Page 32 of The Legend
“Yeah, butyou gave her that drink, or drinks in this case. Don’t think this isn’t on youtwo.”
“Do youthink there are sharks in there?” Sway peeked over the side of the raft.
“No, it’sa river.” Aiden told her looking over the side himself. “At least I don’t thinkthere is.”
“Why doyou care if there are sharks?” I asked lifting my head from the edge of theraft that I was using as a pillow.
“Because,”Sway stood up and then tumbled on top of me from all the alcohol and Benadryl.“I’m going to swim to shore.”
“I don’tthink so honey.” I chuckled adjusting her on my lap, the thought crossed mymind that she was perfectly positioned for align boring, but sadly, our familywas here. “You’ve had too much to drink.”
SettingSway back in front of me, I tossed the oars to Aiden, I said, “here, help meand we can get back to shore.”
Workingtogether or at least I thought we were it must have occurred to Aiden that wehad made no progress.
“Jameson,”Aiden yelled from his place at the front of the raft. “You’re supposed to berowing the same direction as me!”
“I can’tsee what way you’re rowing!” I yelled back watching Sway closely to make sureher drunken ass stayed put. She was still looking over the side of the raftsearching for a shark.
Emmathought it would be a good idea to come back and see what I was doing and whywe weren’t moving.
“Don’tcome back here. Stay up there. You’ll throw off the weight balance.”
Before Icould finish my sentence, Emma fell into the side of the raft and cut a hole inthe side. Aiden fell in the water next and started swimming to shore.
“You guysare so stupid.” He mumbled.
Emma andSway fell out next and then before I knew it, we were all in the water.
I lookedat Emma who was treading water in a manner that seemed as if she was drowning.“You’re a dick.” I told her and swam over to her intending on drowning her tinyass. She grabbed my shoulders pushing my whole head under.
“I’m not afucking floating device. Stop that!”
Emmadunked me once more.
“Kids!”I heardAiden call out. “Stop trying to kill each other. We need to find that tourguide.”
I noticedthe cool water turn warm a little too quickly. “Are you peeing?” I asked incomplete horror.
“Yes.”Emma answered too calmly.
We triedto swim to shore but it was a river and the current wasn’t easy to swimagainst. Mostly because my sister had, decided to act as if she was a goddamnchimpanzee and clung to my back.
“You areby far the most useless person in this family Emma!” I said to her when she bitmy shoulder and told me to swim faster.
“You knowwhat, Jameson?” Aiden butted in not knowing that his wife was attacking me. Howcould he know? He was spending entirely too much time using a turtle to get toshore. I wanted to tell him that they bite but instead, after Emma bit me, Ifelt he needed to find that out on his own. “Let’s focus on finding thatuseless fucking tour guide and get the hell out of here.” Aiden yelled over hisshoulder. “We’re all doing our best.”
“You’reright.” Then I smacked Emma on the back of the head when Aiden wasn’t looking.“Let’s find that useless fucking tour guide.”
At somepoint during this ordeal, Emma and I had separated from Sway and Aiden and theyseemed to be closer to shore than we were, probably because I was swimming fortwo.
I keptlooking around hoping I would see a rescue raft but saw nothing but turtles. Icouldn’t understand why they were in a river. Didn’t they prefer oceans?
“It’s likethe time we went camping in Dayton Peak.”
I glancedover my shoulder at Emma, still piggybacking, in shock. “You and I apparentlyremember that night very differently.”
“How so?”
