The canoe zips down between two rocks, bangs around, and then we are hit by a giant wave. Before we can recover from the first blast, we get hit by a second.

The canoe rolls hard to the right. We smash into a rock.

Opik rolls forward and disappears over the side.

“Opik!”

The canoe lurches forward. I look back over my shoulder. Opik’s head pops up in the whitewater, and then I watch as he is pin-balled down through the rocks.

OMG!

The canoe moves through the last of the rapids.

I squint at the whitewater, searching for Opik’s body.

“Come on, come on.”

I see him.

He is forty feet to our left, his hands splashing frantically against the water.

For all his wisdom and tricks, he doesn’t know how to swim.

I gaze down at Lassie then back to Opik.

Meow.

“NO.”

Meow.

“How—”

MEOW.

I jump over the side.

Two seconds later, Opik’s small body rushes toward me and I tackle him in the water.

The last time I ever see Lassie, he is up on the back of the canoe, staring back at us.

::::

When I was fourteen years old, I was wrestling with my dad. We were in the living room of the same house where he lives today. I’d finished eating breakfast and we were sitting down to do twenty minutes of algebra. I think he could tell how badly I didn’t want to spend twenty of my precious minutes doing word problems, and he told me that if I could pin him to the ground, then I would get out of “school” for the day.

We’d wrestled plenty of times, but each time the small frumpy man in the sweater would eventually pin one of my shoulders to the ground and count, “One, one thousand . . . two, one thousand . . . three, one thousand,” then celebrate with a victory dance.

I knew when we wrestled, he took it easy on me, but what he didn’t know was that for the past six months I’d been taking it easy on him. I’d started doing three minutes of push-ups and sit-ups during my ten minutes of “me” time in my room. Though it didn’t show much physically — I was still a scrawny little thing — I was much stronger than my father thought.

And today was the day I unleashed the fury.

Algebra be damned.

“What have you been eating?” my dad asked after two minutes.

I laughed and wiggled out of his hold.

Fast-forward a couple more lame attempts from my father to pin me and I could feel him getting tired.

I rolled on top of him. Twisted my body so my legs hovered near his head. Grabbed his elbow with my left hand. I snaked one leg around his head and locked my ankle under my opposite leg.