Chapter 28 Jill
Jill
Jill was waiting in line for a piece of cake when she thought she heard someone scream from the upper deck.
It was hard to hear anything over the pulsing music and Heather’s raucous laughter. One of J.J.’s friends had been imitating
their swim team coach, and all the kids were cracking up. Jill was too worried to join in. She didn’t see Una or Mrs. Smith
and was afraid to search for them by herself.
She wanted Charles to come with her, but he was surrounded by flushed and happy adults who couldn’t stop touching him. He
was hugged, kissed, and patted on the back. Grandmas squeezed his cheeks. His mother adjusted his yarmulke.
Jill wondered what it would feel like to be lavished with so much affection. Would she ever do something to earn that kind
of praise and attention? She doubted it.
She flashed back to earlier in the week, when her mother had taken her to the mall. Jill had been so excited to try on dresses.
Despite her fears about the party, she still held on to her fantasy of enchanting Aaron.
Inside Macy’s, the rows and rows of glittering colorful dresses were like wishes waiting to be granted. If Jill chose the
right one, her wish might come true.
“That won’t look good on you,” her mother had said when Jill had run her hand down a purple sequined number. “Your shoulders are two wide to go strapless.”
For every dress Jill admired, her mother had found something about Jill’s body that wouldn’t work. Her waist was too doughy.
Her thighs were too thick. Her hips were too curvy.
Finally, her mother had picked out several dresses and told her to go try them on.
The moment she’d felt the white satin dress slide over her tanned skin, Jill had known it was perfect. It hugged her on top
and the gauzy, tiered skirt floated around her legs like the bell of a jellyfish.
She didn’t need to try on anything else. She’d found her dress.
“Let me see,” her mother had commanded.
Jill hadn’t wanted to leave the sanctuary of the fitting room. In that space, she was beautiful.
“Come on,” her mother had urged. “I have things to try on, too.”
Jill had stepped out and done a twirl. That was how confident she’d felt in that dress.
“It’s a little short,” her mother said. “Try the pink one. It’ll cover more of your legs.”
Turning to the mirror, Jill had examined her reflection. “I like it.”
“Well, I don’t think you should wear—”
Something inside Jill snapped. She’d rounded on her mother and screamed, “Just forget it! I don’t want to do this anymore!
You’re mean! You’re mean and I hate you!”
She’d gone back into the fitting room, changed into her shorts and T-shirt, and stormed out of the store.
Her mother had called after her, but Jill didn’t stop until she reached the car.
She slid into the back seat and sobbed. Her mother had come out twenty minutes later with a garment bag in her arms. She scolded Jill for causing a scene.
Jill hadn’t replied. She hadn’t looked at her mother or asked her what she’d bought. She’d stared out the window and willed
her mother to start the car and take her home.
She’d barely spoken to her since. Even when her mom presented her with the white satin dress, she’d only mumbled a thank-you.
It had taken Una telling her that she was beautiful to restore the feeling she’d had in the Macy’s fitting room.
I wish I was Jewish, she thought now as a waiter handed her a sliver of cake with alternating layers of chocolate and vanilla and a cookie shaped
like a gun.
Normally, Jill would devour the treats right away, but she was too worried about Una.
Just as she was looking for a place to leave her plate, the music came to a screeching stop.
“FIRE!” a woman near the DJ shrieked. She pointed to the upper deck.
Jill hurried across the dance floor to the aft seating area. Looking up, she saw a black cloud shift against the dark sky.
She smelled smoke but couldn’t see the fire.
A high-pitched squeal burst though the speakers and then the captain began to speak. He told the elderly, parents with young
children, and guests who couldn’t swim to proceed to the lifeboats in an orderly manner.
“Crew members will hand out life jackets to every guest. Please put them on immediately and listen for further instructions.
The most important thing is to remain calm.”
The tail end of his sentence was cut off by an explosion.
Jill clapped her hands to her ears as a maelstrom of light and thunder engulfed the top of the boat.
The night blazed with color. Mortar shells of light detonated on the sundeck, assaulting the sky. Rockets shot off in every direction, creating sparkling mushroom clouds in the air or barreling into the water with banshee cries.
The boat was under attack from an unknown enemy. Shrill whistles and cannon fire booms reverberated through its hull. The
noise and flashing lights disoriented the guests. The smoke pouring down the deck stairs terrified them.
People were running in every direction, screaming. They shouted names, knocked over tables as they reached for each other,
crashed into furniture. The deck was instantly littered with shattered glass and broken plates. Ash began to rain down from
the sky.
Jill dropped to her knees and crawled under a café table. She watched people swarm to the rails. Kicking off their shoes,
they straddled the rails and disappeared over the side of the boat.
A hand clamped around her arm and yanked her out from under the table. Her dad held her by the shoulders, searching her for
injury.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes, but—”
“We need to get in the water and swim to those boats.” He pointed to a cluster of boats beyond the ship’s bow. “Jump overboard
and follow your brother.” Misjudging her hesitation for fear, he shifted his hands to either side of her face. “You can do
it, Jilly Bean. You’re strong. I’m going to get your mom in a life jacket and stick close to her. We’re not the swimmers—you
guys are. Other kids from the swim team are already in the water. Go!”
Her dad pushed her over to where J.J. stood and then darted toward the life jacket locker.
“Come on!” J.J. shouted.
“I can’t! Una’s up there!” Jill saw kids she knew from swim team, from school, and from her neighborhood climb over the rail and leap off into space. In between explosions, she heard splash after splash after splash.
J.J. grasped her hand. “She can get in one of the lifeboats! You heard Dad. We have to get off!”
Jill’s eyes flooded with tears. “You go! I’m not leaving without her!”
“Goddamn it, Jill!” she heard her brother yell, but she ran in the opposite direction without looking back.
Before she reached the stairs, someone grabbed her arm.
It was Charles. “Where’s Mrs. Smith?”
Jill started pulling Charles up the stairs. “I think she’s up here. With Una. Get your weapon out.”
At the top, Charles said, “You take this side. I’ll take the other one. Meet you at the bow.”
Jill swerved around a man with a bleeding forehead. “Rose!” the man called. “Rosie, where are you?”
A woman in a gold gown stumbled toward Jill. She made a shooing motion at her. “Go back! The lifeboat’s on fire!”
Ignoring her, Jill hurried toward the bow.
Smoke poured from the lifeboat’s canvas cover as two crew members tried to douse the flames with fire extinguishers. A third
crew member used a long hook to peel off the burning material and flick it into the water.
“We’re good! Lower it down!” she heard one of them shout as she raced past.
Heat from the sundeck poured onto her head and shoulders. Every time another firework went off, she hunched her shoulders,
expecting sparks to rain down on her.
The door to the interior areas was propped open. Tongues of black smoke escaped from within, probing the air. Jill’s eyes
and lungs burned.
She coughed and yelled Una’s name. Coughed again.
No one was alive in there. The heat and smoke were too intense, but she shouted until it felt like a cheese grater had rubbed
the tender flesh inside her throat.
Finally, she lurched toward the bow.
Through the haze of smoke, she saw a figure hunched over the rails. It took Jill a moment to recognize that the woman with
the whirlwind of silver hair was Una.
“UNA!” Jill croaked. “We need to go!”
Una’s hands clutched the rail. Her eyes bulged as she stared into the water. She rocked back and forth, muttering something
Jill couldn’t hear over the mayhem.
Wrapping her hand around Una’s wrist, Jill was about to tug her away from the rail when a pillar of flame rent the sky. It
lit up the water around the bow, illuminating the thick shadow moving under the surface.
It wasn’t a solid mass like a whale or a big shark. It was almost arrow-shaped with a rounded head, streams of hair, and a
nest of rippling arms.
It was the creature in Mrs. Smith’s stained-glass window. The creature in her garden. The creature with the woman’s face and
tentacles for arms. It was the monster.
And it was swimming toward the kids in the water. The kids trying to reach the cluster of moored boats.
“Hey!” Jill shouted. “There’s something in the water! It’s coming your way! Come back! Hurry!”
Her smoke-scratched voice was lost in the smack of the lifeboat hitting the water. She tried again, but the noise of the fire
chewing through the teak decking drowned her out.
The air was polluted with the smell of gunpowder and melting plastic. When Jill sucked in another breath, the grime singed
her throat.
Next to her, Una kept muttering. She said something that sounded like “swan” over and over as she watched the monster draw close to the group of swimmers.
Suddenly, a head disappeared under the surface.
“No,” Una whispered. “No, no, no.”
Another head vanished. And another.
The swimmers began to scream. Some put their faces in the water and swam as fast as they could, racing back toward the burning
yacht. Others kept moving toward the moored boats.
The fire shifted in the wind, and the spotlight of flame that had lit up the water beyond the bow winked out.