Chapter Twenty-Six
I killed him.
I killed him.
I killed him.
I stop breathing. My heart might stop too—the entire world along with it.
He…he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Of course, Jackson is here. He’s been with me for days. I found him in the water…
Ben trails a finger down my cheek. “You don’t remember?”
When I say nothing—because I can’t—he keeps going. “The wave overshot the top of the boat, and we all got slammed into the deck instead of washed off it. The water receded, and the three of us were tangled in the lifelines, but you were out cold.
“Part of the railing by my shoulder snapped off when we hit, and it hooked through the rope around the flotation ring. I couldn’t stand to get to the hatch.
Your fucking boy toy took my knife out of his pocket, and instead of cutting me loose, he sliced through a line on the deck and tied it around you. ”
I think I’m going to be sick.
“I told him he was wasting time, that we had to leave you and get to the hatch, and he looked me dead in the eye and said, You’re not going to make it, but she will. He was so focused on tying you to the boat that he didn’t even notice me pick up the knife.”
No no no. I don’t want to hear this. I can’t hear this.
“In hindsight, he probably meant that none of us had time to make it to the hatch before the next wave, and he was right. I lodged my knife in his neck, and the wave hit. It felt like the boat got punched by a giant. We rolled, and I blacked out. The force must have knocked me loose of the lifelines. Woke up floating in the pitch-black ocean, and everyone was gone.”
“No,” I say, my voice sounding hollow. “I found Jackson floating in the water with the emergency ring. It’s what kept him alive, I…”
But I also saw the life ring at Ben’s camp, leaning against the tree.
There was only one on the boat.
“Sorry, no,” he says, not sounding sorry at all. “That’s what kept me alive. I still don’t know how I managed to hang on to it all night, but by the morning, I could see the shoreline. You and Emmy appeared half a day later with your raft.”
My hands fall away from him and land limply in my lap.
Oh my god.
I remember Jackson standing on the flipped boat while I dove to get the raft from the cabin, only to vanish when I needed him to help me haul it up.
I remember dragging Emmy to the stream over and over to break her fever.
Jackson never offered to carry her. I tried to give him food, water, sunscreen.
He refused it all. Kicking the raft ashore, the jellyfish only stung me, and if I stopped to take a break, so did he.
If you don’t want to go down with this ship, you need to make a plan.
You. You need to make a plan. Not we.
Keep swimming, Hannah. You’re almost there.
You don’t need a volleyball. You have Emmy.
Someone will see the smoke from your fire. You have to hang on a bit longer.
You. You. You.
I see Jackson floating in the ocean, plain as day. Waving me down as soon as I started to crack under the pressure of keeping Emmy alive all by myself. Wearing the “Game of Holmes” shirt that he never put back on after I used it to sop up the blood from Captain Keith’s broken nose.
He never came up with a single plan. He never cooled down in the creek. He never added to our pile of food or firewood. He talked and encouraged me and said all the things I needed to hear, but he didn’t actually do anything, touch anything, interact with anything on the beach except…me.
He was never here.
Ben looms very close to my face. “It’s sort of romantic, if you think about it. He died for you, and now you’ll die thinking about him.”
He grabs me by the throat, but all I can hear is Jackson telling me to keep trying, to not give up.
I straighten my leg between Ben’s and press my heel against a cluster of rocks for leverage.
I twist and throw my elbow into the back of his injured knee, and he lets out a yelp, windmilling his arms to keep from tripping over the clothesline I’ve made with my legs.
I grab his ankle and yank.
Ben’s upper body tips back, leaning precariously over the edge of the rock face.
And then, he falls.
His scream splits the air and abruptly cuts off.
I feel the end of his life in every part of my body.
I wobble to my feet and peek over the edge.
What’s left of Bennett Mulholland is splayed out in the surf and rocks below.
He landed in the middle of the sharpest section of rock.
His limbs are bent at unnatural angles. As I watch, a wave crashes through the rock teeth and lifts his body.
First, he’s pushed closer to the base of the cliff, and then it pulls him farther out. He’s slowly being dragged out to sea.
His eyes are wide open, staring at the sky.
I turn and puke off the other side of the cliff. Almost nothing comes up, but I retch the bile left in my stomach while that blank look on his face makes a home in the back of my mind.
I know what would have happened if he’d been the one to leave this rock. He would have gone straight for Emmy. The coward that he is, he probably would have killed her in her sleep. What I did was not only for self-defense but to protect her too.
Still, my whole body is numb as I scramble my way back to the sand.
The roar of the helicopter races overhead, just like it did in my imagination, only this time it blows sand everywhere and displaces the seawater. This time it’s real.
I stick my hand in the air and wave it down the beach as I stumble back toward the raft.
I have to get to Emmy and—
Emmy and…
Memories of the last few days replay in my mind. Only now, they shift.
Jackson no longer stands on the hull, holding the rope for me while I dive for the raft. The rope is tied to the boat, and I dive for the emergency raft alone.
Jackson’s holding onto the raft, swimming beside me until he dissolves, and I swim alone. Whispering assurances to myself the whole way.
I see him asleep next to his sister, and then I blink and she’s lying alone.
I replay our time on this godforsaken stretch of beach, except now there’s one set of footprints leading to and from the jungle.
Mine.
Because only Emmy and I made it to shore, and she’s been asleep for days.
Something cracks open inside me, and a coldness spreads through my body.
I blink, and I’m standing in front of Emmy, with no memory of walking down the rest of the beach. Big gasping sobs rip through my chest as I take in our little camp. The fire is still pouring smoke into the sky. It scatters when the helicopter nears.
Emmy’s still asleep on top of the ruined raft. I collapse at her side before my legs can give out, pressing my forehead against hers. The helicopter makes another pass overhead and lands a little distance down the beach.
She stirs. “Hannah?”
“I’m here, Em.”
Shouted commands fill the beach as help arrives, and I hug her tightly.
“We’re going home.”