Chapter 14
Piper wasn’t kidding—it does look like rain. Actually, it looks like a storm. A bad one.
The sky is clear directly above my head, but gray tendrils are dangling from the bellies of dark clouds rolling across the horizon toward us.
Out of the water, I stand on the main deck, watching the approaching weather, enjoying the way the sun bakes my skin dry, soaking it up before the rain blots the rays away.
I don’t have a towel, and Piper has disappeared.
The cuff bracelet shines merrily on my wrist. I should grab my clothes from the deck chair, go inside and get changed, but the sun is clearly not going to hang around much longer, and as annoying as the humidity is, I want to feel the warmth for a little while longer.
Out of the corner of my eye, I catch a small motorboat bouncing across the waves like a water strider, coming in to the island’s dock way too hot, peeling to the side at the last minute before slowing down.
The motorboat has brought the storm. It happens so suddenly, the ocean and sky transformed in mere minutes.
The waves are much higher and rowdier than they were twenty minutes ago when Piper and I were in the water.
The crystal-clear view of the bottom of the ocean is gone—the surface is frothy and gray.
The sky dims and the wind picks up. I shiver, my skin drying too quickly as the sun is hidden behind a swell of darkness.
In the far distance, the sky is a sickly green.
There’s shouting from the island dock, voices carried by the anxious wind. Two figures, two men, are climbing from the motorboat. They appear to converse for a minute, waving their hands, gesturing at the sky, the small beach house, before hopping back into the boat and speeding toward Empress.
I glance up. The storm. It has to be related.
Grabbing my clothes, I hastily yank them on, grimacing at the feeling of my dry shorts touching my soaking wet underwear, and race back inside the yacht.
“Rachel!” I yell, spotting her in the kitchen, rolling something that looks like a big spinach leaf in her fingers. As grateful as I am to see someone finally making food on this boat, my hunger is momentarily forgotten.
Rachel jumps at my sudden appearance. “Shit, Charlie, you ruined my take!”
It takes me a second to process the tripod that is maneuvered over the counter so that Rachel can film whatever she’s doing with the big leaf. There are spice jars scattered around her, ingredients laid out in a row.
“Something’s wrong,” I insist, ignoring her protests. “Where are the others?”
“What are you talking about?” Rachel examines my face, then glances out of the window. “Oh, yeah. Storms are scary on Empress the first few times. Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it.”
“No, people are here, I think something bad is going on.”
“What?” Rachel repeats, her eyes drifting back down to her video, losing interest.
“I think Carl and Trey came back. They’re headed this way!”
Rachel sighs. “They’re probably dropping off provisions. I gave the stews a list of groceries for the week. Sometimes the boys bring them over instead.”
“No—” I say, frustrated, and then cut myself off. Is Rachel right? Maybe I’m overreacting again. “Either way, they’ll be here any second. I have to go change. My clothes are wet, and it’s freezing in here. I’ll be right back.”
“Take some deep breaths, Charlie,” Rachel suggests. “It’ll be okay.”
When she spoke to me like this yesterday, her tone had seemed comforting, kind. Today it sounds condescending.
I race downstairs, careful to not slip on the shiny staircase with my wet feet, and burst into my room, slamming the door behind me. What I’d really like is to take a hot shower, but I’m not risking fogging up that mirror right now.
I press my face against the tiny porthole window instead. Goose bumps litter my arms as rain begins to pelt the ocean around us. I jump back as a wave arches up and smashes against the window, saltwater spraying everywhere. How high are the waves already?
I shuck off my rapidly dampening clothes and leave them on the floor, changing into a dark blue long-sleeved lounge set. The sleeve of the shirt won’t fit over the golden cuff bracelet, so I slide the bracelet from my wrist and gently place it on the bathroom counter.
When I return upstairs, all hell has broken loose. The influencers are gathered in the kitchen. Carl and Trey are standing before them, dripping rainwater on the floor as the storm breaks down on top of us.
Voices blend together as everyone speaks at once.
“We have to go, now!”
“I don’t think the motorboat can get over those waves…”
“Why did you pick the world’s smallest boat to come get us?”
“We can’t all fit in that thing anyway!”
The world outside is a shadowy swirl of clouds and rain. Ligia is gone. The sound of raindrops and waves pelting the yacht are too loud; the wind is slamming against Empress, groaning.
This is more than a storm. This is a—
“How the fuck was I supposed to know a freak hurricane would hit today?” Carl is shouting at Fiona, whose face is red and blotchy, even under all her makeup.
“Don’t you get alerts? Don’t you get news on your phone?” she yells back. “Or were you and Trey too busy swimming to notice?”
The happy, loving couple from earlier is gone—they are spitting fire at each other.
I’m reminded of something Sage told me once, years before she did what she did: “The people who post the most about how amazing their relationship is online are the ones with the worst relationships. If you’re trying that hard to convince people everything is great, you’re probably also trying to convince yourself. ”
“Why is it my job to be your weatherman?” Carl breaks off, coughing, hacking as if he can’t get enough air into his lungs.
“Jeez, Carl, are you okay?” Ashley asks, her voice missing the hard edge I’ve grown accustomed to hearing from her.
He waves her off, refusing to look at her. “I’m fine.” But he’s wheezing and clutching his chest.
“This can’t be happening!” Fiona cries.
“Everyone SHUT. UP.” Trey’s booming voice cuts through the bickering, and the room finally falls silent.
Rachel and Ashley are holding each other, but Ashley can’t stop glancing at Carl, eyes pleading and wide. Carl, in turn, is ignoring her, massaging his chest. Fiona and Viv stand before the men, a united front, eyes blazing.
Only Piper, now dressed in a crisp black jumpsuit with cross-body straps, is completely unfazed. She sits on the edge of the kitchen counter, watching the conversation with boredom. There’s another glass of clear liquid in her hand, which she sips from aristocratically.
“What’s going on?” In the momentary quiet, all of them turn to me.
“Charlie,” Trey says, and there’s guilt etched on his expression, “I’m so sorry, we had no idea it was coming. A freak storm system came out of nowhere. It started over Cuba and it’s been picking up steam. We heard about it when we got back to Islamorada; people are evacuating.”
“A hurricane?” I ask breathlessly.
Trey grimaces. “Looks like it. Wind speed is ninety-seven miles per hour right now.”
“Category 2,” Piper offers from behind us, sounding uninterested in the whole thing.
Trey nods. “They’re tracking the cyclone path, and it’s turning toward North Carolina, but they don’t think it’ll make landfall.”
“Okay, but what about us?” Fiona hisses.
Trey looks around Empress. “You’ve been in here for tropical storms before. Empress can withstand Category 4 or 5 winds—”
“Untested!” Viv cuts him off. “That’s marketing bullshit, Trey, and you know it! We’ve never sat through a goddamn hurricane before! There’s a reason we only stay here on weekends during hurricane season.”
“Vivienne,” Trey says, and there’s a warning in his voice. “We are perfectly safe on Empress.”
“Wait,” I interject. “You’re not saying we’re stuck here, are you?”
Trey’s throat works as he swallows. “Look outside, Charlie. We can’t get back to the Keys right now. Like it or not, Empress is the safest place we can be. Probably even safer than Islamorada.”
“This is a yacht,” I object. “Can’t we move it? Go back to land?”
Trey winces. “Uh, no. The caissons require quite a bit of engineering to operate, and Empress is a big yacht that requires a skilled and qualified captain. I’m the owner; I know how it works, but I don’t have the ability to pilot it.”
This, to me, is an insane oversight. I literally bite my tongue to keep from saying so.
“What about the house on the island?” Rachel offers. “Being on land has to be better than being out on the actual water, right? Maybe we can get to the beach house on Ligia.”
Trey shakes his head. “Waves are too intense to get to Ligia safely right now. Plus, there are a bunch of palm trees right next to the beach house. Not sure it’d be safe to bunk there with these winds.”
“The winds aren’t at fatal levels. It’s not supposed to be very dangerous,” Carl adds weakly. His voice is froggy from his coughing fit, and he keeps clearing his throat.
“Oh, no, sure, that looks totally safe,” Fiona snaps, jabbing at the howling fishbowl of storm right outside us.
“The hurricane isn’t getting in here,” Trey assures us. “Everything on deck is weather-proof and bolted down. Nothing is going anywhere, and we’re not going anywhere. This won’t last long, mark my words. It came on too suddenly to have the stamina to go much longer.”
“Are you a meteorologist now, too, Trey?” Piper asks mildly.
Trey ignores her. “Let’s try to make the best of this. We’re all together. We’re all safe.”
“We don’t have a lot of food,” Rachel says, finally pulling her face away from her sister’s embrace. “I was waiting for provisions, remember? Unless you two brought them?”
“No, but we’ll be fine,” Trey insists. “I’m sure we have enough so that no one will starve. Maybe we have to go a night or two without dinner, but that’s no big deal.”
“We should check the crew mess.” Ashley speaks up. Like before, her voice is lower, more mellow. As if she can hear it, she continues, but now there’s a familiar serrated edge to her words. “Obviously. There might be food down there that was left behind when the stews moved out.”
“Good idea,” Carl says, glancing at Ashley’s chest before quickly looking away. “We can check later.”
Fiona clocks the softening in her boyfriend’s voice and glares at him. “Carl to save the day, everyone.”
Trey puts his hands up. “Hey, everyone take a breath. It will be fine. I’m sure there’s enough booze for us to enjoy our time anyway.”
“This isn’t a vacation,” Viv remarks. “We’re trapped here by a hurricane, Trey.”
“Then you should start filming.”
“Are you serious?” Viv looks at Trey like he’s asked her to extinguish a candle with her boobs. “‘Hey everyone, buy from Royal Yachts so you too can get trapped out at sea in a hurricane!’ Yeah, that’ll go over well.”
“Vivienne, this is exactly why you should show that,” Trey says slowly, like she is very stupid and he needs to spell it out for her.
“It highlights the strength and safety of Empress. And it’s authentic.
Aren’t you always talking about how important it is to be authentic?
Your followers want to see real-life stuff. ”
Viv’s face twists at his tone, but as his words sink in, I can see her considering them.
She purses her plump filler lips and finally nods.
“You might be right. All right, girls, we don’t know how long we’ll have internet access for, so get to work.
I want shots of the storm, shots of you, clips of you expressing your feelings, but being very clear that you feel overwhelmingly safe on Empress. ”
I stare at her, taken aback by how quickly she’s changed tack. A minute ago, Viv was spitting mad, worried about being trapped on a yacht in a hurricane, and now she’s all business, whatever fears she had forgotten. Maybe this is her way of coping—we can’t change the situation we’re in, after all.
“Charlie, can you go check the crew mess instead?” Viv asks, turning to me suddenly. “See if there’s anything useful down there. Food or otherwise.”
“Oh, um, sure,” I say, too slow to come up with a reason why I can’t. It’s better than fussing around on my phone like the others anyway. “What is the deal with the internet? Will we have Wi-Fi during the storm? Can we call and get someone to evacuate us?”
Viv ignores me, wandering off to the couches, face already buried in her phone.
Piper takes her drink and slips away, while Fiona fastens a hand on Carl’s wrist and drags him into a corner, whispering furiously.
Rachel scurries off, phone at the ready to capture the perfect hurricane content.
Ashley is watching Carl, expression strangely blank.
Then she blinks rapidly, glancing at the retreating back of her twin, heaving a large sigh.
As if her feet are made of stone, Ashley follows Rachel to the third level.
Only Trey remains in the kitchen to answer my question. “Unfortunately, I think it’s safe to assume the internet will go out at some point. See, it’s Ligia that houses the router and antenna. It’s a long-range router, so it reaches where we’ve anchored Empress.”
“But when the internet goes out, we’ll be stuck.” I can’t figure out why he’s not taking this as seriously as anyone else. Does he truly believe Empress is the safest place to be right now?
“I’m not an idiot, Charlie,” Trey says, smiling a little to soften his words.
“I left word with the Coast Guard on Islamorada before I came back to get you girls. Obviously, I didn’t make it in time to evacuate you, but I promise, we really are safe here.
We have a radio on the bridge. Worst comes to worst, I’ll call them again from there.
They can come get us. But right now, this is the safest place for us to be. ”
“There’s a bridge?”
Trey chuckles. “Of course. And an engine room. And crew quarters. And everything else a boat would have. This is a yacht, remember? We hide the less glamorous areas.”
I suppose this should make me feel better, but I can’t surface from the well of fear that has sprung inside my chest. I’m trapped in the middle of the ocean during a hurricane with a bunch of strangers, and I’ve been seeing things.
I have never felt less safe in my life.