FINALIST IN 2008 CRESTED BUTTE SANDYS CONTEST

She was getting close now, Serena knew.

She scanned the sides of the few remaining Grandfather boulders below her, the only conceivable places Mouse could have stashed the third coup. Once past them, she would have to veer the kayak right into Snaggletooth’s slot. A twinkle of titanium and a flash of red caught her eye about one hundred feet directly in front of her between two boulders – in mid-air. That made no sense. No logs or limbs, trapped by the river, that could hide a coup broke the flow of black-green water frothing around the mouth of Snaggletooth. But there it was, the telltale red neckerchief seemingly suspended four or five feet above the surface of the river.

“Mouse,” Serena said out loud. “What the …?” She came up on the dangling prize fast and she still couldn’t figure it.

She smiled. “Mouse, you are so bad,” she yelled at the river master. Fishing line. Stretched between the last two Grandfathers. Ingenious. Devious. Pure Mouse.

She had no more time for playing tourist. The coup bobbed dead ahead, though not in a particularly nasty part of the Dolores. The river dipped steeply – very fast – into a trough directly below the neckerchief, but it looked straight, uncomplicated. Once through it, she’d have only seconds before the current carried her over the two-story waterfall. Snaggletooth foamed only fifty feet beyond the coup, so there would be no second chance.

Serena shot forward, readying her upper body for a slight stretch above her head to grab the coup. At the same time she loosened her left hand on the paddle, her bare fingers aching after hours of being curled around the plastic. Her timing needed to be perfect. 

She raised her left hand just as she slid into the dip. But as the kayak followed the current, the paddle now held only in her right hand clipped a hidden rock, enough so that her grip slipped. Even as she instinctively grabbed for the paddle with her left hand she knew she’d blown it. Her mind barely computed what happened before she rocketed past the coup, which remained swaying, untouched, above the river.

Then she disappeared over Snaggletooth.