Chapter 4 #2
Rachel turns on me with fresh rage. “What the hell sort of piece of crap boat did your father send us out on? He did this on purpose. Was this the plan all along? This is all your fault. If we die out here, it is because of you and your pathetic father.”
I don’t even fight her, maybe she’s right. Maybe this is my father’s doing. Maybe the safety equipment was never even there. Why didn’t we check that first? We rushed a decision and now it might cost us our lives, and everyone else’s.
I just stare, feeling numb.
We drift, all of us silent, our hearts beating against our ribs with a violence we can’t articulate.
The luxury yacht casts a molten light over the night, both beautiful and apocalyptic.
I can’t feel anything but the cold, wet air and the warmth of Aggie’s shoulder pressed to mine.
Every now and then, the boats slam together, causing us to jerk, everyone's head snapping up before slowly lowering again until the next time.
I look at Ace, on the other boat, staring into nothing.
His eyes flicker, catching mine. He looks concerned, and that worries me the most because that means things are far worse than we had anticipated.
We didn’t mean for anyone to get hurt, but the longer we drift, the worse I feel.
Why would my father do this? He might be a lot of things, but I still would have thought he loved me.
“You good?” Ace asks, maybe he mouths it, I don’t know.
I nod.
If he knows what we did, will he ever forgive us?
That is, of course, if we make it out alive.
WE LOST THEM.
The other lifeboats.
As the night drifted, we all got separated, except for our boat and the security boat.
Voices slowly disappeared into the darkness, calling out but being unable to stay close.
During the night, the seas got rougher, and what was a quiet and terrifying ordeal quickly became cold, hard fear.
Our boat slams against theirs, and the sea swirling drowns out Rachel’s wails, which get louder and louder with every passing minute until finally, she exhausts herself and falls into a fit of sobs.
Now the morning sun is blaring down on us, refusing to allow sleep and promising a long and painful day ahead.
Nobody is talking now, what is there to say?
We made a grave mistake, and now we’re stranded out here, with no way to call for help because we got separated from the other boats.
We don’t know if they managed to call for help, or if they’re even still in the water.
Maybe they got rescued and decided we weren’t worth waiting around for?
With my father behind all of this, even the most intense and unbelievable situation could be very real.
“How did this even happen?” Rachel keeps murmuring to herself, over and over.
“It’s quite simple, really,” Adrian says, sitting at the back of the boat, “the boat sunk.”
No shit.
Rachel glares at him. “Yes, I know that, you idiot. What I meant was, how the hell did an explosion happen?”
Adrian thinks on it. “Well, boats don’t usually just explode. Someone is definitely going to HR about this one.”
He is absolutely no help.
“What are we going to do?”
That comes from Iris, who has her gaze fixed on Ace, Kellen and Zeke. It is Zeke who answers; the other two are sitting, staring down at their hands, legs wide, heads dropped.
“I don’t know,” he tells her, honestly. “All we can do is hope a rescue call went out and we see choppers or boats soon. Someone will come.”
What if he’s wrong, though?
What if nobody comes because we aren’t even where we were meant to be?
If they didn’t get a distress call out, then the only person who can give any kind of information on our location is my father, but will he?
Will he risk everything trying to rescue us or will he write us off as nothing and move on?
Considering he was willing to sell us, I know which way I’m leaning.
Glancing over at Aggie, our eyes meet and I can see she is feeling everything.
She is blaming herself, but she shouldn’t.
This is on me.
I shift and move closer to her, reaching out for her hand and leaning in close. “This isn’t your fault.”
“I was only supposed to do damage, not light a fucking fire that brought the entire yacht down.”
I squeeze. “It was me who came up with the plan.”
She glances at me. “No, it wasn’t. It was an equal decision.”
We fall silent.
“What if we die out here?” she whispers.
“We won’t, someone will come, I know it.”
Aggie pulls her knees to her chest and rests her chin on them, jaw working quietly as she thinks. “If we do die, at least I won’t have to listen to Rachel’s voice another second because if I have to listen to her wailing for one more second, I will throw myself over.”
I try to smile, even though my lips burn as they stretch. “She’s going to haunt every single one of us if she goes first. They’ll find our skeletons, and the local seagulls will have picked them clean except for the decibel memory of her bellowing.”
Aggie snorts, and it breaks something in both of us—a soft pressure-release after the last twelve hours of terror. “The real tragedy,” she whispers, “is that I can’t even tweet about this. So if I perish, there’s no legacy. No poetic final post.”
“Well, hopefully it brings your name to the surface and makes you go viral, even if you’re not here.”
She huffs. “Will serve me right, for causing this in the first place.”
I try to concentrate on the horizon, but the whitecaps only make me dizzy. “If we make it.”
“When,” she corrects, “when we make it.”
“What did you say?”
Rachel’s voice comes above ours, in an almost shriek. “What the fuck did you just say?”
I pause, turning slowly to see her staring at us, her eyes wide.
“We’ve had enough of your shrieking, Rachel,” Aggie mutters. “What is your problem?”
“You just said it will serve you right for causing the fire in the first place.”
Aggie’s face falls, and I’m certain mine does, too.
“What?” Iris gasps, her eyes wide. “What is she talking about?”
“Aggie?” Zeke, who has perked up and is staring across at our boat. “Please fuckin’ tell me she misheard.”
Her eyes meet mine.
“Don’t look at her,” Rachel screams. “Tell me I didn’t just hear what I think I heard.”
Tatiana presses a hand to her chest, staring at us, as if she is imagining this all as a really bad dream that we are about to get her out of.
“Answer the question.”
Ace’s voice is like a whip, and even though a part of me wants to lie, I know the only way we will survive this is to tell the truth.
Aggie sighs, and her shoulders slump. “It was me,” she says, and her voice is so even, so naked that for a second no one reacts. “I rigged the cleaning chemicals and set the explosion. We had to do something before we docked, before—” She glances at me, a silent question.
How much do we tell them?
A weird calm fills me. Maybe it’s the way the water holds us, the hush of dread so complete it erases even Iris’s whimpering. If we die—and I’m starting to believe we could—then at least we could die telling the truth.
It’s the least I can do.
I look right at Ace, at the way his hands clench and unclench, at the raw betrayal darkening his eyes.
“We didn’t do this for nothing,” I say, my throat scratchy as I try to raise my voice loud enough for everyone to hear.
“My father, he was never sending us on vacation. He was going to sell us. All of us.”
I don’t know what response I expect. For everyone to hug me and tell me I saved them all?
For Ace, or Zeke, or even Kellen, to call me a liar and say I’m out of my mind?
But for a solid ten seconds, no one says anything.
The silence vibrates; even the endless churn of the sea feels like it’s stopped to listen.
It’s finally Rachel who speaks, tears running down her cheeks. “What the fuck are you talking about? He’s your dad. Are you insane? As if he would do something so... horrible.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. He doesn’t see us as people, Rachel,” I say, my throat burning. “I overheard the conversation clear as day, he was going to sell us. We were never going on vacation, he had people waiting at the other end for us.”
Iris is crying now, real tears, not the superficial drama.
Rachel stares at her, then at me, and then at the men—expecting, I guess, for someone to tell her this is a prank.
Some big, unfunny joke. She points a shaking finger, mouth twisted.
“So you decided to set the fucking boat on fire, instead?”
I shake my head. “We were trying to just set off an emergency response, create a disaster so they’d have to rescue us. We had no idea my father stripped the emergency equipment and that all the radios were fucking out. This was the safest way. The only way.”
She laughs, that ugly edge again. “Safest way? We’re all going to die out here, you psycho.”
“Well,” Adrian pipes up. “Statistically, we’re probably more likely to survive this than you ladies would have been if you were sold into the sex trade.”
“Fuck your statistics,” Rachel screams at him.
It’s Kellen, of all people, who snaps. “Fuck me, just shut up. Just—shut the fuck up, all of you.” He leans forward, his face hard and strange in the dawn light.
Iris hugs herself, rocking. The sun is a white knife on her skin. “We’re never getting home, are we?”
I want to lie, I want to promise, but I can’t. “I don’t know,” I say, and it’s the closest I’ve ever come to crying in front of these people.