by Olin, Sean
The boat was twenty-five feet long, a beast of a vessel. Carter checked the jib. He checked the mainsail and made sure the boom was secure. Then he untied the ropes and started the engine.
One, two, three, go.
They navigated their way through the no-wake zone and out into the river.
Carter raised the sails and adjusted the ropes in the riggings. He knew just what he was doing. He positioned himself on the deck, and manned all the sails at once as they tacked up the river toward Wassaw Bay.
Jules was surprised by how fast Carter had gotten the boat to go. She hadn’t realized that a boat this big could really book. Kneeling toward the front so she could gaze over the edge, she watched the wedge of the stern cut smoothly through the small, nearly imperceptible waves. The sunlight glistened in diamonds on the surface.
Once they were out in the open water, Carter shouted, “Hey, you ready for the fun part?”
Jules rolled over and stretched her legs out in front of her, leaning back to catch the sun on her face. “This isn’t the fun part?” she said.
“It gets even better. I need you to come over here and sit next to me.” He patted the hull, showing her where to sit, then tugged the rope sharply to hold the mast tight against the wind.
Once Jules had situated herself next to him, he said, “Hold on tight to the bar.”
She did.
As he tied one of the lesser ropes to the boat, he said, “You have to make sure you keep your head low.”
She hunched. He grinned at her.
“Here we go,” he said.
Carter let the rope slide through his fingers and the sail swung in with a whoosh. It pivoted over them, coming so close that Jules could feel the air move across the top of her head. The sail continued on, flying out wide to the point at which the rope Carter had secured went taut and stopped it. Fluttering once, it caught the wind again, and without losing any of its speed, the boat tilted impossibly to the starboard side.
They leaned all their weight against the hull, stretched back until it was almost like they were standing up. The boat took a sharp ninety-degree turn and as it did, a wall of water went up behind them, a spray that arched over the edge of the hull and soaked them.
A thrilling experience. Jules yelped like she was on a roller coaster, and then she laughed and laughed. “Wow,” she said.
Carter nodded. She could see how much he loved this all over his face. He adjusted the ropes one more time and snapped them into their safety latches.
They glided forth toward the ocean, far away from everything.
“You feel better?” he asked Jules.
“Yeah,” she said.
“There’s nothing like a sailboat to take your worries away.”
The water glistened with sunlight. The fish jumped and spun. The cormorants skimmed the surface. The seagulls soared overhead.
A school of dolphins came leaping and dancing across the open sea. They seemed to be waving. They seemed to be smiling. For almost an hour they swam along with the boat.
They were happy. Carter and Jules, happier than they’d ever been in their lives. Simply and completely. Jules sitting between Carter’s legs, wrapped up in his arms, the two of them gazing out at the calm, endless sea.
And as the sun began to descend to the west and the sky began to glow, they pulled in the sails. They let loose the anchor. There it went—rumble, rumble—down to the ocean floor.
They sat on the stern all alone, arm in arm, and watched the sunset like for the first time.
Any nervousness and fear lingering in their hearts had been left behind them, far off on the shore. They were a long way from the past now, a long way from Dream Point.
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While they were belowdecks, changing into their swimsuits, the skylight on the prow of the boat rolled open. A stowaway climbed the ladder out of the storage compartment at the front of the boat.
First the hands became visible. Then the muscular swimmer’s arms. The wavy, dishwater-brown hair. The deep-red lifeguard’s swimsuit with the ghostly white cross on it. The whole of her.
Lilah.
She stood there like a fury, the wind whipping her hair. She’d been waiting. She’d been planning. She knew this was her time. She wore a diver’s belt around her waist, an eight-inch knife clipped to her hip. She looked to the sky and she could see the future there, written in the bloodred streaks of the vanished sun.
She stretched and flapped out her muscles. Then she dove off the boat into the water. The sea was her home.
Her moment was coming soon.
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Back on deck, Carter and Jules were giddy. They sat on the edge of the boat, braced behind the safety railing with their legs hanging over, bouncing against the hull. They watched the fish jump in the fading dusk light and chattered away. The game was What’s the Weirdest Thing You’ve Ever Eaten?
“Alligator,” said Jules.
“Doesn’t count! If they sell it on the promenade in Dream Point, it can’t be that weird.”
“Okay . . . blood sausage. That counts. It’s too revolting not to count.”
“Rattlesnake,” said Carter. “Tastes like chicken.”
“Cow stomach.”
“You’ve eaten cow stomach?” said Carter.
“My mom dated this Cuban guy for a few months, and one time when I was sick he brought me this soup that he claimed would make me better. Mondongo soup. It was made with—he called it tripe, but it was cow stomach.”
“Did it work?”
“I don’t know. The intestines were cut into these strips, like spaghetti, bit they were hairy. It made me gag. Your turn.”
“Moose.”
“Wow. Moose.”
“Yeah. My father went on some crazy hunting trip in Canada. Like a rich-guy trip where the guide takes you around and catches the animals for you, and then you shoot them and feel proud of yourself. He brought me back some moose jerky. He claimed it came from a moose he actually shot, but . . . ”
“What does moose taste like?”
“Teriyaki sauce.”
Jules shot him a look that was so adoring—teasing and flirty and admiring all at once—that the both of them started laughing and couldn’t stop. They felt silly, sloppy drunk, and they hadn’t even opened the champagne yet. Just being together—that was enough.
“Look at that moon,” said Jules, lacing her arm around Carter’s waist.
“Yeah.” It wasn’t quite full, but it was close. There were no clouds in the sky that night, and the outline of the moon was crisp, its craters in high relief, like it had been shot in HD. It reminded Carter of the moon on the night they’d first met. He pulled her close and kissed her, and for a moment the two of them swooned close, attracted by each other’s body heat.
“Should we swim?” Carter said.
Jules unlaced her legs from the railing and stood up. She did a slow dance, spinning on her tiptoes, her arms stretched gracefully above her head. Then the boat rocked slightly and she lost her balance. She toppled over and giggled again.
As they stood by the opening in the guard railing, psyching themselves up to dive, she asked Carter, “You think there are sharks in there?”
“I’ve never seen one in all my time coming out here. I think we’re too far north.”
“Jellyfish?”
“No, but I ate jellyfish once.”
“Okay, here goes nothing.”
Jules dove off the boat as gracefully as she danced. Carter watched as she slid under the water in one smooth arc. Now that his thoughts had floated back to that first night with her, he was lost there, overwhelmed with the memory of the electric shock
of that first touch of her skin, the fizz he’d felt in his heart just standing in her presence.
She surfaced fifteen feet out or so and turned toward where she thought he’d be, right behind her, only to discover that he still hadn’t jumped. She called out to him, “You chicken?”
“No.” What he was was dazzled by how hot she was. He didn’t want to say that, though, so instead, he said, “I’m figuring out which dive I should do.”
“It’s cold in here. Come warm me up.”
One last look, and Carter jumped in feetfirst, bicycling his legs as he went down. He swam out and splashed a massive arc of water at her, just like he’d done that first night at Jeff’s party.
“You didn’t just do that,” she teased him.
She splashed him back.
“Is that how it’s going to be?” he said, splashing her again.
They splashed and splashed, dunked each other, kicked up the water, pushing and pulling and wrestling with each other, laughing the whole time, neither of them able to get enough of this freedom, this being alone together with nothing to do but play. Their slick skin slid under each other’s hands as they grappled and kneaded and inevitably kissed each other.
Pulling back, Carter said, “So, you know that night at Jeff’s house. The minute I saw you, I just knew. You were—I should have just admitted to myself from the start that I was totally—”
“Shut up and kiss me again,” she said. “It’s all over.”
They kissed again, more deeply, bobbing in the water.
Something bumped against the boat. They couldn’t see it—it was on the other side—but they heard the echoing against the fiberglass hull. A fish. A sea bass. A grouper. They’d been seeing them jumping all evening.
They smiled at each other, and then Jules wrapped her legs around Carter’s waist and they went right on kissing. Carter’s hands running up and down Jules’s thighs, hers running up and down his back, finding their way under the waistband of his swim trunks, probing at the base of his spine.
A fish brushed against the back of Carter’s leg. It tickled the sole of Jules’s foot.
They laughed about this. There sure were a lot of them out here tonight.
“You’re positive there’s no sharks?” Jules said.
“No. No sharks. Promise.”
And that was when whatever it was swimming around below them got ahold of Jules’s ankle and yanked her out of Carter’s arms.
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Jules screamed. She kicked with all her might, but the thing tightened its grip. It wouldn’t let go. This was no fish.
She went under. She kicked and kicked. She flailed her arms toward the surface, trying to pull herself away.
Then she was up again, briefly, gasping for breath, calling out, “Carter!”
And she was under again. The thing was crawling up her leg, clawing at her calf, grabbing at the waist of her bikini bottoms.
She was up again suddenly.
“Carter!” Where was he?
He was underwater, swimming straight down with all his might. Blinking through the salt water, his eyes stinging fiercely, he could see murky shapes wrestling with each other just out of his reach. One of these was Jules. The other one was red. Was it human? Yes, it was.
The knowledge that this was Lilah crawling up Jules’s body, pulling her down, sunk in peripherally as Carter pushed through the heavy water toward them. He had no time for dread. What was called for was action.
He grabbed at Lilah’s arm, but it was too slippery to grip.
He grabbed at her shoulder—pushed at her, pulled at her—but this dragged Jules down, too.
They were—all three of them—submerged now.
Carter managed to tangle Lilah’s hair in his fist. He yanked with all his strength and her head snapped back, but she didn’t let go of Jules. He wrapped himself around the upper half of Lilah’s body and twisted and turned trying to shake her free.
She had to fend him off, at least, which gave Jules a brief advantage.
Peeling at Lilah’s fingers, Carter tried to pry them loose.
All the while, Jules was kicking, kicking, kicking. She kicked Carter in the head. She kicked Lilah everywhere.
Holding on tight, Carter twisted and yanked at Lilah’s body. She had to use most of her strength to wrest herself away from him, and the concentration required to do this took her attention away from Jules.
One more kick. She was out of Lilah’s grasp.
As Carter continued to wrestle with Lilah, Jules swam for the surface. Her heart beat in her ears. Her tear ducts felt like they were ready to explode.
Then she was up, gulping down air, paddling, swimming like she’d never swum before, toward the ladder hanging off the side of the boat.
It took Carter a moment to realize that Jules had shaken free. When he did, he pushed Lilah deeper into the water. He let go. He frog-kicked, using her body as ballast to propel himself toward the dark shadow that must have been the boat.
He reached the ladder a second after Jules did. They yanked themselves up.
“Pull the ladder up! Carter, quick!” Jules shouted.
But he couldn’t do that. The ladder was bolted into the side of the boat.
And Lilah was already at the bottom rung.
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When Lilah reached the top of the ladder and found Jules barring her way, kicking at her shoulders, trying to push her back and send her falling into the sea, she smirked. This girl was no threat to her—not now, now when she was so completely in her power. She was strong, too strong for Jules. A swipe of the arm, a twist of the wrist—that was all it took to gain the upper hand, to get Jules in a power hold, her arm torqued at the elbow, her whole body pulled down behind it.
Then up, off the ladder, and onto the stable footing of the deck. Lilah rammed her heel into Jules’s neck, stunning her.
Jules’s body curled into a fetal position. It was not in her control. No matter how much she might want to defend herself and Carter, her body wanted only to protect itself. Her neck stung where Lilah had kicked her. Her trachea went numb. She could hardly breathe. At the very best she was about to be beat up. At the worst, Lilah would kill her, right here, right now. But no. Lilah stepped past her. Why?
She had no use for Jules. Not right this minute. Carter was the prize she wanted right now. He always had been; he always would be. Casually, confidently, she walked the length of the deck, picking up the harpoon gun she’d stashed against the gunwale early that morning while Carter and Jules were still back in Savannah eating Belgian waffles.
He was frantically digging in the compartment where the tools were kept, under the bench at the stern of the boat. There used to be weapons there—knives and lances and harpoons—but where were they? All he was finding was a tangled mess of ropes. And the more he dug, the more tangled they became. He wasn’t watching his back. Yet again, he’d allowed Jules to be out there alone with no protection from him. Even as he kept digging, he knew he should have stood guard at the ladder instead of racing for the toolbox.
Suddenly Lilah was on him, standing at his back, holding the barbed trident head of the loaded harpoon gun to his ear.
“Hi, Carter,” she said. “I’ve missed you.”
He turned slowly toward her. She was smiling.
“Where’s Jules?” he barked.
She plumped her bottom lip out into a pout. “The first time we talk in two and a half months, and this is all you have to say to me? I’m disappointed. I’d have thought you’d be more excited to see me.”
He was acutely aware of the harpoon aimed at his face. Instead of saying something that might inflame her, he
let his facial expression do his talking. “What did you do to her?” he asked.
“She’s fine.” Lilah nodded toward the front of the boat. “She’s over there. Resting.”
Glancing, just briefly—he didn’t want to take his eyes off Lilah for long enough for her to pull something—he saw Jules’s body curled on the deck.
“Is she hurt?”
“Maybe she’s hurt. Probably. I mean, she’s alive. I just kicked her a little. Why do you care so much?”
“Lilah . . .”
“No, you’re right. You don’t have to answer that. We both know you don’t care about her. I know she’s got you all turned around in your head, but really, I swear, you don’t owe her anything. Don’t you think it’s time to remember who you are—who you really are—and what you really want?”
“What’s that, Lilah?” Carter said sarcastically. “What do I really want?”
She tipped her head skeptically. “You think I didn’t hear you yesterday when my name slipped out while you were kissing her?”
Carter glanced at Jules again. She still wasn’t moving.
“It’s not too late. We can get through this just like we’ve always gotten through everything else. Forever, remember? That’s what you promised me freshman year, and I know you still believe it. You just have to be brave enough to admit what you want. And then everything can go back to normal. Okay?”
Trapped, Carter waited to hear what she’d say next. But she didn’t say anything. Instead, she fumbled with a snap on the diving belt around her waist. Keeping the harpoon gun trained on Carter’s head, she pulled the knife out by its bright-yellow plastic handle and held it up for him to see.
“Come back to me, Carter. We both know that’s what you really want to do.”
She slowly crouched and laid the knife on the deck. Then she pulled herself back to a standing position, and being careful not to catch herself with the blade, she gripped the handle with her toe and pushed the knife toward Carter.