Snapshot (11 page)

“Someone short, fat and ugly.” Marti grabbed another life jacket and left Haley standing alone. She approached Adam and flung the life jacket at him. He caught it easily. “Come on, Romeo, let’s get this over with.”

“See you later,” Adam called to the girls as he followed Marti to the remaining boats.

“Pick one.” Marti crossed her arms with her hip hitched. The choice included two sailboats, a rusted out, sunken rowboat, a single-person kayak and three canoes.

“Not much left,” he said.

“Yeah, well if you weren’t so busy hitting on the groupies back there, maybe we’d be in a solid rowboat.” She opened up the dry bag and placed her camera inside.

“Lighten up. We’re at camp, and this is supposed to be fun. Are you always this uptight?”

“I’m not uptight. I’m annoyed that I have to spend my entire morning with a shallow, self-centered rocker who thinks it’s funny to deceive his new friends. Give me your camera.” She held out her hand and waited as he stared at her.

“Ouch! Does that attitude work for you back home? You must have loads of boyfriends.” Adam handed over his camera, then turned over one of the canoes and tossed in a paddle. A spider scurried around the edge of the boat. He used his life jacket to brush it out of the boat and then slipped the life jacket on.

Marti ignored his comment. She pushed the air out of the rubber bag and sealed it tight. “You know nothing about me. Don’t pretend you do.”

“I know you have a chip on your shoulder the size of a killer whale. And for whatever reason, I seem to represent your crappy childhood. Real mature.” He slid the canoe halfway into the water.

 
“For your information, I’ve had a beautiful childhood living with my grandma. I haven’t spent the past five years basking in some artificial environment of fan adoration.” She attached the dry bag to a cross bar toward the front of the boat. “About all you’ve done is build your ego by hiring a good special effects producer so when you stand on a stage you appear like some demi-God.”

“Wow, you’ve been obsessing about this for a while,” he said. “Gee, and I thought that all this time we were creating ground-breaking music that earned us five Grammy nods.”

“Well, they also give Grammys to rappers, who are the world’s sorriest excuse for musicians.”

Adam’s face turned red and eyes intense. “Do you even hear yourself? Just... Just... Oh, get in the damn boat!” he said with his jaw clenched.

“Fine.” Marti stepped in the cool, shallow water, climbed into the front of the boat and sat with a thud on the metal seat. She turned. “But it’s true! Have you heard that crap?”

Adam grabbed the back of the canoe and heaved the boat forward, causing Marti to lose her balance and almost fall backward. He grabbed the other paddle and threw it into the boat, creating a loud clamor.
 

She spun around and glared. “What is your problem?” A couple of insults, and the guy had a fit.

Adam jumped into the back of the boat and settled in. “My problem is that I’m stuck with a girl who obviously has some serious daddy issues and can’t see past her egocentric self!”

“Oh!”
Daddy issues
! Marti wanted to take her paddle and smack him upside the head so hard he’d fall overboard. Daddy issues were the absolute last thing she had. She had anti-Daddy issues. As far as she was concerned, she didn’t even have a dad!
 

“You’re an asshole!” She shoved her paddle in the water.

“And I’m too polite to say what you are.” The boat shifted forward across the water as Adam paddled away his anger.
 

Too upset to respond, Marti sat in silence and paddled. The boat continued to veer to the left. After some muttering from Adam, they found their rhythm and straightened it out.

The clear water ran deep as they floated further from shore. Long strings of water dripped from her paddle with each pull. Below, she saw an occasional fish. A few minutes later, the sun and the gentle breeze soothed her nerves. Despite her rift with Adam, Marti relaxed. She sighed and rested her paddle across her lap. Adam’s smooth strokes propelled them forward.

“Sure is pretty out here.” She wondered if Adam would ever speak to her again.
 

Silence.
 

Just when she was about to try again, he started to talk.

“If I could live anywhere, it would be on a nice lake like this. Lots of trees and the sun sparkling across the water.”
 

“We have lakes in Madison, but they’re green and scummy. My grandma said she learned how to swim in those lakes. Now people don’t even let their dogs go in.”

“That sucks.”

“Yeah.” A warm wind created ripples on the water.
 

“So, I haven’t spotted any loons yet. Where do you think we’ll find them?” he asked.

“I heard the naturalist say they build their nests in the bog.”

“And where is the bog?”

Marti pointed to the left side of the lake where a small inlet opened up. “I think it’s back that way. I hiked by the sign for it from the trail, so I’m pretty sure it’s over there.”

“Okay, we have a plan. To the bog it is.”

She resumed paddling, and Adam turned the canoe toward the far inlet. Together, they cruised along the top of the water. The other boaters were scattered across the lake. Occasional sounds of laughter and shouts could be heard.

“Can I ask a question? Without you getting mad?” Adam asked.

“Depends. Is it going to be a stupid question?” She smirked, knowing her words would annoy him.

“From your point of view, everything I say is stupid,” he answered.

“True.” She gloated.

“You didn’t have to agree. That was your chance to say, ‘No, I think you’re brilliant and witty.’”

“Nah, I wouldn’t want to lie.” She heard Adam chuckle.

“Okay, risking my fragile ego, and taking the chance that I’ll be crushed by you once again, here goes. I know your dad was far from a stellar parent, but didn’t you ever see the genius side of him?”

“Oh my god!”
 

She lifted her paddle and turned in her seat. “Seriously! After the things I told you, you’re going to be like everyone else and go, ‘Oh, but he’s so talented. He’s an icon. He’s a frickin’ master of his craft!’” Marti mimicked the words.

“I’ll take that as a no. You are not ready to talk reasonably without flying into a rage.”

Marti took a deep breath. “Fine. Here’s my take on it. When a person is so irresponsible and self-centered that they can’t look out for the basic needs of their own family and they actually cause irreparable harm to their own children, that’s totally unacceptable. And when they treat other people like they exist only to serve them, that’s not only rude and offensive, it’s completely wrong. No one on this earth should be allowed to step on other people just to build themselves up. That’s the kind of guy my dad is, that’s the way the guys in his band are, and that’s the way all the other musicians who came around are. They could care less about someone else unless there was something in it for them. So when you ask if I saw the genius side of him, no! I was busy trying to survive. I was busy trying to stay away when he was high on his drug cocktails. He would go into a hallucinated rage and think the furniture was going to eat him alive. Sometimes I would have to dodge the unexpected piles of vomit on the floor. And there were times when one of his groupies would wander in and pass out on my bed.”
 

Marti was on a roll. Adam started this line of conversation, and now he’d have to hear it all.

“Then when the parties ended, he’d be hung over for a day or two. If I so much as turned on the Disney Channel, he’d fly into a rage. And when I was little, if I left a doll out, the next day I’d find its hair burned off by some loser who wanted to traumatize a little girl.”
 

Adam finally spoke. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize. My family isn’t like that at all.”

“No one ever does see that side of the story. They just think about the genius. Well, there’s a steep price paid by the people around him.” She shuddered.

“It sucks he treated you that way, but stop confusing me with him. I’m not like that.”

“Maybe not, but give it time.” Behind her, she heard him swear.

A short while later Marti spotted a wooden sign with BOG painted on in peeling letters.
 

“Look. There it is,” she said.
 

They rounded the corner to a narrow inlet leading back to the bog. Around them grew tall weeds and water plants creating a sort of secret entry. Thick clouds moved in and covered the sun and changed the bright day to overcast and dull. The buzz of a mosquito filled her ear. She fanned her hand in the air and regretted not bringing bug spray. The waterway became smaller until the overgrown plants brushed against their arms as they paddled carefully through the shallow murky water. A low croaking sound came from up ahead.

 
“This is like out of a horror movie. Don’t go into the bog! There’s monsters in there!” Adam said in a spooky voice.

Marti tried to ignore him, but the eerie surroundings caused a chill to run up her spine. She shivered.
 
“What do you think lives in here, I mean other than loons?”

“And creatures from the deep? I don’t know. Turtles, frogs, water snakes, I’d guess.”

“Snakes!” She still hadn’t recovered from last night’s fish scare.

“I don’t know. Probably. It’s pretty swampy back here.”
 

Marti tried to squish smaller in her seat so none of the over-reaching plant growth touched her.

“Relax, I don’t think a snake is going to jump into the boat and get you.”

Suddenly there was a loud clunk directly behind her. She screamed an ear-splitting screech, leapt off her seat and gripped the front of the canoe, tipping them dangerously to the side.

“Oh shit! What was that?” She cowered at the front of the boat, her breathing rapid.

Adam picked up one of his sandals and waved it. Its match lay on the bottom of the canoe behind Marti’s seat. He burst into laughter.

“You are such a jerk!
 
Oh my god! I so want to hurt you!” She climbed back to her seat, wobbling the boat.

“You’re such an easy mark.” He continued to laugh.

“Don’t ever try something like that again. I swear I’ll take you out!” She wished she could erase her embarrassing behavior. Now Adam would lord it over her.

“Oh relax, it’s good to get your feathers ruffled once in a while. All that control makes you uptight.”

Marti turned in her seat and gave him the evil eye.
 

“Speaking of which, any chance we had of finding the loons was ruined by your girlie screams.”

“That’s your own fault.” She grabbed the paddle she’d dropped into the water when she launched herself away from his sandal. Cool drops fell on her legs as she resumed paddling. She stopped to swat a mosquito biting her ankle.

They canoed another few minutes until the brush finally opened into an inlet of water. A secluded mini lake.

“This is amazing.” Marti took in the private sanctuary, glad to be out of the narrows. Water bugs skated across the water, barely touching the surface. The chirps from unseen birds sang in the distance. Around the edge of the small inlet, brush arched over the water in lazy slumber. Disgusting, thick algae floated near the overgrowth donning an oily film from who knew what. Fish poo?

“Look. Over there.” Adam pointed toward the far side of the water. A mound of sticks and plants created a low nest with a loon nestled inside.

“Quick, grab the cameras,” Marti whispered.

“I can’t reach them. They’re closer to you.”

Marti glanced back to see the dry bag she’d clipped to a crossbar about three feet behind her. She quietly set her paddle in the boat and turned in her seat until she faced Adam. She reached forward, but the bag was too far. She tried to crouch and take a step, but the boat wobbled, and she let out a little squeal.

“Shh.” Adam quieted her.

“Sorry,” she whispered, then knelt on the square lifesaving pad and crawled just far enough to reach the bag. She unhooked it, retrieved her camera and slung the strap around her neck. She looked at the bag as Adam raised an eyebrow.

“Push it this way,” he said.

“Hang on.” Marti reached for her paddle and pushed the dry bag across the bottom of the boat until Adam could reach it.

“Nice one.” He grabbed the bag and his camera, and glanced to see if they’d spooked the loons.

The next half hour, they drifted, capturing various snapshots of the loon. Marti remained facing Adam and they could talk quietly. Funny how they could get along when their focus was on something other than each other. Occasionally, Adam would slide his paddle in the water to adjust the position of the boat.
 

After a while, the bird seemed agitated by their presence and raised it’s long neck. As it watched them, they noticed two babies peek out.

“Do you see that?” Marti whispered. She raised her camera, feeling like a photographer for the Discovery Channel.