Without their mom right there, surprisingly, the two boys seemed to settle down. They leaned over the sides trying to spot fish—or skip rocks or splash each other—I wasn’t totally sure.
I shifted slightly to glance at them, uneasy. “Should they be leaning out that far?”
Noah followed my gaze. “They should be fine,” he murmured, but his eyes stayed on them.
The raft dipped slightly as J.J. shifted his weight.
“Dude, I saw something! An alligator!”
“They don’t have alligators here. You’re making that up!”
I turned to Noah. “Do they?”
“Nope.”
But the boys’ voices kept getting louder as they bickered back and forth.
And then, before anyone could stop it, Kill gave his brother a hard shove.
One second, JJ was on the raft—mouth open, mid-laugh. The next, he was in the water, flailing and shrieking in childish outrage, but once he resurfaced and realized he could float, he started laughing again, kicking off away from the boat, apparently deciding to go for a swim.
“You have got to be kidding me,” Cody murmured, sitting upright, but then he yelled, “Get that kid back in here! There’s a strainer ahead!”
My pulse spiked. Even I knew what that meant. I had actually listened to the safety talk, after all. Strainers were piles of debris, trees and branches and the like, that had gotten caught on something in the river. There were enough gaps to let water pass through, but not larger objects—like people, for example.
A person could become pinned. Dragged under.
I lurched to my knees, eyes searching the water downstream. And sure enough…
JJ was thrashing playfully, splashing around in the water, clearly enjoying himself—completely oblivious.
“He’s laughing,” I said, panic prickling up my spine. “He thinks it’s a game.”
Cody lunged for a throw bag, but Noah was faster.
“Grab on!” Noah shouted, unspooling the rope and tossing the end toward the boy.
JJ didn’t see it. He was twirling around in the water, just looking up at the sky.
“Damn it,” Noah muttered. And then…
He jumped.
Of course, he would be the one to go in. He was Noah.
I scrambled toward the edge, heart in my throat, watching him slice through the current, straight for JJ, arms powering him forward.
Cody moved to regain control of the oars, because up ahead, the strainer loomed—gnarled branches jutting from the water like a skeletal hand.
JJ was still laughing when Noah reached him, clearly unaware of the danger. But whatever Noah said, JJ listened and started kicking toward the raft like it was all part of the plan.
From there, everything happened really fast. Cody was out of his seat and, with what looked like surprising ease, pulled JJ back up into the boat.
But Noah was still in the water, one arm hooked over the side of the rubber pontoon.
“Hold on, dude!” Cody had taken hold of the oars again.
I reached down and grabbed the shoulders of Noah’s life jacket, kneeling, braced to pull him in.
