Chapter Sixteen
Something tickles the side of my face by my hairline. It moves away. Returns.
There must be a fly in the hotel room. I turn my head to shake it away. I’m too tired to do anything else about it.
The tickle resumes. I crack my eyelid open, slowly becoming aware of the rest of my body piece by piece.
Sunlight sears painfully through the back of my eyes, and I lift my hand to shield my face, but it gets caught on something near my hip.
My other hand clenches onto something soft with an abrasive surface.
My legs are out in front of me, and when I move my ankle, I don’t feel the back of my foot press into a mattress or slide across a blanket.
It drops down below me with no resistance.
I’m in the water.
My eyes snap open. For a moment, all I can see is blinding, brilliant sunlight against the bluest sky. I lift my head, trying to understand what’s happening, and there’s nothing but water as far as I can see. I try to twist for a better view, but there’s a rope tied around my waist.
Why is there a rope tied to my waist?
I untangle myself and flex my hand. The muscles in my palm and down my forearm ache when I move, and the rope left long burn marks around my arm. I grab the rope and use it to turn myself around…and pause.
The Be-Yacht-Ch is on its side behind me, half under water.
I wait for that to shock me, but I feel numb as I stare at it.
It’s leaning so far forward that it looks one stiff breeze from flipping completely.
The fiberglass bottom reflects the sunshine, curved like a beached whale.
The cabin looks almost entirely submerged.
Only a couple of the porthole windows remain above water.
The back sticks up a little higher than the front, but conservatively about seventy-five percent of the vessel must be beneath the waves.
I have the weirdest sensation of being outside my body.
I’m staring at the boat and cataloging everything that’s wrong with it, but it feels like I’m watching myself bob in the water.
Like it’s not happening to me. Our boat is slowly sinking, I’m alone in the water, but I feel nothing.
My insides are hollow. I blink over and over at the wreckage, trying to understand, but there’s no understanding this. There’s just destruction.
Something digs into the skin under my arms. I raise my elbow, and the sight of my skin, rubbed raw from the life vest, shakes loose some whisper of urgency.
You have to get out of the water.
I grab the rope from the surface and tug until it pulls tight somewhere on the boat. I haul myself in little by little, sliding over wide swaths of the detached sails hovering just beneath the surface.
A few feet from the boat, the stub of the snapped mast flickers in and out of sight below me.
I release the rope and clumsily swim the rest of the way.
The life vest makes moving my upper body awkward.
The hatch and the wheel are both underwater, but the benches on one side of the cockpit are still above the surface.
I scrabble for purchase against the now-vertical decking, trying to haul myself out of the water, but it’s too slippery.
I grab the railing along the back end of the boat and try using it like a ladder.
Time and time again, I pull myself partway up only to fall back in the water when the muscles in my arms give out.
Each time I fail, my muscles scream in protest, and the salt water stings my cracked lips and my scalp until those too go numb.
The fourth or fifth time I drag myself out of the water, I somehow manage to get my upper body up over the side of the boat and lean forward far enough to keep from falling again.
Barnacles dig at my skin. I kick myself through a gap in the railing until I’m sitting half on the boat’s side and half on the bottom.
My lungs burn. I sit there for what feels like a long time, letting my muscles relax and catching my breath.
I don’t know what to do now. I stare down the fiberglass bottom of the boat and frown. The whale tail thing Ben said would keep us upright isn’t there. A bunch of rusted out supports mar the bottom where it likely should have been attached, surrounded by a hundred thousand more barnacles.
I stretch my legs out in front of me and examine them like they belong to someone else. They’re covered with cuts and bruises, but I got up on the boat without screaming in pain, so nothing must be broken.
I guess that’s good.
What’s left of my sunset red pedicure winks back at me like a bad joke.
I feel like I’m forgetting something, but all I can do is stare at my toes.
Eventually the life vest starts to hurt.
I unbuckle it, and my shoulders ache as I slide it off.
The muscles inside don’t want to move, and the skin outside stings and splits as I rip open raging red sunburns with each shift of my arms. My left elbow has an almost-black bruise wrapping around the bottom that throbs when I bend it.
There’s a gash on one of my knuckles. I look down.
The bruises continue across my ribs, and there’s a cut in the hip of my bathing suit, but it’s otherwise still holding together.
My hair falls over my shoulder in a stiff, salty mass, and that tickle on my forehead has returned. My fingertips dance along the edge of my scalp and catch on a slimy three-inch patch of skin that’s been almost completely flayed from my skull, leaving it to flap freely in the wind.
That’s not good.
The feel of my own scalp between my fingers, slick with blood, sends a burst of panic through my body. My hand falls to my lap, and I stare at the crimson stain on my fingers, at my position on the half-submerged boat, at the rope still knotted around my middle.
And the mental lights come back on.
My breath saws in and out of my raw throat. My hands start shaking, and before I know it, I’m puking over the edge of the boat as the previous night rushes back to me. The wave. The wind. The boat pitching on its side. Hands on my ribs. Screams. Being swept off the boat and then…nothing.
I whip around, staring at the eerily flat ocean around me.
Oh my god.
Where are Emmy and Jackson?
I yell their names. I even yell for Ben. Nobody answers.
I rip off the rope I don’t remember tying to myself and crawl along the side of the boat.
The fiberglass is so hot under the sun it burns my knees and the palms of my hands, but I ignore it.
I grip the base of the lifelines like a horizontal ladder and drag myself along, screaming their names over and over and over.
I don’t know how many times I call for them, but I shout long after my voice cracks and my lip splits open again. I’m met with more silence.
Dread creeps up my body. I peer over the side into the portholes, but the interior of the boat is silent. I roll to my knees, screaming again for my friends, but the only thing making any sound out here in the middle of the ocean is me.
I blink, and I’m sitting on the side of the hull again. I don’t remember when I started crying, but tears are streaming down my face, and I can barely breathe. I stare out at the sun glinting off brilliant blue water, and I slowly slip back into the numbness.
Shock. I’m going into shock.
Or I’ve been in shock this entire time, maybe.
When blood starts stinging my eye, dripping from the wound on my forehead, I lie back and allow gravity to draw it away from my face. Pain burns through my chest, part physical and part all-consuming grief, as the reality of my situation sinks in.
Everyone’s dead.
I’m stranded out here alone.
I never thought surviving something like this could feel like the worse outcome, but I suddenly wish I hadn’t been wearing my life vest. That last wave would have taken me out. It would have been a quick death. With my friends.
Now I’ll die alone.
Tears slide down my temples as I sob up at the sky. Did Jackson die quickly? Will they find his body, or is he at the bottom of the sea with Captain Keith? With Ben?
I roll the frayed friendship bracelet between my cracked fingertips.
What about Emmy? She had a life vest, but the size of those waves… I can’t imagine how she could have survived that. Will some poor fisherman find her floating corpse? Will she wash ashore? What will be left of her when she does?
I think I’m going to be sick again.
I sit up to puke and hear a thump from somewhere beneath me. I ignore it and hang over the side until the nausea passes. There’s nothing left for me to throw up anyway. When I sit back up, I hear it again.
Three knocks, this time.
Some of Captain Keith’s things must be rattling around inside. I crawl over the top of the lifelines and slide down to the porthole closest to me. Water laps at the other side of the glass.
The sound comes again.
Three knocks.
Long pause.
Three more knocks.
Another pause.
My eyes widen. Loose items floating in the water wouldn’t be that regular. There’s no way. I press my ear against the side of the cabin and wait. Three more knocks. I crawl a couple feet toward the front of the boat.
The knocks are quieter.
I crawl back the other way, frantic now to prove to myself that I’m not hearing things, that this is real. That someone’s still here with me.
Please, please. I can’t do this alone.
Press my ear to the cabin.
Louder.
Hope blooms in my chest. “Jackson?! Emmy?!” I scream.
Three more knocks.
I scramble back, listening every foot or so for the sound, until I come to the last porthole. I cup my hands around my eyes and peer into it, surprised to find air on the other side.
My eyes adjust to the darkness inside.
And an eyeball blinks up at me.