Chapter Seventeen #2
Right away I can feel the resistance of her body moving through the water.
She’s getting closer. I haul her out, trying not to imagine her smashing her head into something, or breathing water into her lungs because she’d passed out before she could take a breath.
I pull faster, my heart slamming into my ribs.
What feels like hours later, I glimpse a hand in the water. I pull her through the opening and kick toward the surface. She breaks through a second after me, and I wrap my arm around her ribs.
“You did it, Em,”
She spits out water and takes her first breath of fresh air in probably half a day. “The food?”
I push her toward the back of the boat. “It’s up there. I’ve got it.”
By the time I get her to where I climbed up earlier, she’s practically gasping for air. Rattling, angry breaths saw in and out of her lungs, and she looks more green than pale.
“You just have to get up on the boat, and then you can rest, okay? You’ve got this.”
She grits her teeth and nods. I hook my arm in the railing and use it to push her up above me.
Her knees wobble, but she gets one of them up on the side of the boat, and I’m right behind her, nudging her along the side of the boat toward the cabin.
Once she reaches the portholes, she collapses on her side, chest heaving.
I crumble beside her.
For a while, all we do is breathe. Every muscle in my body feels like it’s been punched. My eyes sting from the salt, even when they’re closed. The blistering sun makes quick work of drying us, and a slow itch begins to crawl the length of my body, but I’m alive. Emmy’s alive.
“Thank you,” Emmy whispers.
I throw my arm around her and pull her close, fighting back tears again. “Can’t let you die on our perfect BFF trip.”
The ghost of a laugh escapes her lips.
Her gasping wheezes continue long after I’ve caught my breath. I sit up and check her face, her pulse, and the wound on her arm. Now that she’s out of the water, the pus is building up. It looks awful.
And infected.
I press my hand to her forehead. She’s hot to the touch.
Fuck.
I scramble back to where I stashed my bag and drag it to her.
There’re only four cans of food inside—condensed tomato soup, two cans of peaches, and a small can of tuna in oil—but both water bottles seem to be sealed.
I open one and lift the back of her head, trying to get her to drink, but she spits out a whole mouthful before I can get her to swallow any.
I allow myself one mouthful before I put the cap back on. It tastes like salvation, but it scratches all the way down my raw throat. I zip the water back into the bag.
“Jack?” Emmy mumbles.
Grief slices through my chest again, somehow stabbing and burning at the same time. I have to tell her he’s gone. That we’re here alone. But I can’t find the words.
How do you tell your best friend that her brother is dead?
“The…one at the…”
I look down at her. “What?”
She shakes her head. “The cold one.”
“Em?”
The next thing out of her mouth isn’t even English. It’s an incoherent scramble of consonants and long pauses. The fever is making her delirious. I have to go back inside the boat. I need to find something to clean out that wound. Which means…leaving her up here by herself.
How can I leave her when she’s barely aware of where she is or what she’s saying? What if she falls into the ocean while I’m rooting around inside? I can put my life jacket on her, but I can’t tie her to the boat, because I need the rope to get myself in and out of the cabin.
I ball my hands into fists.
I don’t know what to do.
Emmy groans and shifts to face me, whispering Jackson’s name over and over, and I turn to look out in the distance, so she doesn’t see the tears pooling in my eyes.
If Jackson were here, he’d know what to do. He always does.
Did.
A light breeze drifts across my face, and I close my eyes against it.
Maybe there’s no point in treating Emmy’s wound.
What are the chances we’ll make it out of this anyway?
Things were dire when the boat was upright.
When we had shelter. When there were four of us to figure out what to do together. Now we’re dying in slow motion.
Maybe it’s mercy to let the fever claim her in her sleep.
Could I do that? Could I sit here and watch her die?
I open my eyes and swallow against the tightness in my throat. I don’t think I can get us through this on my own. I don’t know enough. I’m not strong enough to do it alone.
Emmy groans behind me.
Strong enough or not, I can’t let her suffer.
I just can’t.
I grab my life vest and ignore her protests as I roll her back and forth to get it on her. She needs it more than I do. At least this way, I know she’ll be safe up here. I loop the bag strap around Emmy’s head, and when I sit back, something in the water catches my eye.
Directly ahead of the sunken bow of the boat.
I cup my hands over my eyes, watching something flicker in and out of sight in the bright light about three hundred feet in front of us.
What in the hell is…?
As I watch, an arm lifts into the air, and my brain pieces together what I’m seeing. It’s a person. Clinging to the boat’s emergency flotation.
Only the hand waving at me isn’t attached to a blond sociopath.
It’s attached to a mop of dark hair.
“Oh my god.”
Jackson’s alive.