Overboard!

by Terry Lynn Johnson

  “Whoa!” I looked at the knife in my hand, then back at the block.

  Holding the block up, I struck it with the knife again, harder. This time a shower of bright sparks came off. This was easier than thin, small matches; the knife wasn’t going to snap in my fingers.

  After a few tries, I figured out how to aim the sparks onto the shavings. They burst into flames, and then the cotton balls ignited.

  I sat back, stunned. “I made a fire!”

  I turned to Marina. “Hey, look! I made this!”

  I dropped the block and put my hand in front of her nose again. Still breathing.

  The flames were starting to die. I put more sticks on top and the flames caught. Pretty soon, the fire was crackling and popping and the heat bounced off the boulder toward us. I held my palms toward it and smiled. But my smile faded as I looked up. Darkness was falling fast.

  “Are they going to find us at night, Marina?”

  Relief crashed through me when she opened her eyes, but she said nothing. We looked at each other over the smoke of the fire. She looked scared. I remembered how scared I was in the ocean and how her calmness had helped me feel better.

  “Don’t worry,” I said, forcing my voice to sound relaxed. “I’m going to make us a shelter. We’re going to survive the night. And then the rescuers will come.” I wasn’t sure about any of it, but it looked like Marina needed to hear it.

  I tried to picture what our tent looked like when we set it up in the yard. Back when Stacey used to do cool things like that with me.

  “I need a long branch to use as a ridgepole,” I told Marina. “I’ll be right back.”

  Racing toward the forest, I searched the ground as I went. I brought all the things I gathered back to the fire and piled them next to Marina. As I worked, I kept talking.

  “We have to make sure we don’t set up next to an ant nest. I made that mistake before. Stacey had ants crawling up her legs and biting her inside her pajamas! You should have heard her screaming! It was hilarious. But let’s not do that tonight.”

  There was another boulder near the fire that was as high as my chest. We were above the tide line here, and the ground was dry. I propped one end of the long bare branch I’d found against the top of the boulder with the other end on the ground. Then I leaned the board we had brought to shore with us against the branch so it looked like one side of a tent.

  I had to stop to add more wood to the fire. “I don’t like the dark,” I told Marina. “Not since I had to sit in a dark room for two whole days. No TV, no computer, no games. It sucked.”

  I didn’t tell her the other thing I was even more afraid of than the dark.

  For the other side of the shelter, I used pieces of driftwood, and then filled in the spaces between the driftwood with dried seaweed and smaller branches. Once it was done, it looked like a lumpy lean-to, with the opening facing the fire and the ocean. I bent and crawled in. There was enough room to turn and lie down with my feet at the narrow end and my head just inside. Though it looked dry, the ground was uneven and damp.

  It was almost too dark to see. Mosquitoes whined in my ears. I brushed them away and raced back to the forest to collect armfuls of leaves. I brought them to the shelter and threw them inside. Then I pulled branches off trees, the kinds with lots of needles on them. Needles and cobwebs and mosquitoes stuck to my neck and face. I swatted at the bugs and ran back toward the light of the campfire.

  “This is our mattress,” I told Marina as I arranged the branches on top of the leaves. I could see with the light of the fire. The mosquitoes weren’t as bad around the smoke.

  “Come on.” I pulled Marina up and helped her slide in feet first. With the fire in front of us and the walls up, the heat from the fire filled the little shelter. After collecting more firewood, I crawled in next to Marina.

  Once I stopped moving, I heard the quiet the waves had left in their wake. Instead of crashing, now they barely made a noise like frying eggs as they hissed up and down the gravel. An owl hooted somewhere behind us and I tensed.

  “Marina, are you awake yet?”

  She mumbled.

  I needed someone to talk to so that bad thoughts wouldn’t come. The noises were scary out here, not at all like our backyard with the porch light on and the sound of the neighbors’ TV and of cars driving by.

  Suddenly, I heard a loud spray burst out of the ocean.

  “What?” I yelped.

  Then I recognized the blowing noise I’d heard on the whale tour boat, and my racing heart calmed. I threw more wood on the fire, and watched the sparks rise into the black toward the stars.

  I lay back down. “Tomorrow, rescuers are going to find us—​right, Marina?”

  No answer.

  The sounds of the humpbacks breathing kept me company.

  Chapter Eight

  I woke to the sound of barking.

  “What—?” Marina said. Her voice was hoarse. She’d been puking in the night, but I must’ve fallen back asleep.

  I stumbled out of the shelter. It was still too dark to figure out what the weird shadows were on the beach. When my eyes adjusted I saw that the tide had slid up to the rocks.

  Bark-bark-bark.

  “Hello?” I yelled, hoping there were rescuers with dogs. I started toward the shore but stopped short when I saw what the noise was coming from.

  “You found me,” I said. “And you brought your friends.”

  “Huh?” Marina said from the shelter, louder.

  Two dark, hulking outlines wriggled into the water with a splash. I gazed out at the sleek heads bobbing in the ocean. I was sure I recognized that mottled one with gray specks. She let out a loud bark when she saw me and dove under.

  “Seals,” I told her. “Selkie is checking up on us.”

  My tongue felt glued to the roof of my mouth. A throbbing pain pulsed at my temples and my throat ached.

  Marina rolled over slowly to peer out of the shelter. “Where are the rescuers? They need to find us. I can’t stay here.”

  My suit was draped over her like a blanket after she’d taken it off during the night. Her lips were cracked and peeling, and her hair was matted to one side of her head. She looked like she was about to cry.

  We both desperately needed water. I looked at all the water in the ocean next to us. All the wet noises from the seals splashing around were making me crazy. But I knew from those salty waves crashing into my face that we couldn’t drink any of it.

  “We must be out of the search grid,” Marina wailed. “Remember that island we missed? What if they don’t find us? My arm hurts. I’m so thirsty. If we don’t find water, we’re going to die.”

  I stared at her. What had happened to the robot girl from yesterday? Her freak-out was making me freak out. I could feel my pulse speeding up. I needed breakfast. I needed to know where my parents were. I needed to go home.

  I saw the blackened fire pit. It reminded me of that feeling I had last night when I lit the fire. I had felt in control. We needed to get warm, and I had done it. If I figured out that problem, I could tackle this one, too.

  “We need to stop and think,” I said. “Where would we find water?”

  Marina was too busy peeking under the bandanna at her wrist. It was as if I were the older one now. “I’ll go find a stream,” I said.

  But after searching the thick forest behind the shelter, all I found were spider webs, an old tire, and a long white balloon, the kind they use to drape over the sides of boats to keep them from banging into things.

  I also found a plastic water bottle, but it was empty. I licked my dry lips. The pounding in my head got worse.

  When I stepped out of the forest, I noticed that all the grasses were bent over and wet with dew. I licked one, and the moisture felt so good in my mouth. I looked at the empty bottle in my hand and then at the grasses covered in water. If only there was a way to get the dew into the bottle.

  I shrugged out of my sweater and tore off my shirtsleeve. The
n I used the sleeve as a rag to mop up the dew. I squeezed the rag over the bottle and it began to fill. It took a while, but I managed to collect almost a quarter of a bottle. I brought it carefully back to the shelter. Marina was still huddled under my suit. When she turned and saw me, her eyes went big. “Oh!”

  I was proud of the way she looked at me then. Not like I was someone who didn’t know port from starboard.

  “How’s your arm?” I asked, handing her the open bottle.

  She took a drink, measured how much was left, then took another small sip. “I’m really sick. It’s making me scared.” She wiped her mouth and ducked her head.

  “I get scared too,” I said. “I’m the most scared person of anyone I know.”

  “About what?” She handed me the rest of the water.

  I thought of my parents and sister, of my gut worry over whether they got into the life raft, but couldn’t talk about any of that.

  “I was on the gymnastics team.” I started gathering more sticks for a fire. “My friend Chad and I dared each other to do a giant swing on the high bar. You’re not supposed to go on the bar without Coach to spot you, but we snuck in. I landed on my head and got a concussion. For two days I had to sit in a dark room to heal my brain. Since then, my mom treats me like I’m about to fall on my head again any minute.”

  “So you’re afraid of gymnastics? Is that why you’re not on the team anymore?”

  I stopped scraping the black block with the knife. I’d never told anyone why. “What is this?” I held the block out to her.

  “This is magnesium. The scrapings burn quick and hot. You can light fires if you don’t have matches.”

  “Yeah,” I said, striking the knife against the block.

  I sighed. “I guess I didn’t realize how high the horizontal bar was. I couldn’t do any of it after the accident. Not the rings, not the vault, not even the horse. Floor wasn’t my best event, so I quit. I can hardly climb stairs now. If I go too high, I start to shake and feel all fluttery.”

  Marina paused, eyeballing me. Finally she gestured at the fire. “We need green branches.” She looked calmer now, not so freaked. I was relieved to see her eyes focus. It must’ve helped her to hear about other people being scared.

  “Green?” I asked.

  “Live branches to put on the fire. It makes smoke. We have to be ready to signal when the helicopters come.” She licked her lips. “And we need more water.”

  My stomach growled so loud, we both looked around. Our eyes met and she gave me a shaky smile. “Food, too, I guess.”

  “My pocket.” I pointed to the immersion suit on the ground next to her. “Animal crackers,” I said as she pulled out the Ziploc bag.

  “You thought of everything,” she said.

  We both dipped our fingers into the crumbs and licked them off. It didn’t make me any less hungry. Then I looked at the bag I’d left on the ground yesterday. It had a few drops of condensation in it. It reminded me of something Stacey had done in eighth grade.

  “Hey, we can use this to make a solar still.”

  “A what?”

  “My sister had to do a school project for environmental science. Something to do with clean energy. I was surprised she was so smart, but then she told me she had read about it online.”

  I laid out the plastic bags we had. One large one from Marina’s pocket and two small ones from mine. “If we fill these bags with plants, something green, and leave them in the sun, they sweat inside. We can make our own water to drink!”

  Marina grinned. “That is smart!”

  I found clean stones and put one in a corner of each bag with the leaves and then carefully laid them out in the sun. The water would collect at the lowest point, where the stones were, and I could add water to the bottle again.

  During the day we waited, ready with the fire. But there were no rescue helicopters overhead. No boats coming to get us. We saw big ships passing through the mouth of the strait, but they were far away.

  “How are they going to find us if they don’t come close enough to see our smoke?” I asked.

  Marina craned her head to look up. She’d been drinking most of the water we got out of the solar stills, but she was still sick. She needed to go to a hospital.

  “I don’t know,” she replied. “In the course I took, they just told us how not to drown. In all the stories, people who didn’t drown got rescued. But they’d better hurry; we can’t live much longer on dew. We can die from dehydration easier than drowning.”

  I wished she’d stop talking about dying every two minutes.

  An eagle flew over us.

  “There’s another one,” Marina said, scanning the tops of the trees. The eagle landed on a branch, the white of its head stark against the backdrop of the forest. It stared down at us. “I wonder if . . .” She perked up. “There! I knew it! We’re saved!”

  “What? Is it the helicopter? Where?” I stood up so fast I got dizzy.

  “An eagle nest. This is where they set up the new cam. Now I know where we are! Wow, we’re farther up the Cape than I thought. We’ll never be able to walk to town. It’s too far.”

  “What are you talking about? What’s a cam?”

  “There’s a camera in that tree. The DNR just put it up so people could watch the eagles being born. All you have to do is go up there and signal.”

  She looked at me then with dismay because she had just remembered my confession.

  My gaze ran up the height of the tree. At the same time, my stomach sank. It was so high.

  “I can’t,” I whispered.

  Chapter Nine

  “Well, I can’t do it.” Marina pointed to her arm.

  I thought of all I had done since the boat had gone over. About being in the water, and pulling Marina onto the board, and then getting to the shore. I had made a fire on my own. I never thought I could do that. I did it when I wasn’t busy thinking I couldn’t. I just did it. Seemed to me, the thing about surviving something is believing you can.

  I looked way up the tree. All the way to the big ball of branches that Marina said was a nest.

  “What about the eagles? Aren’t they going to attack me?”

  Marina shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve never climbed into an eagle’s nest before.”

  “Well, that doesn’t help.”

  “Maybe you should wear this. For protection?” She pointed to my immersion suit.

  Slowly I pulled the suit on. My legs already felt wobbly and I hadn’t even started climbing yet.

  “There’s no sound, just a camera, so don’t bother talking,” she called after me. “I’m also not sure if it’s on all the time. I know they had to shut it down because of damage to the cables. Just jiggle it to make sure it’s working. And hurry, it’s going to get dark soon.”

  “Great,” I muttered.

  I stood beneath the lowest branch of the tree. It was like the highest parallel bars I’d ever seen. The lowest branch was way too far up to make it in a simple leap. I needed a springboard to mount.

  I searched around and found a log with a broken end. I rolled it toward the tree and then propped it up on the trunk under the first branch. It wedged itself in as I shook it. Now all I had to do was run up the log and leap to that branch. The thought made me feel sick.

  I stared up again, trying to judge the distance. Trying to ignore the pounding in my chest.

  I rubbed my shaking hands on my suit, then clapped them together as if I were pounding off the chalk. I slowly backed up, moving branches out of the way. A simple move I’d done a million times. Except not nearly so high. Could I even reach that branch? What if I missed?

  Don’t think. Just do.

  I took off at a sprint, ran straight up the log, and used my speed to leap into the air, swinging my arms over my head to give my jump more momentum. I stretched out my fingers as far as they would go, reaching, reaching.

  I caught the branch with the tips of my fingers and somehow clung on. It was rough und
er my hands, and my skin scraped as I hung. I swung my legs upward and aimed for the next branch. Don’t look down. That’s all. Just keep climbing.

  Of course, as soon as I thought about not looking down, I looked. The ground swayed beneath me. So far below already. I imagined it rushing up toward me, remembered the hollow sound, the last thing I heard before everything went black.

  Stop thinking! Focus on the task. If I could keep my thoughts on just the climb, there would be no room for panic.

  I pulled myself higher. Reached, stretched to the next branch, and the next one. My muscles trembled but they knew the motions. It was as if my arms and legs had their own mind and just did it. Stretch, reach, lunge, grasp, pull.

  The bark left the skin on my palms raw, but I ignored it. Must keep going up. Branches started getting thinner closer to the top. But the worst part was the swaying. The tree swayed with the breeze up here, and with my weight. Every time I moved, the tree swayed more. My heart hammered in my chest.

  Thump thump thump.

  I could feel my pulse in the scratches on my face and hands. Finally, I was underneath the mass of sticks that was the nest. But that’s when I realized what the hard part was going to be.

  The nest was like a shallow bowl sitting in the center of a cluster of branches. It was as wide across as I was tall. I was going to have to reach far out to get around and over it.

  Carefully, I pulled myself along the underside of the nest, grabbing the sticks and branches that stuck out. The muscles in my arms screamed as I hung sideways; my whole body shook. Slowly, I raised my head and peered inside. Please let the camera be working.

  When my eyes came level with the nest, I was met by three angry heads. They shrieked and glared at me as I crawled onto the nest.

  Blink. Blink.

  “I’m just borrowing your camera,” I whispered to them. “Don’t call your mom and dad!”

  I was expecting fuzzy chicks—​small chicks. They were almost the same size as an adult eagle, but they didn’t have the white heads. And they acted like babies. They huddled together, taking up most of the space.