Chapter 4 #2
We speed through the water, silent except for the roar of the engine.
It’s dark now, the sky lit only by a few handfuls of stars.
I grip the rail as the spray hits me hard in the side of my face.
Icy water splatters my hoodie, my sleeves soaked through.
The wind digs in, freezing the spray on my skin.
By the time we reach the pier, my teeth are chattering with cold.
The Reel Easy rests quietly beside the pier, motionless except for the gentle bob of the tide, the deck empty and still. I scan the pier, but there’s nothing there but two seagulls perched on a railing.
When we’re parallel to the pier, Heath kills the engine, calling out for Luke, who never responds. For a long moment, we’re all silent.
My stomach tightens as I look the Reel Easy over, expecting Steven Newton to come stomping up to the bow.
He paid no attention to me as a child, but he paid too much attention when I was a teenager.
Eyes lingering too long, lips wet and slightly open, hungry.
A lot of the dads here were like that. Harassing waitresses at the pub, winking at daughters not even grown, telling them filthy jokes that made them blush with shame.
Luke knew what his dad was like but did little to stop it. “Harmless,” he said in his lazy way. “He’s just havin’ a bit of fun, Min.”
But it wasn’t harmless to me. I never forgave Luke for that.
I was around fourteen when I finally told Heath about the harassment, and two things changed.
One, I was never cornered by Luke’s dad again.
Two, Heath and Luke’s sinking boat friendship broke down completely.
I’ve always felt guilty about it, but Heath said it wasn’t my fault at all.
The truth is, their friendship had fallen apart two years earlier.
“Luke?” Heath calls out again. “You there?”
Silence.
Behind me, someone whispers, “What is that?”
The little boy steps silently forward and clasps the rail in his right hand. His father watches him, uneasily. Shivering, I lean over the railing, staring down into the dark water. Something’s wrong.
And then out of the darkness, a fin.
“Oh my God!” someone cries out.
The father rushes forward to the boy. “Ben! Get away from the rail!”
I fix my eyes on the fin. It’s sharp and black and jagged and God, it’s fast. The Deep Sea explodes with movement and muffled yelling.
“It’s a great white!”
I shake with cold and adrenaline, leaning farther forward until the rail digs into my abdomen. My brother yanks me back with one hand and yells out, “Luke! Are you there? Luke!”
There’s blood in the water now, gallons of it, a red oil slick. And there’s something else…
Heath sees it, too. His hand drops, and his body goes still.
“What is that?” a tourist calls out. “What the hell is that?” yells another.
There’s something floating on the water. A bloody mass of flesh, drifting eerily in the current. The man beside me grimaces, presses the flat of his hand to his stomach like he’s going to be sick.
“That a seal!?”
A dozen shrieking seagulls appear from nowhere, flying a foot from the surface, flapping their white wings, diving into the black water for scraps of flesh. And then someone screams, “Oh God, it’s coming again!”
That black fin breaks the surface and the man beside me screams right in my ear.
Heath grabs the back of my hoodie in his fist, yelling something, but it’s lost in the noise.
God, its teeth, so white in the darkness as it snatches at the flesh in a frenzy, ripping, tearing, blood gushing like spilled paint. I’m rocked by the sheer violence of it.
Its tail smashes the surface and then it sinks below. It’s so quick, all of it.
Someone screams, “Where is it? Where is it?”
I try to peer over the rail, but Heath pulls me back.
The man behind me is shaking so hard, I can feel the tremors from his chest. “Is it gone?” he asks breathlessly.
We all wait in loaded silence. All I can hear is the sound of my own heart beating, and the seagulls squabbling for bits of leftover flesh.
And then a voice calls out, “Heath!”
Luke Newton is standing on the third rung of the boarding ladder, hooked over the gunwale. He’s half bent over, loosely gripping the rail, laughing. “You see that shit, bro?”
Heath relaxes his grip on my hoodie, and I peer over, looking down. But the shark is gone.
“Musta been a seventeen-footer!” Luke calls out. “Sure was a big bastard.”
I lean on the rail, watching the scraps of flesh float by in the current. Luke stops laughing and peers at me in surprise. “That you, Min?”
It’s so quiet now that I barely need to raise my voice. “Yeah,” I tell him, “it’s me.”
He breaks out into a smile, nods at the water. “The sharks are happy you’re home.”
“They don’t look happy.”
“What?” he calls out in mock confusion, spreading his hands out wide. “You didn’t enjoy the show?”
He laughs again, and it feels like no time has gone by at all.
Luke’s laugh is the holy shit, can you believe it!
type. Everything was a joke to him. Sometimes I think it got on Heath’s nerves.
Luke’s an only child, his parents hands-off and indulgent.
He’s one of those dare me boys. You dare me to jump off the pier? You dare me to eat this entire onion?
Luke was restless and easily amused, tagging along everywhere Heath went, even if Heath didn’t want him there. Heath was coiled up tight, watchful and clever, with a tendency to overthink. The plan maker. And Luke was always there, charging in behind him like Wolverine.
He’d follow us to our house, playing endless games of Uno, and he’d slip me extra draw 4s when Heath wasn’t looking.
Then Dad was home, steely and silent. Heath and I braced ourselves, quietly packing up our game, swimming upstream and away from his murderous current.
But Luke…Luke would call out, “Hey, Mr. Greenwood!” and to our horror, he’d plunk himself beside Dad at the dining table, oblivious and chatting so cheerfully that Heath and I would flinch.
In the past few years, Heath’s barely said a word about Luke. Now he won’t even look at him. He just stares off, jaw tight, when Luke calls out, “He’s gone. You scared him off, bro!”
Heath ignores him and turns instead to the little boy with pained eyes.
“It was a seal, yeah?” the kid’s dad calls out to Luke, looking to Heath for confirmation.
“Uh…” Luke hesitates, eyes fixed on Heath. “Not sure, mate. Couldn’t see much to be honest.”
“No,” Heath says quietly. “It wasn’t a seal.”
The father’s face drains of color. He pulls his son into his arms as something slick and bloated drifts by in the dark current, turning slowly as the water pulls it along. He presses a soft palm over his son’s eyes because the shapeless mass in the water wasn’t an animal at all.
It was a woman.