When he grew too tired to lift his arms he sat back to catch his breath and rest his aching ribs. But just sitting there was even worse. It allowed too much time to think about how dire his situation was. Stranded in the middle of an ocean without food or water or any sense of direction—in a boat full of dead people.
Panic rose in his throat and started to settle in his chest, making it hard to breathe. He pulled at his own hair for a few seconds, freaking out; then he closed his eyes and sucked in breath after breath until he calmed down and could resume bailing water.
It wasn’t long before Shy grew exhausted.
He put on the slicker to protect himself from the wind and sank down into the water in the boat, which was slightly warmer than the air. He shivered and stared at the bodies. Two older men, one with glasses and a cast on his right arm. A youngish blond woman who might have been pretty before her head injuries. Two older ladies, the one closest to him with a hideous gash across the side of her face.
He thought about dumping them into the ocean so he didn’t have to look at them, and because eventually they’d rot and start to smell, but he thought it might be bad luck. And a part of him still believed he might be rescued by morning. If the bodies were still on the boat they could be given a proper burial.
Outside the boat, the sky was slightly brighter. The sun would soon come up over the ocean. And before that it would come up over California.
How was this possible?
After everything he’d been through?
He tried to imagine his family back home, safe inside the strong hospital walls. But he couldn’t picture their faces. Something was wrong with him. He’d swallowed too much salt water or lost oxygen to his brain. Because no matter how hard he concentrated, he couldn’t picture the faces of his own mom and sister and nephew. He could only picture Carmen.
He looked back at the cruise ship, all but sunk now. Watched the last bit of the bow plunge beneath the ocean’s surface until all that was left was the flicker of a few bright flames coming off the tip. And then only flames. And then nothing.
In its place, the first tiny sliver of morning sun.
Shy held himself as he watched the slow rise of the bright blurry mass, unable to wrap his mind around it. His teeth chattering and every breath killing his chest and his mind stuck on what might’ve happened to Carmen.
He reached a hand up to rub his tired eyes and found himself wiping away tears.
Day 3
28
The Other Survivors
Something jostled Shy out of his sleep.
He sucked in a deep breath and looked around, imagining the cold hands of a dead person gripping his throat, but the bodies were all facedown in the boat the way he’d left them.
It was light out.
The water level was dramatically higher, too. Up to Shy’s chest when he sat up, which gave the impression of drowning. The boat was sinking.
The boat shook, like he’d run into something. A piece of the sunken ship or a person, maybe.
Shy crouched and scanned the glistening ocean, looking for signs of life now that it was daylight. He saw faraway ship pieces. A deflated raft. Empty life jackets.
He knew he’d been sleeping a long time because the sun was directly overhead now and beating down hot. The air warm and dry. The ocean lay mostly flat under the brightest blue sky he’d ever seen, like a postcard.
Then everything came rushing back.
The waves and the ship fires and California and his family. He should be on the Lido Deck now, passing out towels to passengers. Miniature golf clubs. Sneaking peeks at every woman in a bikini, including moms. Waiting for Carmen to cruise by with her coffee so they could talk. But the Lido Deck no longer existed because the entire cruise ship was at the bottom of the Pacific. And he was stranded at sea all alone. No other survivors anywhere.
The lifeboat shook again, more violently this time.
He leaned over the jagged edge, looked directly into the water, and his heart climbed up into his throat.
There were five or six sharks circling beneath his sinking boat. Jaws partly open and full of teeth. Eyes black. He watched, horrified, as one of them broke from the pack, rose up and banged its snout into the bottom of his boat, knocking him on his ass.
“What the hell!” he shouted, angrily pushing himself off one of the corpses and sloshing through the water to pick up the raft oar. Now he was pissed. On top of everything else he had to deal with this? He stood and started beating at the ocean and screaming down the sharks: “Get your asses away from here!”
They dispersed for a few seconds, then re-formed their pack and continued circling.
Shy pulled the oar into the boat and sat in the water trapped inside. He rocked himself back and forth trying to catch his breath and trying to think, his heart pounding against the inside of his chest as he looked around.
The sweatshirt had come out of the gash in the boat, which was why it had taken on so much water. If he didn’t figure out a way to fix it, he’d sink, and if he sank…He remembered his grandma’s warning in the library: I have pictures of their teeth, though, mijo. They have rows and rows.
Shy wadded up the arm of the sweatshirt a second time, shoved it back into the hole. Then he moved through the bodies and dug back through the supplies.
The boat shook again.
He pulled out the tarp, ripped open the packaging. But he couldn’t figure out how to secure it over the hole, so he tossed it aside, grabbed the fiberglass patch kit. He had to bail out enough water so that the hole was no longer submerged and it had a chance to dry. Only then could he try patching it.
More scooping, two hands at a time, splashing the water overboard as quickly as he could. He did this for what seemed like hours, until his arms and shoulders burned and his back ached. All the while the sharks continued circling the boat. Sometimes knocking against the bottom or lifting their huge, menacing heads out of the water and flashing their teeth.
The sun traveled slowly across the sky and began falling toward the sea. By the time the sky was lit up with colors, the water level inside the boat was down near his ankles.
He kneeled, pulled the sweatshirt arm from the gash. It was no longer underwater, but it was still wet. And all the clothing on the boat was soaked, including his own, so he couldn’t dry it. Finally he leaned his face down and blew on the gash, breath after breath, each deep inhale triggering that sharp pain in his ribs.
After several minutes, he felt around the gash with his fingers. It was dry. He opened the kit, positioned the patch over the hole, pasted on a thick coat of resin.
A shark slowly emerged from the water and showed its teeth, gave a strange sideways glance. Shy leaped to his feet and grabbed the oar. He raised it over his head and came down with as much power as he could muster, cracking the shark in the teeth.
“That’s right, shark bitch!” he shouted as it ducked back into the water. “Come back up here if you want some more!”
He stood with the oar poised above his head again, but the sharks all stayed underwater.
Eventually Shy sat against the tallest side of the boat and stared up at the swirling sunset sky, picturing Carmen’s face when the ship alarm first started blaring. It killed him, that look.
His stomach was starting to cramp from hunger.
His mind felt cloudy.
The ocean continued whispering to him, the way it had since day one of his first cruise. But he knew he’d never understand.
As the sky grew dim, he moved across the boat and kneeled down to feel around the resin-covered patch. It was completely dry. Strong when he knocked against it with his knuckles. At least the boat wouldn’t sink, he told himself. And the sharks had gone away.