Chapter 12 Jill #2
You could get out of the race, niggled a small voice in Jill’s head. Just get on the launch without a life vest. After everyone gets dropped off, the launch would bring you back. You could go
home, have the house all to yourself. You could listen to records. Read. Eat anything you want.
While Jill was lost in the vision of putting on her Xanadu record and sprawling on the living room couch with a Strawberry Shortcake ice cream bar, Allison appeared by her side.
“Ready?” she asked in her hushed library voice.
In her Bar Harbor T-shirt, black Ray-Bans, and scuffed-up docksiders, Allison almost looked cool. But the smear of white cream
on her nose ruined the look. Jill imagined someone pushing Allison’s face into a bowl of sunscreen the way a Dairy Queen worker
would dunk a soft-serve cone in a vat of vanilla dip.
It’s not even sunny, Jill thought with disdain.
She saw Aaron heading down to the dock. He was taller than the other thirteen-year-old boys and a few of the high schoolers,
too. If Jill got a seat next to him in the launch, they could talk some more. If not, she wanted to sit where she could see
him. She wanted to watch the wind blow his hair off his forehead and ripple his T-shirt.
“Yeah. Let’s go,” she replied.
Jill didn’t get a seat near Aaron. She was stuck sitting with Allison and one of Allison’s friends instead. Both girls ignored
her as the launch motored through the harbor.
Jill watched Mrs. Smith’s house, then the empty lot, then her own house slide by. Next, they passed a cluster of moored sailboats and finally, the jetty of rocks that stuck out into the water like a wart-ridden finger.
The rocks were the boundary between the harbor and the bay. Beyond the bay was the Sound. The bay was much deeper than the
harbor, and the currents rushing in from the Sound made the water choppy and unpredictable.
Jill glanced at the wake behind the launch. The bubbling white trail led back to the dock. To safety. Like the breadcrumbs
in Hansel and Gretel, the path home would soon disappear, leaving the kids to face the wind, the tides, and all the creatures they couldn’t see.
A yacht club employee had towed their Blue Jays to the middle of the bay. The sailboats were tied to each other and to a lead
line securing them to a motorboat. The launch pilot cut the engine and shouted for the kids to exit over the port side.
“Sailors in the lead boat go first. Go in order so the sailors in the boat closest to the launch leave last.”
Having done this before, the kids scrambled over the side into the first Blue Jay. Holding on to the mast for balance, they
picked their way to their assigned boat.
Jill looked for their boat number and was relieved to see that it was close to the launch. She and Allison climbed over the
side and half crawled to their boat. Heather and her skipper exited last, and then the launch slowly pulled away.
Their first task was to separate from the other boats, raise the mainsail and the jib, and head to the starting line. They’d
wait there until the sailors from the competing yacht clubs were also ready to begin.
The Cold Harbor sailing instructors had reviewed the racecourse with the skippers, but Jill wished she’d seen the chalkboard drawing, too. She was relieved they were in the second heat and could follow the boats in the first heat.
Suddenly, several air horn blasts cut through the kids’ chitchat like a guillotine blade.
Jill thought Allison said, “Here we go,” but she couldn’t be sure.
She watched the boats in the first heat maneuver to the starting line. J.J.’s, Aaron’s, and Heather’s boats were all in the
same heat.
Jill wished she was with them. Too many skippers in her heat were losers. Allison was timid and indecisive and had never even
placed in the top ten. Then there was Charles Bernstein’s skipper, Tony Pulcino. Tony sailed like he was driving a bumper
car. He always got too close to other boats, angling for a collision. And Kim Lahey’s skipper, Leslie Feldman, never wanted
to stay on course. She thought she knew better than the instructors and was always getting lost.
Four short horn blasts sounded. This was the warning for the sailors in the first heat to prepare to cross the starting line.
Twenty seconds later, a long blast meant their race was underway. It was also a signal for the second heat to sail toward
the starting line.
When Allison steered their boat toward the two buoys without much difficulty, Jill felt a glimmer of hope.
She knew it was illogical to be scared. Teachers and parents from all three yacht clubs patrolled the water around the racecourse
in power boats. They kept their distance so as not to create too much wake for the sailors but stayed close enough to rescue
anyone in serious trouble.
Still, the fog hovering around the shoreline was thicker than it was in the harbor, and without the sun to burn it off or
a brisk wind to break it apart, fat bands of diaphanous gray seemed to be oozing toward the sailors.
The four short horn blasts sounded again, followed by the long blast. The bow of Jill’s boat kissed the stern of a boat from another yacht club and the skipper threw them a glare. When Allison steered into their boat a second time, the boy shoved them off with his paddle. “Back off, bitch!”
Allison turned crab-red and muttered, “Sorry.”
Ten minutes later, Jill was ready to shout at her, too. Most of the boats had pulled ahead while they were still floundering
in the rear.
“Where’s the first buoy?” Jill asked. When she couldn’t hear Allison’s reply, she lost her patience. “Talk louder! I don’t
know when we’re tacking because I can’t hear you.”
“Tack!” Allison yelled.
The boom swung from port to starboard and Jill switched seats while trimming the jib. They picked up a little speed, but not
much.
Jill scanned the horizon, searching for the course buoy. At this point, it didn’t really matter if she knew its exact location
because all they had to do was trail the other boats. At least they weren’t dead last. That honor belonged to Charles and
his skipper. Their boat was close behind a boat from the Huntington Yacht Club, and Jill wondered if Tony was deliberately
antagonizing the rival team.
She could see Charles’s red head bobbing around as he responded to Tony’s orders.
He must be miserable, Jill thought. She knew Tony would call him Upchuck.
Then he’d ask who Charles’s favorite character was from Gilligan’s Island, which would lead to jokes about Ginger.
Tony would ask the same question about Scooby-Doo and The Flintstones.
No matter what Charles said, he’d be Ginger or Daphne or Wilma for the rest of the race.
Though Jill felt sorry for Charles, she had her own problems.
It seemed to take forever to tack around the first buoy and zigzag toward the second, which was floating closer to the opposite shore. By the time they approached, webbed fingers of fog had crept farther out from the shore. Soon, the buoy would be engulfed.
Most of the instructors were waiting near the finish line or motoring in wide circles at the edge of the fog to be sure that
none of the junior sailors went too far off course and ended up stuck on a sandbar.
There were piles of jagged rocks near the shore as well. They’d tear through a Blue Jay’s hull like it was made of crepe paper,
leaving the sailors no choice but to wait for help or swim parallel to the shore until they cleared the rocks. Only then could
they make for the safety of the beach.
“Coming about!” Allison shouted.
They rounded the second buoy and Jill gave her skipper a thumbs-up. Two more buoys and they would cross the finish line and
be done.
As their mainsail swelled with wind, the bow knifed through the waves. Jill’s ponytail streamed out behind her head like a
comet, and for a few heartbeats she felt her anxiety loosen.
Almost there. We’re almost there.
Glancing over her shoulder, she saw that Charles’s boat and the Huntington Yacht Club team had dropped even farther behind.
Their boats didn’t look right. They were so close that their sails seemed to overlap. Jill couldn’t tell exactly what had
happened—they were too far away—but in her gut, she knew that Tony had rammed the other boat and now both boats were stuck.
They were a floating tangle of lines and sails and masts.
“Earth to Jill!” Allison cried. “We’re tacking!”
Jill snapped to attention seconds before the boom whipped across the centerline. As she shifted her body to the other side of the boat, she saw a dark mass in the water. It was approaching their boat from the east. From under the fog.
She’d seen shadows created by schools of fish, but as this mass grew closer, she knew it wasn’t made of fish.
It was too dense. Too dark. It was like a sea within a sea. It undulated and roiled like boiling water. But it wasn’t water.
It was a thing.
Jill was immobilized by fear.
Shark.
It can’t be. The shape is wrong.
It was like an interstellar cloud—black and irregular. But as it slid under their boat, she closed her eyes, gripped the nearest
cleat, and braced for impact.
Nothing happened.
Their boat kept its steady pace north. She heard the water slapping at its sides and the whoosh of wind filling the sails.
She opened her eyes and looked down.
The mass was already to the aft of their boat. Watching it recede, Jill expelled a lungful of air.
She was about to turn away when she saw its speed suddenly increase. It was headed directly for the last two boats, which
were still locked together.
The next course buoy was coming up, so Jill had to face forward and prepare to come about. But out of the blue, Allison lost
hold of the tiller. Their boat turned directly into the wind. The sails shuddered and their momentum stalled.
Allison grabbed the tiller and pulled it toward her, steering the boat the wrong way. As the sagging mainsail blocked Jill’s
vision, she listened for Allison’s command.
Allison didn’t give one.
Jill gave the boom a shove and bellowed, “Turn toward the shore!”
With the sail out of her face, Jill could see Allison. Her skipper was wide-eyed with panic. Her sunglasses were gone and
the sunscreen on her nose was now smeared across her left cheek. It looked like warpaint made of Elmer’s glue.
“I don’t want to get caught in the fog,” she whined.
Jill was scared, too, but they had no choice. “It’s just until we catch the wind again.”
Allison mouthed something. Oh or okay, maybe. Jill wasn’t sure. All she knew was that they needed to keep moving. They needed to put more distance between themselves
and the black mass in the water.
Glancing at the stretch of water behind them, Jill searched for the two boats.
She saw only one, lying on its side, its sails floating impotently in the water. It looked like a broken bird or the wreckage
of a small plane.
The other boat was gone.
It wasn’t behind the capsized boat. It wasn’t speeding away in another direction. It was just gone.
Suddenly, a sound hurtled toward Jill from across the divide—a high, animalistic shriek that raised gooseflesh on Jill’s arms
and stole the breath from her lungs. It went on and on, sweeping over the two girls in the boat as they sat in frozen terror.
Jill wanted to cover her ears. She wanted to stop the sound from getting in—from proving to her that nightmares were real.
The noise wasn’t coming from an animal.
It was coming from a kid.
One of the boys in the capsized boat was screaming.