Page 4 of Adrift

“Me, too,” I lie with an all too confident smile. “Easy-peasy!”

Of my four cousins, Bella and I are the closest. It might have had something to do with us being only a year apart, but it’s also because Bella has a huge solid gold nugget in place of where her heart should be. In fact, I bet if she were to get an X-ray, she’d break the damn machine. The girl is so generous and kind, you’d think she was training to become a nun.

When my sister eloped with Darian ten years ago, my parents were a mess. My mom and sister had an awful and irrevocable exchange of words where my mom called Darian a “useless junkie and piece of trash,” and my sister vowed to never speak to my parents again. Yeah, she was an extremist like that.

And she stood by her word until her dying day.

My nine-year-old world crumbled the day my sister left because, regardless of our almost eleven-year age difference, she was the one I relied on to hold me during scary movies. She was the one who wiped my tears when Ruby Mallory called me ‘blubber legs.’ She was the only one who understood what it was like being raised by a controlling, sometimes insensitive, mother and a spineless father.

For almost six months after Sonia left, I’d wake up in the middle of the night to find my way down the dark hallway to her room. I’d roll down her comforter and sleep in her bed, breathing in the faint scent of her shampoo on her pillow.

I remember wondering how she could have just left us.

Did my parents mean so little?

Did I mean so little?

How could a man she met only a year before mean more to her than us?

Between my mom popping sleeping pills like they were breath mints, and my dad’s complete withdrawal from life, I practically raised myself for the next couple of years until my parents finally got their act together. It was then that Bella and I became closer. With our extended Indian family hovering over my parents, Bella was the only one who made me a priority. She was the only one to ask how I was doing. Aside from Melody, she was the only one who made me feel like a nine-year-old.

My sister held steadfast to her word, not speaking to my parents over the next ten years. She and I connected a few years ago, when I was in high school, but she was so flaky that the two times we scheduled to meet, she didn’t even show up. Even her texts and messages were sporadic.

Especially the strange text she sent me a couple of months before she died.

What the hell was that?

I shove the thought of the text I’d spent way too much time pondering aside to focus on keeping my damn kayak steady, pretending to know what I’m doing. Felix yells back to the group, letting us know the areas to avoid and reminding us to keep our paddles face up. “Let’s head over to where the water is a little deeper and calmer. We can practice our wet exit. It’s the safest way to get out of your kayak in case you roll over, so I want to make sure we practice it a few times.”

My heart speeds up when I see the first current of water in front of us. Felix guides us over it, and the rush of getting through it has me feeling more confident. For the next half hour, we practice the wet exit by pulling the kayak skirt in the water and swimming back to the surface. I’m not going to lie, I’m not a fan. It makes me feel dizzy and disoriented both times I try it, but at least I know how to get myself out of the kayak if it rolls.

While Bella and Melody are doing the same thing, I look around to see if I can find King again. I see him far in the distance, tailing the group, but he’s still too far away for me to see his face. His arms flex rhythmically as he paddles around, and something about him seems keenly familiar, even from here. It’s like examining a pencil sketch before it’s been colored in–the details aren’t there but the image is taking shape.

The water starts to get choppier as the current speeds up, and we make our way down the river.

“You doing okay, Rani?” Melody’s voice resounds in front of me over the rushing water.

“Just peachy!” I yell back, trying to keep my grip around my paddle, telling myself to be one with the river every time my kayak bumps and slides over a white water rapid. The rush is a mixture of exhilaration and intimidation, but I can see why kayakers come back to do this time after time.

“Alright everyone, there are some strong currents headed our way.” Felix’s voice sounds far away, overpowered by the wind and rushing water, but I get the jist of what he’s trying to convey. “The best thing to do is face the wave . . ..”

I don’t hear the rest of his sentence but try to follow along behind the group. My arms feel tight and sore as my pulse spikes. The group pulls to the left, going down speeding currents, and I try to keep the same pace. But as I paddle forward, a rush of the water shoves my kayak hard toward them. My kayak flies a few feet into the air and lands awkwardly back into the rushing stream, making me roll over into the water and lose my grip on my paddle.

Before I know what’s happening, I feel icy-cold pressure around my head and the bubble of water inside my nostrils. The feeling is akin to being punched in the nose by a sledgehammer. I squint my eyes open to a wall of blue with trains of white bubbles, and I know I’ve rolled over. My lungs burn as I struggle to hold my breath, and my hands wave around wildly, trying to find my paddle.

I try to remember what we had practiced earlier. I have to pull the skirt and exit the kayak, but my heart is racing so fast inside my chest, it’s ready to keel over and accept defeat, and all my senses are drowning.

Fuck, I’m going to die.

Chapter Two

Darian

“Darian jan, I need you to stop calling me every hour like an obsessed teenage girl. I’m fine, sweetheart, and so is my Arman.” My mom sounds exhausted, even though she used the Armenian endearment with my name. I can’t tell if the exhaustion is from me calling her again or from taking care of my son day in and day out for the past year.

I lift the cap off my head and run a hand through my hair, looking around my office. This isn’t sustainable. I really need to find a nanny for my son, but trust isn’t something I store extra of, and the only person I trust to take care of him is my mom. “I get it, Mom. I’m just . . . worried.”

“Don’t be! It was just a dizzy spell. The doctor said he needs to increase my blood pressure meds and I should be as good as new.” Her voice hitches up toward the end–something she does when she’s trying extra hard to convince the person she’s arguing with.

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