Breaking Point (7 page)
And then something stopped me. I was halfway out of the boat when this voice in my head told me that if I didn't go after her, I'd regret it for the rest of my life. I dropped back down into the seat. An image of Brianna smiling appeared in my head.
Maybe I would drown out there. But at least I would die trying to save her. I tightened the straps on the life jacket, jammed my paddle into the sand and slid off into the waves.
The sea was not choppy, but the waves were powerful enough to swamp me at any minute. I spent as much effort keeping upright as I did trying to paddle forward. I had never felt so alone in my life. My mind was racing. What would I do if I found her drowned? What would I do if I found her alive and we got out of this okay? What would I do differently in my life?
My brain went to any number of crazy places, but my arms kept working. As I neared the next island, I had settled into this thought: I am out here on my own, and I am at the mercy of much larger forces. That hurricane was more powerful and violent than anything I had ever experienced. My night with Brianna was as frightening, yet as amazing, as anything I'd ever known. And now I was here, at sea, following her. Trying to save her. Trying to save me.
My arms ached, and my body told me to give up. Go ashore at the next island. Yet, as I rounded the back of the island and the protected waters suddenly became calmer, I regained my strength and my resolve. I did not go ashore. Instead, I focused on the next, much smaller, island farther east. I rounded a sandy spit of land and charged out into the open waters again. There were hundreds of tiny islands out here, but I wanted to believe I could instinctively know where Brianna would go next.
I forced myself to go ashore at the next island and stretch my legs, which were badly cramped. I ate a few blueberries that were growing there and stuffed more in my pockets. I found a tiny pool of fresh water left from the rains and drank deeply, wishing I had a container to carry some of it with me.
Then I pushed off again, my dedication to finding Brianna stronger than ever. I fought off the demons of fear and doubt in my head and focused on the next, much larger, island in the distance. When I got slapped by two waves larger than the rest, I got drenched but kept the little boat steady, turning away from the waves until the swells had passed by. I bailed with my plastic bucket as best I could and, laden with water that would slow me more, kept the island in my sights and worked the paddle as if my energy was limitless.
The bright sunlight sparkling on the water made me squint, and my vision seemed to blur, but as I neared the island, I saw somethingâsomething red. I paddled even harder.
It was a kayak, for sure. Brianna's. As it came into focus, I could see that it was floating near shore, upside down. I felt a cold wave of panic sweep through my head. I told myself to stop thinking. Just paddle. And I thought about those larger forces again. Not just the sea, the storm. But something was guiding me. I'd never been a religious person, and I can't say I had a name for what the force was. But it was inside of me, yet something much larger than just me. Whatever it was, it drove the panic away, it made me feel stronger and it urged me on.
I pulled ashore alongside of Brianna's red kayak. She was nowhere in sight. I pulled her kayak up onto the beach and flipped it over. There was no spray skirt. No paddle. She had dumped it at sea. I scanned the water, hoping not to see what I feared most.
I was about to head back out to search for her, not knowing if this just happened or if she'd swamped hours ago. It was as if time had ground to a halt.
But then she appeared, walking along the shore toward me. I began to run to her, but my legs were cramped from being seated in the kayak for so long. I guess I looked pretty funnyâlimping along. Just as I was about to reach her, I tripped on a beach stone and fell right into her. We tumbled to the sand beneath us, and I couldn't speak.
As we lay there, all she said was, “Hold me, Cameron. Just hold me and never let me go.”
We stayed on the island for two days. The weather was good and much warmer than usual for the Nova Scotia coast. We swam in the tidal pools in crystal-clear seawater. We found enough fresh water, and mussels and clams to eat, although we had to eat them raw. The matches were gone.
“Let's never leave,” Brianna said. “They'll stop looking for us, and we can just stay here forever.”
“I'd like that,” I said. But I knew it was a complete fantasy. While Brianna was sleeping in the morning, I had fashioned a usable kayak paddle from a piece of driftwood. I had cleaned up both kayaks, and they were ready to go.
On the third day, the sea was completely calm and the sun was bright. We were both feeling a little sick from eating nothing but the shellfish. I was worried one of us might get really ill.
“Today's the day,” I said. “We need to go ashore.”
Brianna looked at me sadly. “What about forever?”
“I'll stay with you,” I said. “I'll go with you to Montreal like we planned. We'll meet your cousin. We could be there in a few days.” I was about to tell her a storyârepeating her story about the two of us and the new life we would start in Montreal, but she cut me off.
“There is no cousin,” she said bluntly. “I made that up.”
I was a little shocked and confused. Why had she lied to me? “We'll find another way. We can do it.”
But she shook her head. “I've tried before. Something always happens. I get sent back.” I had not seen this side of Brianna before. She had always been so feisty, so confident in herself, so strong. Now she seemed like a weak, hurt little girl. I held her in my arms again, but even though we were still together, alone on our island, I felt her slipping away.
We sat in silence for a long time, just staring at the water and at the shore of the mainland to the north. And then I took her to the kayaks and showed her my makeshift paddle. She put on her life jacket, and I handed her the good paddle. We dragged the kayaks from the bushes and settled them into the water. I helped her in and gave a little push. “I'm okay now,” she said. “Whatever happens, we'll always have this.”
It was a slow trip across the water to the mainland. We were in no hurry. I tried to talk to her about what we could do once we got ashoreâwhere we could go and how we could still make a life together.
“I'm tired of running away,” she finally said.
I wanted to find the right words to make her believe and to make me believe that it would all turn out all right. But I couldn't do it.
We came ashore near a gravel road at the tip of a headland. There was a single shack there, the home of an old fisherman who introduced himself as Jack Kaiser. He had been watching us approach through his binoculars and was there to greet us when we arrived.
“Hell of a storm,” he said by way of greeting. Even here on the mainland, hundreds of trees had been knocked down by the hurricane. “You lived through it out there?”
I nodded. I told him who we were. I told him the whole story.
“You are two of the luckiest people I ever met,” was his response.
Brianna smiled at me then, and I felt love and longing and loss at the same time. Nothing would ever be the same again in my life.
“I got a truck, if you want me to take you somewhere. I'm not going to turn you in or anything. That's not my style.”
I knew he was telling the truth.
We went inside Jack's home, and he fed us and told us some stories about his life and how his wife had died and left him there to live alone.
Later in the day, Brianna shocked me by asking Jack to drive us back to the camp. I tried talking her out of it, but she insisted.
Chris looked as if he was seeing a pair of ghosts when we arrived. He gave me a hug, and he held on to Brianna's hand. “We'd given up hope.”
Everybody else had left before the hurricane came ashore, and Chris was the only one left to close down the place for the season. There were no harsh words, and he even let Brianna and me spend the night together. “Just don't tell anyone I let you do this,” he said. We promised we wouldn't.
In the morning, Chris drove us to the city. “You're both going to have to do some correctional time. I was hoping the camp thing would change all that, but your adventure made for some serious attention. But first I'm going to take you both to your homes. We'll be back in touch tomorrow to talk about what happens next. Just don't screw it up. You need to work with the system.”
I'd heard those words before and always despised them. I knew we'd be sent to separate facilities, and I knew there would be a good chance Brianna, despite what she said, would run away again.
When she got out of the car at her house, she just looked at me, and I couldn't read her look. There was so much more I wanted to say to her, but before I could, her parents had run out the door and were hugging her. Chris said a few words to them, and then we were driving off.
He knew what I was feeling, but he didn't quite know what to say. Then he finally turned his head a bit and said, “You'll get over her.”
But I knew he was dead wrong about that.
Lesley Choyce spends time on the waters of the Eastern Shore of Nova Scotia when not writing for teens and running his own publishing company. His latest books for Orca include
Reckless
and
Reaction
.