Replica (Replica #1)(80)

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.

So far it seemed their gamble—that after what had happened, security would be trying to get everyone out, not worrying about people trying to get in—was correct. Occasionally helicopters passed in the distance on their way to and from the island, but less frequently now. And Gemma knew they must still be ferrying people from the island. It was unlikely, however, that given Haven’s security, any survivors had even made it onto the marshes, which explained why they were putting hardly any effort into searching for them.

After an hour they’d met no one, heard no one, although occasionally they seemed to hear shouting in the distance, and Gemma knew they were still quite far from Haven. The marshes really did look like a labyrinth, full of narrow channels that forced them back toward the mainland before they could find another vein of water to follow in the right direction. Every few minutes, Jake stopped to consult the compass on his phone. With the saw grass growing as high as a tall man and mangrove trees furry with overhanging moss, they would have otherwise had no way of knowing where the mainland was and which way led to open ocean.