In his outsize custom canoe, Lyle is taut with stress. I’d be rigid, too, if someone had pulled “Mr. McHugh” on me for the second time.

“Professor Fisher,” Lyle replies. His courtesy makes me want to swim over there and capsize the professor’s boat the way Sloane tipped mine. I couldn’t tip them, though. The kayak iswide and flat, with two full-grown men as ballast. I don’t have the power to defend Lyle, like I didn’t have the power to defend anything else I loved.

In an instant, I’m furious. Rage pours from my heart like an oil spill, contaminating everything in sticky blackness. Any spark now will send me sky high.

I bolt my mouth shut and focus on breathing through my nose.

“Well,” Fisher says, glancing delightedly down his long, thin, sunburned nose. “Too bad we caught you at such adifficultmoment. But no better time to introduce you to the River of Love, our research-expedition-slash-relationship-counseling pilot project. Over the next year, we’ll publish three to five papers in major journals, then follow up withmysecond book.”

All the locks holding my mouth shut fail at once. “What?! You can’t publishouridea. That’s plagiarism, you jackass.”

The professor fixes his fishy eyes on me. “The idea was generated and refined inmylab, undermysupervision. I have a right to use it. Perhaps more right than you do, Miss…?”

I turn to Lyle, who looks stricken. “Is that true? Can he… can he do that?”

Before he can answer, another tandem kayak successfully challenges the Stones, the bow paddler whooping with exhilaration.

That voice. For some reason, I know it, but I can’t put a face to it until she whoops again, and the rest of the group whoops back.

I picture a white woman on a stage, wireless microphone in hand, the picture cutting between her open-mouthed excitement and the studio audience’s wild, screaming applause.

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