Jake was obviously thinking the same thing, because he frowned. “Take this.” He wrestled a black Windbreaker out of his backpack. It was a warm night, but the mosquitoes on the marshes, he told her, were killer.
Jake’s car was so old it seemed predominantly composed of duct tape and string. “Sorry,” he said, with an apologetic smile that made Gemma’s heart purr. “But at least you’re getting door-to-door service.”
The car rattled so hard when he accelerated she was sure she was about to be expelled from her seat, that the car would just roll over and give up, panting, like a tired dog, but she didn’t want to complain, and sat there white-knuckling her seat so hard her fingers ached.
“Just a few more miles,” Jake said. They’d looped around to approach Wahlee from the north, on one of the few roads that gave access to the nature reserve, and the bouncing of the headlights made Gemma feel seasick.
Miraculously, they made it without incident, although Gemma could have sworn that the car gave a relieved sigh when Jake cut the engine. Stepping outside, she was immediately overwhelmed by the sound of the tree frogs. They were so loud and so uniform they seemed like a single entity, like the heartbeat of the world rising and falling. Even here, she thought she detected a faint smell of smoke.
Jake removed a flashlight from his backpack and gestured for Gemma to follow him. The Wahlee Nature Reserve was technically closed at sunset, and theirs was the only car. They moved onto one of the paths that cut into a thicket of pine and mangrove trees, and immediately Gemma felt a difference in the ground, a sponginess that made her heart turn over a little. Jake had told her casually that all the islands and marshes around here would be gone in twenty years, swallowed up by water. She imagined the trees submerged, stretching ghostly fingers up toward a sun filtered through layers of murky water. She wondered what April would think now, if she knew that Gemma was following a boy she didn’t know into a darkened nature reserve with no one around for miles.
She didn’t know anymore whether she was glad or worried that she hadn’t told anyone where she was going.
They walked for fifteen minutes, though it felt like longer, and the sticky, humid air seemed to get all tangled up in Gemma’s lungs. After a certain point they didn’t seem to be following a path at all, and she had no idea how Jake was sure that he was heading in the right direction. The marshes had tides that shifted subtly and without sound: the water wouldn’t even warn them before appearing suddenly beneath their feet. Jake stopped and touched her elbow.
“We’re close,” he said. “Go carefully. There are tidal pools here.”
“Okay,” Gemma said. Her voice sounded strange in the humid darkness, like it was being muffled by a pillow. She was sorry when Jake took his hand away.
A few paces farther on, Jake stopped completely and angled his flashlight at a patch of ghostly white saw grass, running down to a black expanse she now recognized as an inlet. Partially concealed beneath a myrtle oak was a bright-red kayak, which he’d rented from a local boat shop and stashed earlier that night. It was skinny and long as a Popsicle. Gemma’s stomach dropped.
“I don’t think we’re both going to fit,” Gemma said desperately, as Jake bent over to drag the kayak free of the growth.
“Of course we will. It’s a two-seater.” He pointed with the flashlight. There were, in fact, two seats in the kayak—if you could call them seats. Gemma thought they looked like those car seats meant for toddlers.
I’m not going to fit, Gemma wanted to say. But of course she couldn’t. Not to him. Jake was the kind of guy who had size-zero girlfriends who modeled locally and were always complaining about trying to find clothes small enough.
“Can’t we get another boat?” she asked desperately. “A boat boat?”
He must have thought she was kidding, because he only laughed.
“Anything bigger will just get stuck. Some of the channels out there are so narrow even the kayak’s a stretch.” Jake bent down and shoved the kayak down into the water, which sucked at the plastic with a wet farting sound. He steadied it with a foot. “Besides, it’s more comfortable than it looks.”
He clambered easily into the kayak—or the floating Popsicle—and somehow enfolded his long legs inside it, as if he were just sitting down in a chair. Then he maneuvered the kayak so he could reach out a hand to help Gemma inside.
“Come on,” he said. “You’ll be fine.”
She bit her lip. She had a sudden vision of getting stuck in her seat, of having to be hauled out of the kayak by a crane. Or worse, of not being able to fit inside in the first place. But she took his hand. As soon as she placed a foot into the kayak, it began bucking like a badly trained horse, and if the boat hadn’t still been rooted in the mud of the bank, she was sure the whole thing would have gone over.
“All right, now the other foot . . . there you go, easy now . . .”
Somehow she managed to climb in without flipping the kayak, and even more miraculously, managed to squeeze herself down into the hard plastic seat, feeling a little like an elephant in a girdle.
“See?” Jake used a plastic paddle to push them out of the mud and turn them in the right direction. He was smiling at her again, his teeth white in the moonlight. “Not so bad, is it?”
“For the record,” Gemma blurted out, “this is exactly as comfortable as it looks.”
“Aw, come on. Don’t be a baby.” But he was still smiling. And as they began to move through the marshes, her spirits lifted. Jake had given her a paddle but instructed her not to use it, and she was happy to let him do the work. They progressed steadily and in near silence except for the slurping of the water on the paddles. They’d agreed in advance that they should try and avoid talking as much as possible, in case there were patrols on the marshes.