“Jesus, calm down,” Shy said, rubbing his sore ribs. “All I did was ask a simple question, damn.”
Addison buried her face in her hands again and sobbed so loud Shy felt like an asshole. Maybe that’s exactly what he was. Maybe he shouldn’t have brought it up out here because nothing from the real world mattered anymore.
“Give it time,” Mr. Henry said.
Shy turned to look at the oilman, who was staring back at Shy.
“I don’t know what you all are talking about,” he said, “but whatever it is, just give it some time.”
Shy hung his head and inspected the sores on his bare foot, mumbling to himself: “Man, none of us have any time.”
They all hid from the sun once it was directly overhead. Addison sat underneath Shy’s slicker. Mr. Henry was covered by the tarp. Shy had taken off his life jacket and draped his shirt over his head and shoulders. He’d had enough of just sitting around and waiting, though. He needed to do something. Now.
He stood up and announced: “We need food and water. And we need to get to those islands.”
Addison and Mr. Henry watched him pull the fishing kit out of the supply cabinet. He had no idea how they were going to get water—there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, so rain definitely wasn’t in the forecast—but he could at least try and catch a damn fish.
“That’s real smart,” Addison said sarcastically.
“What?” Shy said, turning to face her.
“Not wearing a life jacket.” Addison looked away, shaking her head at him in disgust.
Shy stood there, staring. “What are you trying to say? You care if I drown?”
“No,” Addison scoffed. “Do whatever you want. All I’m saying is it’s stupid. Which isn’t a big surprise, I guess.”
Shy had no idea how to deal with a girl like this. In the normal world he’d probably flip her off and walk away. He’d never even try to interact with some spoiled-ass blond chick. He didn’t want to get into another fight, though, so all he could think to do was shrug and turn his attention back to the fishing gear.
“What islands are you talking about?” Mr. Henry asked from under his tarp.
It was good to hear the oilman’s voice. Anytime he went quiet for a long stretch, Shy was afraid he’d find the guy dead. “Ask her,” Shy answered, motioning toward Addison. “It’s her old man who supposedly works there.”
“That’s right, my dad does,” she said. “Not me. I’ve never even been there.”
“What’s he do, anyways?” Shy said. “What kind of job is way out here in the middle of the ocean?”
“I’m his daughter, God,” Addison said, “not his business consultant.”
“Hold up,” Shy said, unable to help himself, “you don’t even know what your own dad does for work?”
“You probably don’t even have a dad,” Addison fired back. “Doesn’t everyone like you grow up with a single mom?”
Shy just stared at her, amazed at what a bitch she was.
“What?” she said.
He shook his head, told her: “Nah, that shit’s too ignorant to even comment on.” He turned away from her all pissed off now, and broke open the pack of fishing lines and bait. He couldn’t believe he was stranded out here with a damn racist.
It was quiet on the boat for a few minutes, then Addison cleared her throat and said: “I didn’t mean it like that.”
Shy ignored her.
Guys where she was from probably put up with her bitchy attitude because she looked good. But Shy wasn’t playing that game. Anyway, she wasn’t even that hot right now. She was as disheveled-looking as anyone would be who survived a sinking ship and got stuck on a broke-ass boat.
“Fine,” Addison said. “Don’t accept my apology. Like I give a shit.”
Shy just shook his head as he put his life jacket back on. The girl had some serious emotional problems.
It didn’t take him long to bait the line and cast it over the side of the boat. There was a school of colorful fish nearby. He tried to will them to his hook, but they didn’t even seem to notice. So he sat there, waiting, thinking about Carmen and how much cooler she was than other girls. Especially this girl. And then he started thinking about back home.
Occasionally, he would reel in his line and recast it. Hoping it would do something. But it never did.
Shy stared into the water for what seemed like hours, watching fish swim right past his hook, trying to figure out what he was doing wrong. Maybe it was the fake bait he’d found in the supply cabinet. Or maybe he was fishing too shallow. Or maybe the sharks in the area had scared all the fish away or the ones who stayed were too nervous to eat.
At one point he overheard Addison saying something to the oilman about a rescue boat finding them. Or a rescue plane. But Shy no longer held out hope for a rescue anything. Every emergency team that existed would be focused on the earthquake victims. Their tiny lifeboat, drifting in the middle of the Pacific, wasn’t even on the radar.
An orange and white fish swam near his hook to investigate. It was thin and no bigger than the palm of his hand, but he begged it to bite. “Come on, you little bastard,” he told it. “Swallow that hook for me. You know it looks delicious as shit.”
But the fish turned and swam away.
Shy dropped his head in disappointment.
He could sense Addison behind him, judging his failure.
32
Eight Days
By late afternoon Shy felt amazingly weak. His muscles were cramping from hunger and dehydration. He stood at the front of the boat with the fishing line anyway, waiting for something to bite.
To take his mind off his discomfort, he started picturing random things from back home. The taquerias and liquor stores that lined his street. Neddie’s Laundromat, where they took their dirty clothes on Sundays. The cracked pavement of his apartment complex parking lot, where he did all his ball-handling drills. His mom walking into the apartment from work, hanging her keys on the hook by the door and sorting through the mail.
He replayed the last time all four of them were together. Sitting at the kitchen table eating sweet bread from the corner bodega. Drinking orange juice. It was the morning before this second voyage, and they were mostly quiet because they still didn’t know how to act after the death of his grandma.
Before Shy left, he turned to everyone, duffel bag slung over his right shoulder. “Guess I’ll get back with you guys in eight days.” He hugged his mom and sis, then held a fist out to Miguel, who gave it a little-kid bump. Then Shy was out the door, rumbling down the steps, climbing into the idling cab that would take him to the bus station.
Eight days.
Shy pulled his line back into the boat and stood there looking over the massive ocean and thinking about that. The sun burning his face. Empty stomach twisted in knots.
All these things from back home.
His life.
Gone.
It was the first time he’d actually thought about what he’d lost in a conscious way.
He glanced back at Addison and the oilman. Both watching him. Then he returned to the ocean, which stretched out beyond all comprehension. In every direction. The three of them in this tiny boat with no food and barely any water, crawling slowly toward their deaths.
A while later Shy heard Addison sloshing her way over to him. “They smell really bad,” she said, pointing at the bloated bodies lying in the boat.
Shy nodded. At least they agreed on one thing. “Definitely getting a little ripe in here,” he said.
“Well?” she said, her tone changing. “Can’t you do something about it?”
Shy looked at Addison, and then he looked at the bodies. They’d always been a symbol of his hope of being rescued. If he kept them in the boat, the boat was more likely to be found. That’s what was in the back of his head. And the rescue team would commend him for hanging on to the bodies so the families could take them back home and bury them. Shy realized something about himself right
then. It was one thing to decide he’d given up hope. It was another to kill the symbol of it.
He went over to the first body and held his hand over it, cringing at the smell. He didn’t want to even touch it. But he had to. He forced himself to lift the slimy, awful-smelling corpse into a sitting position and he looked at it. Bloated features stuck on a strangely crooked face.
He glanced back at Addison, who turned her head as if she couldn’t watch. The oilman, too.
Shy looked back at the woman. “Sorry about this,” he said under his breath. Then he turned his head to take a deep breath and held it as he strained to lift the heavy body up and over the side of the boat. He watched it splash into the ocean and slowly drift off in the life jacket as he stood wiping his hands on his pants.
He took the life jackets off the rest of the bodies before dumping them into the water, too.
When he was done he moved back over to Addison, saying: “Happy now?”
“At least we won’t die of that smell,” she said.
He picked up his fishing line and cast it back into the sea.
“Okay,” she said, “now we have to get to those islands.”
Shy turned to look at her, keeping his line in the water. “Too bad we have no clue which way to go.”
She looked all around the ocean with a concentrated look on her face. “What if we just picked a direction? At least that way we’d be trying.”
Her tone was super condescending, like she was blaming Shy for them being stranded. “Fine,” he said. “Point which way, and I’ll get us going.”
“Why me?”
“Because it’s your idea,” he said.
She gave him an exaggerated frown. “Don’t they train you people for this kind of thing?”
“What, sailing to some island nobody’s ever heard of in a broke-ass boat?” Shy pointed near his feet. “With only one oar?”
“You don’t have to be an asshole about it.”
“Look, Addison,” Shy said, not wanting to spend the last of his energy arguing. “I’m sorry about your friend, okay? And your dad. It sucks. But I lost people, too.”
She looked down at her feet. It seemed like she was going to get upset again, so Shy said: “For real, though. Pick a direction and we’ll give it a shot. Like you said, it’s better than just sitting around doing nothing.”
Addison turned to Mr. Henry and said: “Do you have an opinion about this?”
The man shook his head without looking up. Shy could tell he was coming to the end, and he wished he could do something. Give him painkillers, at least, to ease his suffering. But they had nothing.
“What about you?” Addison asked Shy.
He turned to the ocean. The tide seemed to be moving in one specific direction. Maybe it was being drawn toward one of the islands—though it could just as easily be the opposite. Shy shrugged and mentioned it anyway. “I guess we could go with the tide. We’ll move faster that way.”
“Okay,” she said, looking up at him. “That makes sense.”
Shy showed Addison how to bait the hook and cast the line, then he sloshed his way to the front of the boat with his oar and dug back into the water.
“It’s Addie, by the way,” she called to him from the side of the boat.
He turned to look at her, confused.
“My name,” she said. “Only old people call me Addison.”
Shy nodded. “Addie. Okay.”
He went back to working his oar through the water, wondering if they were being nice to each other now.
33
Otay Mesa Cemetery
When the sun started setting, Addie came to Shy and suggested they trade for a while. He happily agreed and handed her the oar, then stood back to watch. It took her a while to get the hang of it, but once she did, she got them going pretty good. He was surprised a skinny, private-school racist had the strength to pull it off.
She turned around, half smiling, and said: “Is this right?”
“Damn, Addie,” he told her, “you’re not as useless as I thought.”
She flipped him off, and he turned his attention back to fishing. But all he did was fail about a hundred different ways. He tried double-baiting the hook, tried tossing it as far from the boat as he could, tried dropping in two lines at once. Nothing worked. The closest he got was when a small, round fish nosed the bait, then darted away.
When it grew dark and a small shark started passing back and forth underneath his bait, Shy gave up and pulled his line back in and looked around. The night was brighter than usual under a mostly full moon. But there was still nothing to eat and no rain and no land in sight.
Shy sloshed his way over to Mr. Henry, who’d been silent for a while, no longer even whimpering in pain. His pant leg was torn wide open now. Shy pulled the man’s hand from his leg to see how much worse it looked. Pus and blood oozed out of the gruesome wound. The skin around it had turned a purplish-red, and dark streaks ran up and down his leg. When the smell of it hit Shy, he turned away and went to get the jug of water. He held it out to Mr. Henry and said: “Drink some.”
The man shook his head and closed his eyes.
“I’m serious,” Shy said. “You need water.”
No response.
Shy knew the oilman wouldn’t last much longer, and they had less than a third of a gallon left. If he didn’t force it, he and Addie would be able to stretch it that much further.
He turned and watched Addie working the oar. It had been over an hour, easy, and she still hadn’t even taken a break. He was shocked. There was no way she’d ever done this kind of work before, yet she kept on rowing like it was her job.
He turned back to Mr. Henry and shook him by the shoulder. When the man opened his eyes, Shy told him: “You know I’m gonna keep bugging you till you drink some, right?”
The man reached out and took the jug, poured two small sips into his mouth and cringed as he swallowed. He wiped his chin on his shoulder and handed back the jug.
Shy patted the man on the back, wishing he could do more; then he sloshed his way over to Addie and made her drink some, too. “You’re still not tired?” he asked.
“Of course I’m tired,” she said, handing back the water jug. “I’m exhausted. This sucks.”
Shy took a sip, re-capped the jug and then held it up to see how little was left. It was like sand in an hourglass, telling him: Here’s how much time you have left to live.
“Look,” Addie said, letting out a big breath, “I’ll tell you what I know about the Hidden Islands, okay?”
“Yeah,” Shy said, taken off guard. He was surprised she was offering information without even being asked.
“It isn’t much, but whatever.” She looked out over the ocean. “So, according to my dad, they used to be a cluster of four, but three are now underwater. Only Jones Island is still inhabitable, which is where he works.” She shrugged. “Oh, and it’s a private island, so you can’t just go on vacation there. You have to be invited.”
“You’ve never been there, though?” Shy asked.
“Are you kidding? My dad take me to his secretive, private work island?” She rolled her eyes.
“What’s so secret about it?” Shy asked.
Addie grinned and shook her head. “I’m not sure how it looked back on the ship,” she told him, “but I barely even know my dad. All he cares about is working and amassing his fortune.”
“At least he took you on a cruise.”
She rolled her eyes. “Oh yeah. The big father-daughter bonding trip. My dad’s attempt at”—she did air quotes—“being more present in my life. I only agreed to go because he said I could bring Cassie.”
Shy nodded. Even though the real world barely mattered right now, he wanted to know more about her dad, especially knowing he had a picture of Shy. “So, why’d he leave if you guys were supposed to be bonding?”
“You just have all the good questions, don’t you?”
Shy shrugged.
“He tol
d me he needed to check on some new research they were doing. But he was going to meet us in Hawaii.” Addie’s face grew serious, like she was thinking about what might have happened to him when the waves hit. She tapped the oar against the bottom of the boat a few times and added: “I guess his company has some arrangement with you guys. They let him get picked up by a private boat.”
She looked like she was getting upset again, so Shy decided to ease up a little. “Anyways,” he told her, “lemme take over for—”
“They make equipment for hospitals,” Addie interrupted. She handed him the oar and stretched out her arms. “And some pharmaceutical stuff. See? I actually do know what my dad does for a living.”
Shy didn’t understand why a company that made hospital equipment needed to be on a remote island. Seemed kind of sketchy.
“For a while,” Addie continued, “I honestly thought he wanted us to go on a vacation together. I mean, he usually takes a private jet to the island, straight from the Santa Monica Airport, which is close to our house. But that last night on the ship, Cassie and I overheard something we weren’t supposed to.”
“What?” Shy asked, more curious now. He sensed that she was moving toward something important.
“I guess like a week ago,” she said, “someone from his company committed suicide on the ship.”
Shy froze. The comb-over man worked for the same company as her dad?
“I’m pretty sure my dad’s real motivation for being on the ship had nothing to do with me. I think he wanted to find out what happened for himself.” Addie looked Shy right in the eyes. “So, were you working that trip? It was going to Mexico.”
Shy pushed off the side of the boat, said: “Hell yeah, I was working. I’m the one who saw the guy jump.”
“Wait, really?” Addie said, but she didn’t look that surprised. He wondered how much she already knew.
“I grabbed him before he fell,” Shy told her. “He died because I wasn’t strong enough to hang on to him. Your old man tell you that, too?”
“He didn’t tell me anything,” Addie said. “I swear. We only found out about the suicide because we overheard one of my dad’s security people questioning the maitre d’. And me and Cassie started talking after we saw you outside the gym. I mean, it seemed really random for him to just invite you to dinner like that.”
The Living Page 14