After an amount of time I’m not particularly proud of, I catch up with Ash. She’s trying to lift the edges of the boat out of the water enough so we can dump it out, but that’s not going to work and we don’t have time.
“Here,” I tell her, gripping one side of the boat. “Put your hands here and just hold on for a minute.”
“What are you going to do?” she asks.
“I’m going to go around to the other side and start tilting the boat toward you,” I tell her. “If it’s going to pull you under to hang on to the side, let it go. What we’re going to do is try to lift it like that up just far enough that when we tilt it back, whatever water’s still in there isn’t going to drag the boat down where it can fill back up again, okay?”
Her eyes are wide open, her eyebrows up. “I don’t—” she says. “I don’t think I can lift it.”
“I’m going to help you,” I tell her. “With both of us, it’s going to be okay. When I start tilting the boat, though, I need you to help me get it exactly on its side. You’re going to need to help it rotate, okay?”
“Your job sounds easier,” she says.
“Whichever way you want to do it, we’re going to have to do it now,” I tell her.
She looks at the boat which, from where I am, looks like it’s already a lost cause. “Okay,” she says. “
I’ll do what you said.”
“Okay,” I tell her. “If at any point you don’t feel safe, just yell and swim away, all right? It’s just a boat. Nobody has to risk anything more than a security deposit, okay?”
“Okay,” she answers weakly.
“Ash?” I say, trying to put my hand on her shoulder to comfort her, though it ends up being little more than a pat. “Are you okay?”
She looks up at me, her eyes searching mine.
“Hey,” I tell her. “We can do this, okay?”
“Okay,” she says and nods, only the rim of the boat where she’s holding on is below the surface of the water now.
I swim around to the other side of the boat, holding my breath. When I get to the other side, I reach down to grab my half of the boat.
“Okay,” I tell her. “It’s far enough down now that we’re not going to be able to lift it all the way,” I tell her as she holds on with one hand now, using the other to tread water. “Let go of your side and push it down. I’ll—”
“Push it down?” she shouts. “Are you insane?”
“You push your half down and I’ll pull my half up, that’ll get it rotating,” I tell her. “Once it’s as close to on its side as possible, swim closer and grab next to where I’m grabbing. We’re going to have to see if we can…”
I stop talking. The boat is too heavy even to hold onto, much less to get out of the water.
“It’s okay,” I tell her. “You can let go.”
“No!” she says. “We’ve got to save the boat! How are we going to get back to shore?”
I let go of my side and say, “Look around. There’s land everywhere and both of us can swim. We can’t save the boat, but as soon as you let go, we can get to land.”
It’s hard to tell whether she let go on her own or she lost her grip, but it’s all right either way. She nods and we head back in the direction of the boat shop.
As we go, I stumble into the realization that if I don’t slap the water, but guide my hand into it and then complete the stroke, I can take a breath without feeling like I’m drowning.
The boat took maybe three minutes from the time the boat rental guy started shouting to when Ash let go, but it felt like an hour. The swim back to shore, by contrast, seems to take no time at all.
We get to land and Ash and I crawl our way to shore, lying back on the grass once we’ve pulled ourselves out far enough. We’re both breathing heavily, trying to recover from the ordeal.
I roll over onto my side as soon as I’ve regained the energy, and I stroke Ash’s face as she looks at me.
“That turned into a bit of a thing, didn’t it?” I ask.