"You guys, Greg went down to the water and swam to Chappy in the dark. We have to go get him!"

This was Mike's first visit to our summerhouse, and he had no idea if swimming to Chappy was good or bad, but he definitely reacted with the appropriate look of panic in his eyes. He was already perplexed by the fact that my parents had a house on Martha's Vineyard, even though my father hadn't had a real job in a decade and dressed like a circus carny.

Mike glanced at Ray, who was still reclined on the sofa. "He's fine. He does it all the time."

"Not at night, Ray!" I wailed.

"He's on mushrooms!" Sloane added.

"Who has mushrooms?" Ray asked.

"I did," I told him. "Greg and I split them. There aren't any more."

He looked back at the TV. "Well, no wonder you're acting schizophrenic, Chels. Why don't you go weigh yourself or something?"

"I am not being schizo," I told him. "We need to go down to the water and see if he's okay. That is our brother, Ray!"

"Mom hid the scale," Sloane announced.

"What do you mean?" I asked her. "You can't hide a scale."

"She hid it because she thinks you weigh yourself too much. You're becoming obsessed."

"Where did she put the scale, Sloane?"

"I have no idea. She just said she was hiding it."

"Check in the washing machine," Ray suggested. My mother pulled this number often with the TV remote control when she was sick of watching my father sitting on his ass all day. More often than not, she forgot about it and ended up washing several remote controls throughout the summer.

The scale turned out to be in the dryer, so I took it out and slid it underneath for later, where I knew no one would ever see it. Then I refocused myself on the task at hand.

"Okay, Sloane," I said, clapping my hands. "Ray, are you coming or not?"

"Girls, it's a bay. There are no sharks or manatees or whatever you think is going to get him. He's done it a million times. Please relax. If he gets tired, he can just hop on one of the boats. Seriously, girls. You are giving me severe headacheage."

My next move was to burst into tears, which caused Sloane to also start crying. Mike walked over and, with absolutely no conviction, put his hand out to comfort us but then retracted it and, not knowing what else to do, crossed his arms.

"Let's go," Sloane said, and we headed back out the sliding door. "Mike, go down to the basement and get a flashlight."

The water was about a hundred yards from our deck. Mike met us at the front of the house with an industrial-size flashlight. From there we headed across the lawn to the dirt road and found the path that went down to the water.

Sloane and I were still crying as we ran like lunatics through the pitch black with the flashlight bouncing all over the place. The tree-canopied path that leads to the water is riddled with thornbushes, poison ivy, and wet marsh grass that may as well be a giant placenta.

Sloane was holding on to my ponytail, which was becoming looser and looser as a result. The first time I veered to avoid a branch I saw at the last minute, she was able to avoid it, too, but my ponytail completely came loose, and her second and third interactions with branches weren't as fortuitous.

"Shit!" I screamed, trying to assist Mike in helping her get to her feet after her first tumble. Everyone in our family suffers from extreme lack of coordination and an immoderate amount of clumsiness. Even though this is a path Sloane and I had been down hundreds of times during broad daylight, the familiarity of it was completely lost on us. Add to the mix a wooded marshy path in the middle of the black night and you might as well have put us in a minefield with Bose headphones and a water gun.

At the end of the path was a small wooden dock that took you over the marshiest part and fell out on the beach. Once on the beach, I started yelling Greg's name.

"Greg! Greeeggg! Greg!"

Sloane chimed in with screams of her own, and so did Mike, who was surprisingly becoming the forefront of Operation Seafood Tower Rescue.

"We have to get out there. We need a boat," I told them.

"We can take one of the dinghies," she said, shining the flashlight on a bunch of little rowboats that people used to get from the beach to their bigger boats.

Mike grabbed the closest one, flipped it over, and pushed it into the water. It had two benches in the middle and a smaller bench on each end, and two sets of oars inside. The perfect mode of transportation if you were a family of midgets on The Amazing Race trying to make it through Willy Wonka's Chocolate River.

I took control of the flashlight so Mike could grab the first set of oars and start rowing while Sloane took the other. After ten solid minutes of huffing and puffing and becoming completely dizzy, it occurred to us that we had made no progress at all and were in the same exact place we started.

"Sloane!" Mike yelled. "You're supposed to be rowing forward like me, not canceling out my row!"

"I can't see which way you're rowing!" They were seated with their backs to each other, and I was in the middle as the captain.

I grabbed the oars out of her hands and started rowing myself.

It was impossible to see anything beyond the three to four feet the flashlight illuminated, and impossible to tell if we were making any headway.

"Chelsea, find a boat or landmark with the flashlight so we have a point of reference," Mike ordered.

"Done. There's a red anchor buoy thingy right there."

"They're all red, Chelsea. That doesn't help us!" Sloane screamed.

"Then you find something, you big Mormon."

Mike ordered us to just keep rowing in the same direction so that we would eventually make some progress in getting over to the other side. He also told us both to stop arguing and to focus on saving our brother from a dark, untimely death.

Sloane decided it would be a good idea to come back to where I was seated at the end of the boat and supervise.

"Get out of the back of the boat, you dumbass. It's gonna fill with water!" Before this sentence even left my mouth, Mike had fallen out of the boat, because half of it was already submerged in water. Sloane fell out next. I grabbed the front end of the rowboat while it got higher and higher but let go right before it capsized. Now we were all in the water with our flip-flops floating beside us. I took this opportunity to relieve myself.

Mike had started swimming toward the dinghy and was trying to turn it back over.

I looked at Sloane, who was treading water in a manner that suggested she wasn't going to be afloat for much longer. "You really are a dick," I told her as I swam over to her. She grabbed my shoulders, pushing my whole head underwater.

"Sorry!" she yelped as I went down.

I released her from my grip and swam back up to the surface. "What is wrong with you?"

"I'm so tired. I think I have whiplash."

"Well, I'm not a fucking flotation device. You can't just push on me and expect me to keep coming back up. You are so weak. Lie on your back, and I'll hold you. That's easier." We did just that, and I looked over to see where Mike was. I noticed that the water went from cool to lukewarm a little too quickly. "Are you peeing?"

"Yes," Sloane answered. "But just for a second."

"There's an oar!" I yelled to Mike.

"I'm right here, just a minute." Mike was now visible, and I could see him dragging the dinghy back in our direction. Once over by us, he flipped the boat into its upright position. "Where are the oars?"

"Fuck. I just saw one." I swam and grabbed what looked like an oar from farther away but turned out to be the flashlight. The dead, clearly non-waterproof flashlight.

"Chelsea, can you please stop swearing?" Sloane said as her head sank under water.

"Fuck off, Sloane. We need to find the oars. Greeeeegggggggg!!!!"