What the Other Three Don't Know Read online

  “Where are you from?” said Skye.

  “I’m visiting from Washington State University for a few months. Studying engineering, but I wanted to try this out. I’ll be helping Sawyer with camp setup and the resupply on day three. We’ll see you on the water soon enough.”

  Wyatt sheathed his knife and walked to the van, nodding at me as he threw his duffel into the back. The bag was covered in odd insignias and patches that read “Black Ops Zombie Recon” and “Zombie Outbreak Response Team” with the biohazard logo everywhere.

  Wyatt’s trailer was just a stone’s throw from ours, so even if he was too cool to talk to me, he had to acknowledge that we were practically neighbors. Since we lived so close to one another, it meant that I knew his father was an abusive drunk and didn’t appreciate Wyatt or his artistic talent. I’m not talking small-time sketches. I’m talking “worthy of Jackson Hole art gallery” work. Like, the big leagues. I’d seen his skill one afternoon when I was walking Bury and saw Wyatt painting a dilapidated barn in Tetonia.

  I suddenly missed shopping with Mom in Jackson. I missed our visits to the art galleries. I knew we could never afford the paintings or bronzes in those places, but we could afford the hot chocolate and the drive from Victor over the Teton Pass. We could afford time together.

  Wyatt claimed a seat in the van and stared out his window, tapping his foot against the floor, like a piston driving into the carpet.

  “Just the four of us, I guess,” said Skye as he hopped into the van and buckled in. “I didn’t want to be with this group. No offense.”

  “Neither did I,” said Shelby.

  “Sorry you didn’t get to pick another group. Couldn’t your parents sign you up for some dressage camp in Jackson?” said Wyatt.

  “You’re right,” Shelby said, feigning shock and putting her right hand to her chest in a mock-elegant way. “Why am I not at home riding my $100,000 horses? Dear me, they must be absolutely lost without Mumsy! Driver, I seem to have stepped into this crap-box of a car without my gloves!”

  I couldn’t help but laugh, even if that meant kind of aligning myself with Wyatt without even thinking about it. I noticed I felt defensive on his behalf, but wasn’t sure why. It had to be geography, right? Because we were neighbors? What else could it be?

  “Just saying. Don’t complain when you can pay to have whatever you want,” said Wyatt. “I bet your parents would buy you the river if you asked.”

  “That’s not fair, man,” said Skye.

  “No, it’s okay,” said Shelby. “He’s just jealous I get to wear fancy hats to expensive events and that I can, like, buy happiness if I want to. Maybe I will ask for the river as a birthday present. Maybe the whole state of Idaho.”

  Sitting behind her, Wyatt only saw the back of her head, but from my angle, I could see Shelby’s eyes harden, her mouth a rigid line. Her neck flushed a light red, and her cheeks were booming with color.

  “What about you, Indie?” said Skye.

  “I’m just here for the free T-shirt.”

  “Right,” said Skye.

  “I’m serious. Hopefully it has some awesome pun about Hells Canyon and being in hell and all that, right? That’s all I want. Hopefully it’s sweat-wicking.”

  Skye shook his head. “Okay, if nobody is going to be honest, I’ll start: My parents met with Wixom and said that I was ready for the river, that it would be a good challenge for me and they wanted to push me. I wanted to fly-fish. But whatever. I guess I don’t mind rafting.”

  “Can you still do stuff with the new getup?” said Wyatt.

  “More than you think,” said Skye, shifting his leg.

  “Alright,” our driver said, climbing behind the wheel and cutting off our conversation. “Let’s get you guys to Hells Canyon.”

  Our driver—who had clearly read through the brochure—spent the next half hour telling us about Hells Canyon and the river, how it was the deepest river gorge in North America, how artifacts from old mining camps and prehistoric tribes dotted the land, how the river carved through more than 200,000 acres of wilderness, rimrocks, and the Seven Devils Mountain Range—Ogre, She Devil, He Devil, Twin Imps, Devil’s Throne, Mt. Belial, and Goblin. Wyatt perked up when these peaks were listed.

  I felt anxiety coursing through me, aware that I would be confronting not only whitewater rapids but the Snake River itself, where the Hells Canyon Recreational Area split in two and would take us back toward Tetonia and Victor.

  I wasn’t listening to the driver detail the petroglyphs we’d see or how underwater volcanoes shaped the rocks in the canyon, or the fact that the river was a mile below the land and more than a hundred feet deep in places, or that there were at least two sections of class IV rapids.

  I wasn’t listening to any of that. I was only thinking about the weight of the ring around my neck and the many hours over the past year when I’d sat on the banks of the Snake River near Victor and thought about Mom with a sweet taste in my mouth and a bitter feeling in my heart. I’d watch fly-fishing guides in their drift boats and think about how Dad used to take me drifting on the Snake, and then my whole day would be spent trying to come up for air.

  I was haunted by water, by how beautiful it was and how calming it looked. How it was able to curl through anything and stay blue, sink anything but stay moving, carve through a life and take the whole world with it.

  Our driver said we were ten minutes from the site. We continued through tons of massive trees, and while I stared out the window, I heard Wyatt whispering, “Monkshood. Elephant head. Snapdragon. Ponderosa pine. Red alder. Western larch.”

  “What?” I said.

  “Nothing. Just looking at the trees.”

  I watched a large osprey dive into the fading afternoon light, just beyond the trees Wyatt was listing.

  “Can we all agree not to write about each other?” said Skye.

  “Wixom said we had to write about each other,” said Shelby. “That was the whole point.” She stabbed at her phone with her finger. “Are you kidding me? I don’t have any service.”

  Wyatt laughed.

  “Shut up, Wyatt,” said Shelby.

  “It must be tough to know you won’t be the first to like something. All those little hearts, and no red to fill them in. Who is going to do it all? Sigh.”

  “You just said ‘Sigh’ out loud, you know that, right?” said Shelby. “Everybody hear that?”

  “In fact, something might go viral over the next few days and you’ll be the last one to know about it,” said Wyatt. “It’s a shame, really. Maybe you should have your daddy fly a helicopter in to pick you up.”

  “That’s enough, man,” said Skye.

  “I know you, Skye,” said Wyatt. “Don’t think I don’t.”

  “Do you?” said Skye.

  “You’re friends with Royal and Chase, right?”

  “So?”

  “Yeah. I know you,” said Wyatt.

  “Great. Glad we got that out of the way.”

  “I don’t know why you think you’re in charge of our group. Is it because you roll with the soccer team? That doesn’t make you worth anything on this river. So don’t tell me what to do—man—but please, keep using the overly masculine language of the bros.”

  “Hey, tell me something,” said Skye. “Why do you even bother with school? Don’t you have enough generators and canned food to last a lifetime? Why do you even come to town? You should just stay in the sticks and make friends with your horses. I mean, would anybody even notice if you just disappeared one day?”

  “C’mon, Skye,” I said.

  “And stop harping on Shelby. You don’t know her,” said Skye.

  “Yeah. I do,” said Wyatt. “I know all of you.”

  “No, you don’t,” said Shelby.

  The driver cleared his throat, cutting the tension in the van. �
�So, uh, plan on no service for five days.”

  “Look,” I said, hoping to change the direction of the conversation. “Wixom’s human-interest story assignment is a joke. People don’t win Pulitzers for that crap. They win for features about important people, about groundbreaking issues. You don’t see the staff at the Washington Post writing about their coworkers, or Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah writing about the proprietor of the local bakery, or Kathryn Schulz writing about our driver. No offense—” I waited on his name.

  “Thatcher.”

  “Thatcher,” I repeated. I was suddenly worried I’d revealed too much nerdiness in the first few minutes in a weak attempt at impressing them.

  “What? Didn’t anybody else read the assigned packet?” I asked.

  Wyatt laughed again.

  I looked out my window, trying to ignore the others, who were avoiding eye contact with me for obvious reasons.

  “And yet, they award Pulitzers to cartoonists, right?” said Skye.

  “So you read it?”

  “I didn’t say that,” said Skye.

  “Yeah. Okay. Editorial cartoonists. Look at Halpern and Sloan, detailing the struggles of a refugee family. It’s not Dilbert—though that’s a good strip, don’t get me wrong.”

  “Still just trying to get you in general,” said Skye.

  “That makes two of us,” I said. “But at least we can all agree about journalism, right? We all chose Wixom’s class. Let’s just keep it focused on that.”

  “I only took the class to boost my GPA,” said Shelby. “Can’t be that hard. My friend Lissy took Wixom’s class last year and said it was easy as long as you make her think you’re into it.”

  “Sounds like your relationship to half the soccer team, Shelby.”

  “Eat my face, Wyatt.”

  “Okay,” he said. “But only at school so all your friends can watch and judge you for slumming.”

  “My parents made me take it so I had a full load,” said Skye.

  “Awesome. Glad we’re all taking it for the right reasons,” I said. “What about you, Wyatt?”

  “Doesn’t matter. Just trying to fill my schedule and get out of Idaho.”

  “Trying to boost that GPA to a 2.0, Wyatt?” said Skye.

  “Exactly!” said Wyatt, mocking a cheery disposition.

  “It does make things awkward,” said Shelby. “Interviewing someone else in our group. Can’t I just do a video piece about myself and how the trip changed me?”

  “Shelby’s onto something,” said Wyatt.

  “You’re really going to be like this for five days?” she said.

  “Hopefully we won’t have to talk much once we get started,” said Wyatt. He removed a comic book from his backpack and started reading.

  We rode in silence for a stretch, then Thatcher killed the engine, and we all climbed out of the van to see a massive grouping of quaking aspens next to our drop-off point. Light shot over the rim of the canyon and down into a crack. We looked to be hundreds of feet above the water.

  I thought, perhaps, that we’d just pulled over before taking a winding trail down to the water’s edge, but a man was waiting for us at the edge with a harness on and webbing set up around a large, lodgepole pine. He had a neatly trimmed beard and wore a Hells Whitewater Tours hat with stitched water rushing over the logo.

  “Welcome,” he said. “I’m Sawyer.”

  “We’re the rafting group,” said Shelby, “not the climbing group.”

  “I know,” he said.

  “Wow. I hate my parents,” said Shelby.

  “Do they often present you with two options and give you the one you don’t want?” I said, unsure of why she was so upset.

  “I didn’t want to be here at all. I didn’t want to get wet, and I didn’t want to climb, either. But Wixom met with my parents, and this was the decision.” She shot Wyatt a look before saying, “Horseback riding would have been just fine, thanks.”

  I felt like saying, “You’re welcome,” but I didn’t want to get off to a rocky start. Well, I didn’t want to make things worse, which was a distinct possibility. Rappelling was enough of a rocky start.

  Thatcher spoke up. “We have to rappel down to the drop-in site. Your guide is waiting for you. We’ll lower your gear first, and then send you on your way. We thought this would be easiest for everybody, rather than hiking down.” He walked around to the back of the van to gather our belongings.

  “He’s talking about me,” said Skye. “I’m everybody.”

  “That fits,” said Wyatt. “Just glad you recognize you think that way.”

  “Skye with an e,” I said, shaking my head. “Making everybody rappel so you don’t have to hike.”

  “But I didn’t sign up for rappelling,” Shelby whined again.

  Wyatt responded, “None of us signed up for anything. But this looks pretty cool. It’s not like we’re crazy-far up anyway. Should be fun. Get over it.” And then he trained his voice to a whisper. “Look at the light hitting that rock.”

  “What?” said Shelby.

  “Nothing. Just roll with things instead of getting upset about everything. I’m sure they’ll have a rest stop along the river where you can get a mani-pedi.”

  “I’ll roll with things as long as you promise to stop pestering me,” she said.

  “Whatever,” said Wyatt, his attention returning to the light on the rocks.

  We waited for thirty minutes as each bag was tied to the climbing rope and let down slowly. Thatcher and Sawyer were adamant about us using the dry-bags they supplied to pack only what we needed for the first two full days, and Skye was adamant about that including his fly-fishing rod.

  I didn’t care about wearing the same swimsuit or sweater for the entire week, though I packed a couple so I had options. I liked having options. They said we needed to pack extremely light, and that they would bring our bags with the rest of our gear and meet us on the second full day, or day three overall.

  The guide was gathering the things below and loading the raft so we’d be ready to set off immediately. Well, immediately after an eight-hour car ride and a thirty-minute van ride and a rappel—that kind of immediately.

  Wyatt walked off the edge quickly, hopping out from the wall in a seated position, the rope whirring through the belay device as the canyon sucked him down into its greedy arms.

  Skye went next and took his time. While he was adjusting the harness, his shorts pulled up so his upper thighs were showing. I saw a faint tan line.

  “Don’t get any ideas, Indie,” he said, noticing my stare. “I’m not that easy. Well, okay, maybe if you keep smiling at me like that.”

  I hadn’t even realized I was smiling. There was something about the way he talked, the way his words curled around one another like river water around giant boulders.

  “Are you always this audacious?”

  “Did you just synonym me and think it would work?”

  For a moment, I stared at Skye and didn’t know what to say. How many times had I been in a situation in which I didn’t have an immediate reply and was not two steps ahead of the person I was talking to? Never. I had to change that “never” to “once” after what Skye said, and looking at him made me wonder if that “once” might change to “all the time.” I was thrilled by the idea of being stumped. It was like the Sunday crossword, only in person. So many questions in front of me, so many options for answers, down and across.

  I was ashamed of myself for judging Skye, thinking he wouldn’t be able to keep up with me, thinking his mind was one-track and built for soccer only. Skye. So many questions leading to answers I didn’t have. I was puzzling together a response, and he knew it, and yet I wanted that moment to last for the rest of the day.

  “Plucky, cocky, cheeky, brash?” I rattled them off.

  “Criminal overuse of syno
nyms.”

  “How did I synonym you? I didn’t know that was a thing,” I said.

  “You already asked me about being forward.”

  “Different word.”

  “Same idea,” he said.

  “Yes, but you didn’t really give me an answer, did you?”

  “I didn’t have to. It’s who I am. I’ve always been four words.”

  “Forwards?” I said.

  “No, four words: forward, friendly, formidable, and frank.”

  “Thanks, Frank,” I said. “This is going to be a long five days.”

  He was quick about his rappel, and his smiling face disappeared over the ledge and into a grouping of pines and a stripe of shade. He knew exactly what he was doing, prosthetic leg or not.

  Shelby took what felt like, well, my entire life. She kept adjusting her clothing in the harness, asking Thatcher exactly how to stand and wondering about the exact length of the rope and how many things could possibly go wrong.

  “What?” she snapped at me. “Why are you looking at me like that? You think you’ll do better?”

  I put my hands up and stepped back, even though I was already pretty far from her position.

  “Just watching. Didn’t mean anything by it.”

  “Sorry. Wyatt is just irritating, is all. And now I’m all edgy.”

  “I get it. But let’s be friends first, and then move on to the whole enemy thing. I don’t know you, but I’d rather start there instead of the reverse.”

  “Deal,” she said, before turning to talk to Sawyer again. “Will my hair get stuck in this contraption? This is hell,” she said, not waiting for a response from Sawyer or Thatcher. “I’m literally in hell.”

  “Well, technically you’re on the lip of it. You have to rappel to be in it. Or, in its canyon, I guess I should say,” said Sawyer.

  She adjusted her hair seventeen times, checking every pin and clip and band. So irritating. And incredibly annoying. All the synonyms for being the worst. When she finally gathered the strength to step off the ledge, she asked if I’d film her on her phone as she walked down the wall.