Twenty-Five
RIDE OUT THE storm doesn’t capture it, though.
What is it they say about seasickness? First you fear you’ll die, then you hope you’ll die, then, after you survive, it feels like you’re dead?
That pretty much captures it.
I assume, as the storm got worse, we floated farther from shore, though I really don’t know for sure. Between the rain and the darkness, I had zero bearings. All I got was bright flashes when lightning cracked across the sky. Then the sea would appear, all around us, the waves like canyons—so scary, I didn’t even want to look. Soon the windows were so covered with sea-foam spray that it was hard to see out of them, anyway—except for the shattered one. Which let in more water with each crashing wave.
The floors were wet. Everything was wet.
And cold.
At first, I was alert—paying attention in every direction to sights and sounds and cracks of thunder. I even found a sheet of paper, thinking I might try to record information, somehow. The number of lightning flashes? Thunder claps at intervals? Vomiting sessions?
Or maybe I could write something—a will, maybe? Some final deep thoughts? A farewell letter that no one would ever see?
So many choices.
But I never did decide. Soon, I was too seasick to write anything at all.
The constant motion was so exhausting. The churn of the water, the shifting of the angles. We’d switch from tilting one direction to fully tilting the other in seconds—over and over. We tipped up on waves that felt almost vertical, and then we crashed back down into the channel between them. The living room chairs and sofa slid back and forth, hitting the walls and piling on top of each other. The refrigerator came unbolted, and all the food fell out.
It was up and down and side to side—randomly and in no order or rhythm. The weirdest part was going weightless for a minute as the waves tossed the boat up—before feeling gravity double as it slammed back down. Sometimes there was a lull in the waves, but other times, a bunch would hit at once. The boat shuddered and clanked and creaked. We got overtaken again and again with seawater. And every hit from the water wanted to break the boat apart—slamming us with a force like sudden car brakes.
I, at least, had a framework for what was happening—but George Bailey couldn’t brace himself and kept skittering across the floor, clawing madly with his paws for traction. During one sharp tilt, he slid all the way into the far corner, shattering a ceramic lamp and cutting his paw in the process.
He yelped, and whimpered, and as he limped back over toward me, refusing to even touch that paw to the floor, he left a trail of blood.
Something about the blood made me feel hopeless.
Or maybe it was the whimpering.
“I’m so sorry, buddy,” I said to George Bailey, pulling a pillow out of its case and tying the fabric around his paw as a very ill-fitting bandage.
During another lull, I tried to figure out a better place for George Bailey to shelter. Hutch’s closet seemed like a good spot. I could fill it up with pillows and blankets for padding. And of course watch for water under the door.
I took all of Hutch’s hanging clothes out, gathering them in my arms and getting a big whiff of Hutch’s scent that I was too nauseated to enjoy, and I dumped them in the bathroom in a pile and closed the door. Then, as I did the same to the storage boxes at the bottom, I remembered my hibiscus hair clip. Was it still there, I wondered—shoved back in the corner behind Hutch’s neat stack of storage tubs? For a second before I looked, I felt this superstitious flash: If the flower is there, we’re going to be okay.
But it wasn’t there.
The back corner was empty.
For a second, I felt so irrationally disappointed in Hutch. Would it have killed him to just send me one tiny spark of hope ? I really wasn’t asking for that much.
And yet, here we were.
That moment gave way to the next, and I found myself seriously wondering where the flower had gone. Had Hutch thrown it away in a fit of disappointed rage after I’d turned out to be a terrible person? Or maybe tossed it overboard? Or lit it on fire and watched the ashes float off on the wind over the water?
Or maybe it was worse than that. Maybe he had just swept it into a dustpan with all his other unremarkable trash—and thrown it away without even noticing.
In the face of the larger questions dominating my life… questions like, Can you die from seasickness dehydration? And Do whales eat people? And How deadly are jellyfish stings, exactly? In the midst of all those, you could argue that What became of my hibiscus hair clip? was, perhaps, the least pressing.
But I loved that question the best.
It gave me something Hutch-adjacent to turn over in my mind as I padded the closet floor with pillows and gestured to George Bailey to step inside.
George Bailey, like a perfect angel who had never stranded us on a houseboat during a hurricane, stepped easily in. Then he settled into a lion position on the pillows and gingerly lowered his bandaged paw to wait for what was next.
What would be next?
Drowning? Dismemberment? Ripped apart by sharks?
I thought about Hutch saying sharks were always everywhere.
Then I put a fervent request out to the universe. Of all the ways I might be about to die… could sharks please not be one of them?
Of course, the universe didn’t care about my requests.
I’d just have to care about them myself.
I closed the closet door with George Bailey inside, leaned back against it to keep it that way, and braced myself against Hutch’s built-in bed frame. If the boat started sinking, of course, I’d let George Bailey out. But he seemed safer in there for now.
Though what did safer even mean?
My senses were all haywire. The motion was the worst—but the screeching and howling of the wind, and the angry creaking of the boat, and the rolling of the thunder… it was incessant aural chaos. Clanking, wailing, crashing, howling—all of it so loud I couldn’t hear my own thoughts. And, from inside the closet, George Bailey still whimpering, like I was being mean.
It wasn’t long before I’d thrown up everything I’d ever eaten in my life, and then, in the wake of it, continued dry-heaving on principle. I lost all sense of equilibrium. The room in my head was spinning worse than the churning sea. During lulls, I would lie on the floor, panting, longing to die.
But I didn’t die.
And neither did George Bailey.
We survived.
I don’t know how many hours the storm raged. I lost all sense of time—and everything else. But at some point when it was still dark out, almost without my realizing it was happening, the churning waters slowed down. And then it got quiet. And the water itself—if not the motion in my head—became calmer.
George Bailey was still whimpering.
I opened the door, and George Bailey stepped out gingerly, his paw still wrapped in the pillowcase, now stained and bloody where the cut had reopened.
“How are you?” I asked. “Are you okay?”
In response, he limped over on three paws, settled next to me, and licked my face for a while. It was surprisingly comforting—and it made us both feel better.
And that’s how we fell asleep, right there on the floor.
WHEN WE WOKE again, it was day. The sun was out, the sky was cloudless, and the ocean surface was as calm as a pond.
Almost as if the sea was exhausted, too.
Or maybe ashamed of its tantrum.
George Bailey woke up when I did. I checked his paw, and then he watched my attempts to clean myself up a little—partly in hopes of feeling more normal, and partly to be presentable for any rescue that might happen to come along. I washed my face and brushed my teeth with bottled water. I combed my hair. My jeans were wet, and so were my shoes, but I didn’t have better options there. Though I did change into a safety-orange T-shirt of Hutch’s for visibility.
I looked out the shattered window. Except for the debris floating all around us—a beer cooler, a sideways mini fridge, a half-full three-liter soda bottle—everything was weirdly normal.
I walked out toward the living room to investigate, feeling like I had the worst hangover of my life. I’d thrown up so many times in the past twenty-four hours, I lost count. The whole place looked about how I felt—food everywhere, broken furniture, glass from the shattered window. I felt a strange urge to clean up.
I needed to sweep up the glass for George Bailey’s paws’ sake. I opened a kitchen closet to look for a broom—and guess what I found? Hutch’s penny jar. Unbroken, with the lid on, and all of his mom’s pennies. It was half-full. Maybe forty or fifty pennies? I grabbed the jar and took it out with the broom.
George Bailey was watching me from the bedroom doorway.
“What?” I said. “These are coming with us when we get rescued.”
As I swept up, despite feeling like I’d been trampled by some panicked herd of animals, I also couldn’t deny one very joyful fact.
We’d survived.
Also: everything was over!
Except… maybe not everything.
The floor did seem to be at a funny angle, now that I’d swept it up.
I looked around. One side of the boat was definitely lower than the other.
I made my way to the back deck—where I was confronted with two facts in rapid succession. One: we were definitely far, far out at sea. And two: one of the pontoons was partly detached from underneath. With a gash along it that had to be letting in water.
Were we… sinking?
I checked the horizon for some land.
Not much land out there.
I don’t know why my first thought was flare gun . I’ve never shot a flare gun in my life. But I went to the first-aid closet, got it out, and had it pointed toward the sky before it occurred to me to try my cell phone.
It was still dry, inside its little plastic bag. Chalk one up for the dispatcher.
But would it get reception? We could be halfway to Antarctica by now.
I turned it on… and YES.
I called 911 again.
A woman dispatcher answered. “911. What’s your emergency?”
I was, honestly, so moved and overjoyed and discombobulated to hear a human voice that I burst into tears. And then I apologized.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, not even sure myself what exactly I was sorry for. For having a problem? For interrupting the dispatcher’s day? For having failed to get George Bailey off the boat? For throwing etiquette to the wind and calling twice in a row?
Anything was possible.
“I called yesterday,” I said, wincing at how ridiculous I sounded as I finished with, “while being swept out to sea in a houseboat near Key West?”
My voice sounded weirdly hopeful. As if she might remember me.
She did not. She wasn’t even the same person.
“What is your location?” she asked.
“That’s the thing,” I said. “I really did get swept out to sea. That wasn’t, like, a metaphor or anything. Literally swept out to sea. I was out here all night in the hurricane in a homemade houseboat… but I lived. My friend’s dog and I both lived, in fact—though he cut his paw on a broken lamp. And now we are… adrift? And I’m not seeing much land nearby? And the other wrinkle here,” I went on, never a fan of giving bad news, “is that the boat we’re on now seems to be sinking?”
My voice kept going up at the end, as if my entire life was nothing but questions.
A solid pause from the dispatcher.
That couldn’t be good.
I rushed in with some more info, lest she decide I was hopeless. “This houseboat belongs to Tom Hutcheson, who’s a rescue swimmer for the US Coast Guard. Except he goes by Hutch. Isn’t that the sexiest name you’ve ever heard in your life?” This wasn’t helping. My brain was jumbled. Focus! “He’s not with us—on the boat. It was docked at the Sunshine Marina on the west side, but lightning destroyed the dock it was moored to, and the boat drifted off. With us on it. Me and the dog—not me and Hutch.” I looked around. “But I really don’t know how long it’s been. Or how far we’ve drifted.” I looked around one more time. “And I’m really not seeing much around us other than—you know—floating trash and the ocean.”
Another pause. Was it hopeless?
Come on! We could put a man on the moon, but we couldn’t find one bedraggled lady and one very stubborn Great Dane off the Florida coast?
“Hello?” I asked.
“I’m initiating a search and rescue.”
“Oh, my god, I love you,” I said.
“What is your weight?” she asked next.
Seriously?
I made up a number and took off ten pounds as a gesture of self-care. Then I added back two for all the pennies I’d be bringing with me.
“And you have an animal with you?”
“Yes,” I confirmed. “A Great Dane. With an injured paw.”
“What is the animal’s weight?”
“One hundred and seventy,” I said, assigning George Bailey my ten missing pounds.
“Can you describe your craft?”
My craft? “You mean the boat?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“It’s a houseboat named Rue the Day . Smallish, but cozy? It used to have hanging bulbs and Adirondack chairs on the back deck—but they’re long gone now.”
She interrupted. “Ma’am. I meant something identifying. For the search. Color?”
“Oh. Got it. Kind of a Cape Cod gray?”
“And you said the craft is sinking?”
Ah. “Yes. I think so. It’s a pontoon boat, and I think one of the pontoons was damaged in the storm. It seems to be taking on water. We’re definitely… tilting.”
I’ll tell you something. This lady wasn’t going to win any personality prizes.
But I loved her.
I have never felt so grateful for a phone conversation. Yes, she was all business, and kind of the opposite of chatty, and at no point had she offered even a courtesy laugh. But she existed! And she knew that I existed! She might not have any idea where I was, and she might have a whole board of other emergencies she needed to go deal with, but she could hear me. I was still totally alone in the ocean on a sinking boat—but at least I had a friend. Of sorts.
Until she had to go.
In the strange lull that followed, I drank all the bottled water I could fit into my stomach, and George Bailey did, too. I scavenged some bread for me and some beef-flavored kibble for him. I also slathered on sunscreen, which seemed de rigueur for being shipwrecked.
Then George Bailey and I climbed up onto the roof deck. I brought the jar of pennies with me, the flare gun, and my cell phone.
And we waited to be rescued.
Except guess what? Waiting to be rescued is hard.
It’s an agonizing mixture of boredom and terror.
After about three minutes, I was fighting the itch to call Beanie—even though I knew I should save my cell phone battery. It wasn’t like she could save me.
But she could keep me company. That wasn’t nothing.
I mean, if they never found me… this could be it . The grand finale of my life.
Did I really want to spend it not calling Beanie ?
She was the person I processed everything with—from nail polish colors down to bad dreams. For once I had something interesting! Shipwrecked? Come on! How could I not call her?
I was just about to give in to temptation when I saw something astonishing on the roof with us.
A toad.
Somehow, a toad had blown onto the roof of our houseboat during the storm, held on for dear life, defied every single one of the odds, and survived.
I watched it hop toward us and then stop between me and George Bailey, like it wanted to be friends—a kind of interspecies bonding-through-adversity scenario.
But—wait! What kind of a toad? If this was the poisonous kind, I’d have to kick it overboard. I remembered Hutch checking the last one with his flashlight, and I leaned in closer: no knobs or ridges on the head. So this one was the nonpoisonous kind, right?
I was 99 percent sure—but still deciding—when George Bailey scooped the toad up into his mouth.
“Really?” I said. “Is this how it’s going to be?”
George Bailey gave me the side-eye, like Mind your business .
“Fine,” I said. “We’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. But if either one of you dies, I’m gonna be pissed.”
George Bailey looked off at the horizon.
“And we’re naming him Lucky,” I went on, “and I’m putting you in charge of making sure he stays that way.”
On the heels of that, of all things, my phone rang.
Beanie.
I checked my battery life: 60 percent. But I would’ve answered if it had been six.
It was Beanie .
“Hey,” she said, as I answered.
“Hey,” I said.
“What’s up?”
I deflected. “What’s up with you ?”
“Not much,” Beanie said—and she wasn’t kidding. As she elaborated, and told me all about the avocado toast she’d just made for breakfast, the marinara stain she could not get out of her favorite shirt, and the crazy dream she’d just had about her high school boyfriend, I listened with an almost painful glow of gratitude in my chest.
“You have got to stop dreaming about that dude,” I said.
“I know, right?”
What an amazing friend/cousin/almost-sister I had. Life hadn’t exactly gifted me with the greatest mom on the planet, and I wouldn’t say I’d won the stepmother lottery, either… but it was all redeemed, I realized right then, because I had Beanie.
Beanie who always picked up. Beanie who always made time to chat. Beanie who knew all my secrets.
And then I remembered I didn’t know one big one of hers.
“I want you to tell me your beauty list,” I said next.
“What? Why?”
Um, because I was curious? Because I hated not knowing things about Beanie? Because I might be about to die?
“I think I’ve waited long enough,” I said.
“That’s probably right.”
“So?” I demanded.
“Well,” Beanie said then. “Okay. It’s just… everything .”
“Everything?” I challenged.
“You know,” Beanie said. “Just… all of it.”
Now this was distracting. “You like everything about your body? Everything? You think you’re just—what? Perfect?”
“I don’t think I’m perfect ,” Beanie said, like that idea was preposterous. “I just don’t look at myself the way you do.”
“How do I look at myself?”
“Like you have a template in your head for how things should look—down to the most minute minutia—and how you feel about every part of yourself gets graded on the scale of how far it varies from the template.”
Was there any other way to think about it? “Isn’t that what everybody does?”
“I guess I don’t.”
“How do you think about it?”
“It’s just, you know, that… everything gets a pass because it’s mine.”
“Everything gets a pass?”
“Yeah. It’s like, I know what a supermodel is… and I know that I don’t look like that. But I just love all of my… everything… because it’s mine.”
She loved all of her everything because it was hers.
It was such an astonishing idea, I didn’t know what to say.
“Hello?” Beanie said.
“This is why you wouldn’t tell me about your beauty list? Because you’re so insultingly nice to yourself? Do I have to spend the rest of my life resenting you about this?”
“I mean, you could, I guess,” Beanie said. “Or you could just do the same thing.”
Would I do the same thing? Unlikely.
But she could have been talking about ceiling paint right then, and I wouldn’t have cared. It felt so gloriously good for a minute for things to just feel normal. I knew I should tell her I was shipwrecked. I knew I should level with her about my dire situation. But, second by second, I just kept putting it off.
And that’s exactly what I was still doing when the Rue the Day made a funny groaning sound—and then tilted further, from a little bit to a full 45-degree angle.
One side of the roof shifted up. The other side shifted down. And my cell phone, which had been resting on the roof deck beside me, went skittering off, past the railing, and plunked into the ocean.
George Bailey and I also slid, but we caught ourselves on the railing.
For a second, in the aftermath, I wondered if Beanie would intuit what had just happened. But of course she’d just assume my battery had died. The most hollow, gaping loneliness came over me then, as I lost my last connection to civilization. And panic, too.
George Bailey and I both panted at each other.
But that’s when I looked down to see, tucked between George Bailey’s paws, Hutch’s jar of pennies. Still standing.
“Nice catch,” I said.
I reached over, took the jar, unscrewed it, and transferred all the pennies to my jeans pockets. Every last one.
IN THE WAKE of my cell phone’s untimely demise, I entered, shall we say, a dark period in my life.
It seemed pretty undeniable that I was going to die.
Sooner rather than later.
Braced against a roof railing at a 45-degree angle on a sinking houseboat with no remaining connection to civilization, and only a ban daged, bleeding dog and his pet toad for company, I felt—maybe for the first time in my life—true despair.
It was the silence, I think.
Or possibly the empty sky.
Or the way it kept getting harder and harder to imagine a version of this moment where the dog, the toad, and I wound up surviving.
Time compressed down and stretched out at the same time.
What happens when you drown? What does it feel like? Is it peaceful—or full of thrashing? Does it hurt when the water fills your lungs? I remembered, years ago, when I was a kid, not wanting my grandmother to be cremated because I just couldn’t accept that it wouldn’t hurt. But now, being cremated seemed like Swedish massage compared to whatever awaited me in the deep ocean. A school of piranhas, maybe—feasting on me like a charcuterie board?
A visual that I couldn’t push away took over the movie screen of my mind: of tiny fish nibbling away every single thing about me that made me me . The earlobes? Eaten. The eyes? Consumed. The kissable mouth? Devoured.
What does that old song say? “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone”?
The very real, very immediate prospect of my body—the one I’d picked on and complained about and disdained so hard for all these years—suddenly just… not being there…
It saturated me with a sadness so deep, so cellular , I’d never felt anything like it before.
Grief.
Grief for a body that, it turned out, I’d loved all along.