Red Kayak Read online

  I tried not to smile. “Guys, don’t play with the equipment. Carl will get in trouble.” Boy, how many times have I said that?

  Ever since we got called on the carpet by the principal for riding in the ambulance, Carl avoided the school driveway. Instead, he dropped us off behind the 7-Eleven, next door to school.

  I put the elastic strap back on the bar, then we jumped out and slammed the door.

  J.T. and Digger were punching each other in the arms and made a beeline for the store, but I walked up to the front to thank Carl for the ride.

  “No problem,” he said. “Say, you going rock fishin’ with me and your dad Saturday? Season opener.”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m supposed to stay over J.T.’s Friday night, and Saturday’s my only morning to sleep in.”

  “Sleep in?” Carl reached over and pulled the baseball cap down over my eyes. “Watermen don’t sleep in!”

  I turned away, embarrassed. I probably should have been getting up to pull my crab pots, but my parents didn’t care if I took a morning off. I also knew Carl was kidding me. He was proud of how hard I worked. If there was more money in it, he’d be out there, too, fishing oysters and crabs year-round. He loved it. In fact, a lot of times, depending on his shift, he’d come out with me after school to haul in my catch and toss the keepers into the baskets on my skiff.

  “Guess I got lazy this winter,” I said, resettling the hat back on my head. It wasn’t a very witty response, but I didn’t feel much like joking around.

  Mindy picked up on it. She was amazing that way. When she leaned forward, her long blond ponytail fell over her shoulder. “Hey, Brady,” she said. “Are you okay?”

  I looked from her to Carl. “I guess I am a little worried.”

  “About what?” Carl asked.

  “Right before you came, we saw Mr. DiAngelo paddling down the creek toward the river in his red kayak.”

  “Your new neighbor?”

  “Yeah.”

  Carl leaned out the window to look up at the darkening sky and rubbed a hand over his mouth. “Not a very good day,” he acknowledged. “But I’m sure he knows what he’s doing, Brady. He’s probably already turned hisself around and gone back.”

  I readjusted my backpack. “You think so?” I wanted to believe that. When Carl nodded, I said, “Yeah, you’re probably right.” Besides, I didn’t want to worry about it anymore. What I needed to think about was the algebra quiz I had first period because I hadn’t studied much for it.

  “Brady! Come on, we’d better get going!” J.T. called out as he came across the parking lot, stuffing a pack of caramel creams into his pocket. Digger followed with a can of Coke in his hand.

  I glanced at my watch. We had five minutes before the first bell. “Gotta run. See ya.” I waved to Carl and Mindy.

  Then the three of us—J.T., Digger, and I—headed across the field to Alexander Holmes Middle School.

  During Spanish class, second period, I thought about the DiAngelos again. By then, I was in a better mood because the algebra quiz was easier than anyone imagined. Plus, between classes, when I was getting a drink of water at the fountain, I noticed J.T.’s sister, Katelynn, signing in late at the main office. When she waved, it made me feel kind of nice because I liked Kate. Even though she was a seventh grader, a year behind us, she was a neat kid. I pointed and grimaced, a clear reference to the cast on her leg, which was there for the ankle she broke during lacrosse practice. She made a sad face. I knew it was killing her to have to sit out the season because she loves sports.

  A minute later I saw J.T. in the hall. He gave me a high five. “Act naturally,” he said, but I didn’t pick up on it until I was practically in the door to Spanish. When it hit me that act naturally was an oxymoron, I snorted. I’m sure Amy Goldberg thought I was making fun of her new braces because she was right in front of me then, but spun away, rolling her eyes. Geez, I thought, I am such a klutz.

  So I saw J.T., but I never ran into Digger again that morning. It wasn’t too unusual, though, because he wasn’t in any of my classes except for gym.

  As I said, by the time I got to Spanish, I was in a better frame of mind. Señora Mendez started off class by asking us to check one another’s homework. I switched papers with Lauren Modley, knowing I wouldn’t have much work to do. Everything Lauren does is perfect. Then idly, I glanced out the window across the field, to the back of the 7-Eleven.

  I couldn’t hear it, but I saw a fire truck race by the store, a yellow blip, and disappear. I wondered if Carl was headed somewhere, too. A car accident, or a fire. Maybe even a hostage situation. Carl went to one last month where some guy held his wife at gunpoint in their trailer. Boy, now, that’s the kind of thing I half expected Digger’s dad to do someday. He’s crazy and mean enough, especially when he’s drinking. And he and Digger’s mom have been fighting a lot.

  That’s when I started thinking back on the morning again. About the conversation we had in the driveway and Digger’s bad mood. One thought led to another. I recalled how we got kicked off the DiAngelos’ property and hoped it didn’t mean Mrs. DiAngelo would never ask me to baby-sit Ben again. She paid me thirty bucks for watching him that afternoon, and she wasn’t even gone four hours. That came to almost eight dollars an hour—which my dad said was a lot more than I’d make minimum wage at McDonald’s.

  Besides the money, though, it was neat being inside their house. Mr. DiAngelo designed it himself. Plus I got a real kick out of Ben. He’s a cute kid. “A towhead,” Mom called him because his hair is so blond it’s almost white. He had one of those haircuts that looked like somebody put a bowl on his head and cut around it. His eyes were like two big blueberries. And when he smiled, two deep dimples appeared in the center of his cheeks.

  He was only three, but you could have a decent conversation with Ben. “Bwady,” he called me because he had a hard time with his r’s. We put together some LEGOs the afternoon I took care of him, and we constructed some fairly sophisticated stuff. A tall castle with a drawbridge that moved up and down, and a pulley with a string that hoisted soldiers up over the wall. He liked the pulley. He even used it to transport horses over the top. We made some race cars, too. Race cars for knights. Then we microwaved popcorn and watched The Lion King on their new DVD player. (Mrs. DiAngelo didn’t want us cruising the cable.)

  I promised Ben that next time I came I’d bring over my old LEGOs Aquanauts, and we’d make them dive in the bathroom sink.

  “Hola! Señor Parks!” Señora Mendez shattered the daydream. “¿Donde estas?”

  I blushed. “Yo soy en la clase de español,” I replied.

  About a minute later, I got called down to the office.

  When the classroom intercom came on, it was so loud that everyone jumped. Cassie Winfield even slapped a hand on her heart.

  “Excuse me, Mrs. Mendez, could Braden Parks be dismissed immediately?” Mrs. Peters, the school secretary, had a trace of urgency to her voice. “He should come to the office with his books.”

  Like a bolt out of the blue.

  Everyone turned to stare at me.

  I held my hands palm up and looked at Señora Mendez.

  “Guess you need to go,” she said. “Finish Chapter Seven for tomorrow. All of you, write this down.” She peered over her reading glasses at the whole class. “Exercises one through five in the chapter review.”

  I had absolutely no idea why I was being dismissed. Did I have a dentist appointment I’d forgotten about? I didn’t think so. As I stuffed the Spanish book into my backpack, it occurred to me I’d just seen the fire truck. Sometimes they called out the fire truck to accidents because they were afraid of fuel catching fire, or sometimes because they needed the crew to help carry someone on the backboard. My heart started beating fast. God, I hoped Mom wasn’t in a wreck. Or Dad—that Dad hadn’t buzzed a finger off in the workshop or something.

  I swallowed hard, shoved the pen in my pocket, and hoisted my backpack.

  The
school hallway never seemed so long. All those lockers. All that square tile. A door closed somewhere behind me, and it was so quiet the sound echoed. I was relieved to see my father standing at the counter in the main office, talking to Mrs. Owens, our principal. But it only shifted the concern.

  Mrs. Owens half smiled at me and left. Why? So we’d have privacy as he broke the news?

  “Mom okay?” I asked.

  Dad had his work clothes on—old jeans and a T-shirt, both flaked a little with sawdust from the shop. “Yeah, sure,” he said, putting a hand on my shoulder. “Nothin’ like that, Brady. Sorry if we worried you.”

  Relief poured out of me. I dropped the backpack on one of the empty chairs where we sit when we’re waiting in the office.

  “Listen,” Dad said. “Carl called. Somebody’s missing on the river, maybe out in the bay. He wants us to take the boats and help look.”

  I put a hand over my eyes. “Oh, my God,” I said.

  “Brady—”

  The hand slid down and I looked at my father. “It’s Mr. DiAngelo, isn’t it? That red kayak. We saw him this morning.”

  “That’s what Carl said.”

  Dad seemed to be studying my face. “But it’s not Marcellus, Brady. It’s his wife. And their little boy.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I was running so fast I practically slipped and fell off the dock.

  “Wait!” Dad hollered. Tilly was barking at my heels, and it was hard to hear. My father rushed up behind me and handed me his cell phone. “I’ve got the radio on my boat.”

  I took the phone and pushed it into the pocket of my parka. Then both Dad and I jumped into our boats on either side of the dock.

  “Go on!” I shouted at Tilly because she was tap dancing at the edge of the dock, getting ready to jump in, and I didn’t want her to come.

  In the pickup, on the way home from school, Dad had told me to check the smaller creeks off the river. He said he and the other rescue workers would head downstream with the currents toward the bay, the most likely course the kayak had taken. It made sense because Dad and the others had radar and searchlights on their boats. If anyone was found, Dad told me, we should go to the marina at Rock Hall, where an ambulance was waiting.

  Midmorning by then, but it was dark because of the encroaching storm. Everything seemed gray: the sky, the water, the air. And all of it pressed in on me as I pulled the brim of my cap down tight and yanked the cord to start my motor. While it warmed up, I untied the lines that kept my skiff snug in its slip.

  When the boat was free, I sat in the stern, pushed the gear lever to reverse, accelerated a little with a turn of my hand on the outboard’s handle, and turned around backward to see where I was going. As I did, I heard a hard thump in the bow and the boat bounced forward. I swung my head back to see Tilly land awkwardly in the tiny space at the front of my skiff.

  “Hey!” I yelled at her.

  With precision, she hopped over the front seat and sat like an obedient soldier midboat, where there was more room. She barked once as though to tell me, So there—now shut up. So I did. If she wanted to go along that badly, there wasn’t much I could do. I certainly didn’t want to waste time pulling back in and forcing her out.

  Switching gears to forward, I headed out, full throttle, just as fast as my skiff could go. The wind was a sheet of ice against my face and blew the dog’s ears straight back. My hands were cold, too. Damn cold for April. I wished I’d brought gloves.

  I was ahead of my father, but not for long. Pretty soon he had the Miss Amanda passing me on the right. His workboat was three times the size of my skiff, and twice as fast. He waved to me from the doghouse up front, where I could see him adjusting the radar and already picking up the radio receiver. I waved back, then Dad headed to starboard, while I veered opposite, toward the left bank of the creek.

  Already my eyes were scanning the shoreline for the red kayak—or a splash of yellow. Mr. DiAngelo had told the police he couldn’t remember what clothes his wife or son wore that morning, but he knew they had on yellow life jackets.

  I felt excited, but a little panicked, too, as I sped down the creek, squinting into the icy spray and scanning the thick tangle of brown brush and newly budding trees along the narrow shoreline. If that red kayak was out there, I wanted to be the one to find it.

  Soon I could see Dad entering the river. He was far enough ahead that I couldn’t read the words Miss Amanda painted on his stern. I don’t know what made me think of it then—maybe the panic—but I recalled the morning my sister died. The Miss Amanda is named for my sister. Most workboats get named for mothers or grandmothers, but my sister was the first girl born to the Parks family in two generations. And while it’s true she was only an infant when she died, she was old enough to smile, and we were all nuts about her. I used to make a goo-goo face that got her so excited she wheeled her arms and legs around like a windmill.

  After we lost Amanda, my mother couldn’t sleep in the house and went to stay with my grandmother in Connecticut. She kept promising she would come home soon. But almost half a year went by before she did. So, for a long time, it was just Dad and me. That’s the reason I spent so much time with Carl, because Dad had to work Fridays and Saturdays all winter on Mr. Fuller’s oyster boat, and Mr. Fuller wouldn’t allow kids on board.

  Carl was training then with an ambulance crew in Annapolis, over the bridge. I even slept at the firehouse with him because he worked twenty-four-hour shifts. They were nice to me there. I liked the whole platoon. They gave me my own locker, and just like them, I taped up snapshots of my family inside the metal door. I had a picture of my rabbit and another one of my dad and mom getting hugged by a giant chocolate Kiss at Hershey Park. I had a whole pile of comic books and an old Game Boy in there, too—you know, just stuff—so I could be like the firefighters and the paramedics.

  They never seemed to mind having a kid hanging around. I was pretty quiet, and I even helped out some, like picking up trash and emptying the ashtrays. I cooked for them, too. I learned how to cook early on because I was alone so much, and I was an expert on macaroni and cheese from the box. I’d stand up on a chair, and when the pot of water on that twelve-burner gas stove was boiling, I’d dump in eight, nine, ten boxes of macaroni at a time and stir it with a great big wooden spoon.

  The rest of the time I hung out and read my comic books, or watched TV, or went out back to the pen, where I threw the ball for Jake, their bomb dog.

  But sometimes, when there was room in the ambulance, Carl and the others let me ride along, in that seat behind the driver. I had to stay out of the way and be quiet, but that was easy. And that’s where I learned a lot of emergency stuff.

  Weird how this memory flashed through my mind as I raced the boat down the creek and into the river, my eyes sweeping back and forth across the water, looking for Ben and his mom. I saw that the ospreys were back, arranging sticks on the channel marker for their gigantic nest. And I saw some terns feeding over the sandbar. But nothing else. The motor hummed steadily, the wake behind my boat peeling away from both sides of the motor in streaks of white, green, and gray foamy water.

  Not too far downstream, a small creek emptied in from the left. As my father’s boat disappeared around the bend up ahead, I reluctantly turned my boat up the creek, slowed down some, and kept searching. The bow of the boat settled down, and the wake from behind sloshed up against the transom. Still nothing. Why would there be? Common sense and knowing the currents would tell you that the kayak had drifted downstream, especially with the fast-running spring tides. Unless Mrs. DiAngelo had intentionally paddled up one of the creeks, there was no way they would have drifted here.

  God, I was cold. It started to drizzle, and the water froze on my face. I shoved my left hand under my thigh to try to keep it warm. Then I cussed out loud at myself because I hadn’t called out when I saw that red kayak. I was thinking that Ben was probably freezing, too—and scared to death by now. I know what being really cold is
like. Middle of winter I almost drowned in a cow pond when I was little, maybe eight. J.T., Digger, and I were playing ice hockey, and I fell clear through the ice.

  The memory of that accident made me shudder. Abruptly, I leaned over to cut off the engine.

  “Mrs. DiAngelo!” I hollered at the top of my lungs. “Ben! Can you hear me?”

  Nothing.

  “Mrs. Di-An-ge-lo!”

  Not a sound. I fired up the engine again and kept going.

  Up the creek, a couple private docks extended out into the water, then there was a long strip of riprap near a construction site. From that point on, it was just shoreline with trees and a lot of brown cell bush. I kept going, but toward the head of the creek, a marsh taken over by a patch of tall phragmites warned of shallow water, and I turned the boat around, not wanting to run aground. I sped up and came back down the creek, closer to the opposite bank.

  Still no sign of a red kayak or a yellow life jacket. All I wanted to do was open the throttle and head downriver to where the others were searching. My hands ached they were so cold. I stuffed one hand in my pocket and hit the cell phone. I pulled it out and saw that I had “1 missed call.” Turning off the motor so I could hear, I speed-dialed home to see if Mom knew anything.

  “Brady—hi!” she said. “Dad called. He said they found Mrs. DiAngelo.”

  “They did?”

  “Yes. Downriver, near Spaniard’s Neck.”

  “Is she okay?” I asked.

  “She’s alive,” Mom said. “But just barely. They have not found Ben.”

  “They didn’t?”

  “No. They lost the kayak, Brady. So Ben is out there somewhere in the water in his life jacket.”

  “Oh, man, it’s cold, Mom—”

  “I know…I know it’s cold. Are you all right? Can you do this, Brady?”

  “I’m all right. I’m fine,” I assured her. “I need to keep looking!”

  I ended the call and put the phone back in my pocket. We had to move really fast now. If Ben was in the water, his time was limited.