The Trouble Is

Chapter 34: Persistent Pings and Banana Boats

We hike back to the truck, and the sound of a thousand text messages rapid firing fills the night. Ping ping ping ping ping.The sounds overlap enough on both our phones, so we know right away that something is up. I vote that a group of "pirates" finally got arrested for taking over some poor kid's party. East votes that someone's pregnant or that Kanye and Kim have broken up in an incredibly public way.

I have missed calls from just about everyone I know. But there's only one voicemail. It's from Mom.

I scroll through the text messages to see if I can figure out a heads up before calling Mom back. I see a few from Katie. It looks as though the pirating party was a bust. She's now begging me to come to the lake to try this Banana Boat thing. They are typical Katie texts, starting with a smile and a please and ending with a final dot, the ender. I scroll to the last one she sent. This one says <NOW.> All caps, like she's yelling at me.

The next twenty or so are from people looking for me.

<Annie, you there?>

<Anne, call me>

<answer the phone>

<you need to call me back asap!>

East listens to a voicemail he received while I continue to scroll. I'm starting to get the idea that the flood of texts are not about me disappearing with East for a few hours. (OK, more than a few hours, I see now.) Something has happened.

East keeps listening and then reaches out to grasp my wrist. He gently pulls it away from my phone. He puts his phone down and turns to me. My mind races. Something must have happened to Mom. But that's confusing, since she has been trying to call me every fifteen minutes for, like, the last couple of hours.

"Anne," he says with this little catch sound like something close to a choke.

"What is it? Tell me," I demand. "Is it Mom? Dad? Don't tell me it's Doug."

"It's Katie, baby," he says gently. "She's been in an accident."

"What kind of accident?" I ask.

East doesn't answer right away, and the questions start to pour out of me.

"Is she OK?" I ask. I hear the shake in my voice. "Is she hurt? Is it bad? She's not dead, is she? What was she doing?

East makes a little shushing kind of sound.

"Don't shush me, East! You know I hate that!"

East stops making the shushing sound, and I stop with all the questions. I can see him swallow. His Adam's apple moves up and down, up and down. It seems as if nothing in the world exists except this one moment. I no longer hear the shushing sound, the sounds of the wind farms, or anything else. We are surrounded by silence.

Time restarts, and East gently takes my hands into his and kisses them. He keeps them there, next to his mouth, while he speaks in cracked whispers.

"Katie had an accident at the lake," he says. "She was on the Banana Boat. Something happened, and she fell off. Actually, they all fell off—everyone who was on the Banana Boat. But only Katie was hurt. She fell off one side, and everyone else on the other. The boat was in the middle of a turn or something. That's why everyone bounced off like that. The boat turned right into Katie. There was no way to stop it in time, and she hit her head on the boat."

"But she's fine now, right?" I ask, hopeful.

"Your mom wants you to come home," he says. "Let's go talk to her first. She'll know how Katie's doing."

"No, let's just go to the hospital and see for ourselves," I say. "Katie will want me there to run interference for her."

"Anne, your mom sounded pretty insistent," he says. "I think we should listen to her."

"Just drive," I say.

I text Mom.

     <meet me at hospital>

She calls, of course, but I don't answer.

<Anna, don't do this>

<Talk to me first>

     <Is she dead?>

<No, but I still want to talk to you.>

     <k>

I call her and right away, I can tell she's been crying. She repeats what I already know from the texts. She sounds kind of like the wind farm—unreal and far away in a way that I can't describe. I can feel her worry for me as she talks. She uses way too many words to express herself when she worries. And the syllables-per-word ratio multiplies exponentially.

"Mom," I say, trying to get a word in quickly. "What do you want?"

She pauses for a minute, then answers. I can feel the love in her voice as she answers. All the fears of our family from the last few months are wrapped around that sound.

"I want to be there for you," she says, which I know is true, yet not really her point.

"And?" I ask.

"And I want to protect you," she says.

That's when I know it's going to be really bad.