“I promise not to drown,” I say. But what I really mean is that I would never let anything happen to her. I wonder if she’s ever had that, someone who put her above everything, and I realize she hasn’t. Zander left her, and her mother is just now acting like she cares at all, and even her Aunt Sarah put her job first; or at least it feels that way to Olivia. I wish I had told her how I felt about her, before she gave up on me the way everyone else has given up on her.

We cross into the lake without drowning, but when we’re out in the push of Lake Michigan, it’s obvious that Olivia is struggling to keep us from being washed onto the shore. It’s much rougher tonight than the first night we ventured this way, but she hasn’t given up yet. She’s shook though. I can tell by her little gasps every time a wave picks us up, tips us to the right, and then crashes us down to the left. This isn’t the kind of day you take a canoe out on Lake Michigan. Every length of the canoe, we’re getting closer and closer to land, and by the time we reach the beach that I’m guessing is our final destination, we’re running parallel to the shore, about to scrape along the rocky bottom.

Olivia lets out a huge sigh as we begin to wash up onto the sand. I couldn’t do anything from the front of the canoe, but now I take a step out and pull the bow up onto the shore.

“Here,” I say, holding my hand out to Olivia. She drops her paddle into the boat, slings her bag over one shoulder, and takes my hand, climbing out onto the sand.

“We’re here,” she says with a smile, but her voice says that she didn’t think we’d actually make it.

I laugh. “And no one drowned.”

“Thankfully,” she says, the stress starting to drain out of her face as her shoulders soften. She doesn’t pause at the shoreline, just hoists her backpack onto the other shoulder, and starts toward the grass behind us. “This way,” she says.