Sharks & Boys

by Kristen Tracy

  And after discovering the sharks, there was no way I was willing to risk clamoring near the raft’s edge, like Dale, even for that. Besides, if I tried to pee off the side . . . I’m a girl; I lack the necessary equipment to do that sort of thing from a reasonably safe distance. But I’m not the only one. Skate has gotten weaker. He’s relieved himself in the raft too.

  Every time I look into the sky I expect to see a bird; not necessarily a dove, but maybe a gull. It’s like they don’t exist anymore. Up there, it’s an endless blue; the clouds are gone and there is nothing. Except that hot, glaring sun. I always knew that the sun was a burning ball of flames, but it never truly felt like that until now. It turns the sea a painful golden color. Sometimes, because of the way the light strikes it, the water looks solid, and I have to remind myself that yes, it’s really liquid out there. Yes, Enid, you and the guys, for the time being, are completely screwed.

  “Are you okay?” Wick asks me.

  “I guess,” I say.

  Even though there are six other people on the raft, they seem to have zoned out. It’s as if Wick and I are all alone right now, having a private conversation.

  “It’s surreal that you’re here,” he says.

  “You’re glad, right?” I ask.

  “I am and I’m not. I wish you were safe,” he says.

  “I wish we were both safe. I wish we were all safe,” I say.

  “Can I ask you a question?” Wick says.

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “So why are you here?”

  I don’t feel like being honest right now. I don’t want to start talking about how I doubted Wick’s truthfulness. About how I suspected Simone was going to be here. I think all that stuff makes me look bad. And desperate. Also, it doesn’t feel important anymore. The truth about why I’m here feels so lame and insignificant. I try a different tack. One designed to test his feelings for me.

  “I wasn’t sure if you were serious about dating other people,” I say.

  There is a long pause. He outlines my ear with his finger. With my head in his lap, I can’t see his face and he can’t see mine.

  “I never said we should date other people. I don’t want you dating somebody else.”

  This makes me feel better. But I still press him. I want total clarity. I want to reinstate our relationship and know that it will remain reinstated after we return to our real lives.

  “I thought you said we were on a break,” I say.

  “That doesn’t mean date other people,” he says.

  “Oh.”

  “Enid, I really like you. Things were really great for a long time,” he says.

  I realize he’s using the past tense in referring to our relationship, and I don’t know if that’s intentional or he’s become dehydrated to the point of losing his ability to articulate his feelings. I root for the latter.

  “Things can still be good. Once we get back,” I say.

  Wick stops tracing my ear. “I don’t want to hurt your feelings,” he says. “But there were some serious things wrong with our relationship.”

  My whole body whirs with disappointment. I sit up and look at him. We look into each other’s eyes. Our cheeks are sunburned. Our noses are completely red and peeling. “No relationship is perfect.” I think that’s something my mom actually repeats to herself when gearing up to face my father.

  “When you found out about your dad’s last affair, after you learned about everything, you became really anxious about our relationship,” Wick says.

  I want to deny this. But I know I should listen to what he’s saying.

  “All men aren’t like your father. I’m not like him. But you were so aggressively insecure. I felt really judged. Like everything I did and said was under constant scrutiny. And it made it hard for me to want to be around you.”

  I feel awful. I did get more needy after my dad’s recent revelations. But what am I supposed to do? It’s hard to trust people after you’ve been hurt. Over and over.

  “I’m sorry,” I say.

  “I’m not looking for an apology,” he says. “I’m trying to explain things.”

  “Right,” I say.

  “You were constantly checking my phone and e-mails. You wanted to read all my papers, which at first was cool because I thought you were looking for typos, but then it felt like you were dissecting them. Like you distrusted me so much you were hunting for signs of infidelity in my response papers to George Eliot.”

  I feel so humiliated. He really could have stopped expounding on his reasons for dumping me after the “aggressively insecure” comment.

  “I get it,” I say. “Okay.”

  “You don’t get it,” he says.

  I push away from him and sit in a position where no part of my body is touching any part of his body, even our shoulders. I give him space.

  “I love you, Enid. But you became impossible,” Wick says.

  I stop breathing. Is there a way for me to become un-impossible?

  “I love you too,” I say.

  The silence drags. I look out into the water, and it goes on and on. The length of the horizon feels like the length of my sadness. Wick reaches down and touches my leg. “I think we can work on stuff.”

  This is exactly what I want to hear. With everything else going on in my life right now, I want to have things with Wick go right. We’re going to be a couple again. In fact, we’re a couple right now. Don’t I deserve this?

  “That’s what I want too,” I say.

  He keeps holding my leg. I look at his hand and then I look at him. He’s staring at Skate sleeping on the floor of the raft.

  Wick nudges Skate’s shoulder with his sneaker. “Hey, big guy,” Wick says. “Do you want to sit up for a little bit?”

  Skate opens his eyes. He shivers in the fetid water pooling around him.

  “Sit up here,” I say. I slide over and make room.

  Wick pulls Skate up. Landon and Dale help. They ease him onto the raft’s sidewall next to me.

  “It’s easy to just conk out,” Skate says.

  “Yeah,” I say.

  I take my arm and put it around Skate’s waist to help keep him steady. I feel Wick’s arm reach around and touch mine.

  Wick leans forward and says, “I’m glad you’re here.”

  I lean forward and say, “That’s very selfish of you.”

  “Sometimes, I’m a totally selfish guy,” he says.

  Before Wick and I can intensify our flirtation, Dale interrupts us.

  “Guys, I just endured hearing you two rehash all your relationship issues. I can only take so much. Can you please not turn the experience into a romance novel?”

  “That was a private conversation,” I say.

  “You’re in a raft with me. Where do you want me to go? The waiting room?”

  “Stop, Dale,” Wick says.

  “Dude, I’m totally allowed to contribute my feelings. You can’t silence me.”

  Things were going so well. But not anymore. That’s the kind of energy Dale possesses. Wrecking-ball energy. I am so tired. So sick of Dale. I want to insult him, but my mind struggles to remember nouns.

  “You’re acting like a real Sandinista,” I say.

  “A sandy what? Did you just call me an asshole in a foreign language?”

  “No,” Munny says. “She said Sandinista, a member of a Nicaraguan left-wing political party. Also, it’s an album by The Clash.”

  “I know,” Dale says.

  “No you didn’t,” I say. “You’re the eighth smartest person on this raft. That makes you the most dumb.” I have no idea why I called him a Sandinista, but I don’t back away from it.

  “Enid, don’t,” Wick says.

  “Well, you’re the most crazy,” Dale says.

  “I’m not crazy,” I say.

  “Nobody said you were,” Landon says.

  “Landon, he said I was the most—”

  “I know. He didn’t mean it,” Landon says.

 
“Yeah, dude, I didn’t mean it.”

  I shouldn’t pick on Dale’s intelligence. I know it really wounds him. Why can’t I be a bigger person? Why do I have to react so much to people?

  “I think I want to rest again,” Skate says.

  He lowers himself back to the raft’s floor.

  “Okay,” Wick says. “But let’s keep your head up and out of that water.”

  “Sure thing,” Skate says. He sits down and leans his head back on the raft’s side. His head touches my leg. I can see pus escaping through the crease of the green bandage. “I think I’m going to rest some more,” he says again.

  “Good idea,” I say. But I do not know if it really is a good idea. I wonder what he thinks about when he sleeps? I wonder if he dreams about his parents? Now that they’re dead, I wonder where he thinks they are?

  I look into the sky. There are no clouds. It’s blank. Back when my father and I used to talk, he told me that when you skydive, you want to avoid clouds. They contain hidden dangers. I imagine my father falling out of the empty sky right now. A speck tumbling toward me. But then I blink and he’s not there anymore. It’s just the sky. My grandmother used to call the sky the heavens. In my head, I repeat that word over and over. Heaven. Heaven. Heaven.

  “There is so much goddamned water in the world,” Wick says.

  “I was just thinking that,” Landon says.

  “I was thinking about heaven,” I say.

  “You were?” Landon asks.

  “Yeah, I think I believe in God.”

  “That came out of left field,” Landon says.

  “Of course you believe in God. You’re in a raft surrounded by sharks. I bet you’ve started believing in Jesus, too.”

  “Historically speaking, Jesus was an actual person,” Munny says. “I don’t think belief is the right word.”

  “You know so much unimportant junk that it’s impossible to like you,” Dale says.

  “I like Munny,” I say. “And I’ve been thinking about God for a while. Not just today. Two days ago I was totally thinking about Moses.”

  “You were?” Landon asks.

  “Yeah. Why, were you thinking about him too?” I ask. I’m always hoping that our twin connection will kick in.

  “No,” Landon says. “I just didn’t realize that nonreligious teenagers sporadically thought about Moses.”

  “That is a little weird,” Wick says. “What exactly were you thinking about?”

  I don’t want to mention thinking of the bulrushes story when I took the directions from Landon’s basket. So I lie.

  “How he fought Goliath,” I say.

  “That was David. Even I know that, and that’s saying something,” Dale says. “I may be a Christian, but at this point in my life, I care about the Bible about as much as I care about Canada.”

  “What do you have against Canada?” Sov asks. “I have relatives that live there.”

  “So do we,” Wick says.

  Dale doesn’t answer.

  “All I was trying to say is that I believe in God. And I think we’re going to be okay,” I say. “I think saving the llama got me thinking about these deeper issues.”

  “That thing died,” Dale says.

  “I know,” I say. “That got me thinking about even deeper issues.”

  Wick rubs my knee. Talking about God makes me feel hopeful. I wonder if I’ll care about these things after I’m rescued. Am I the type of person who wants to go to church? Every week? I don’t know. I can’t imagine myself sitting on a pew that many times per month. I turn to look into the water.

  “Hey, what’s that?” I ask.

  “Do you see a ship?” asks Landon.

  “No, that right there. That white thing. It looks like my shoe.”

  “That’s not possible,” Landon says.

  “But it totally looks like my white pump.”

  “It’s something. It could be a piece of Styrofoam. Or some other piece of trash. It’s too far away,” Wick says.

  “Let’s row toward it,” I say. I reach my arm into the ocean.

  “There’s sharks in there, Enid,” Sov says.

  I pull my hand back in the raft. “I want my shoe,” I say.

  “Dude, get over it,” Dale says.

  “Dude, if it were your shoe and you were barefooted, you’d want it too,” I say.

  Dale shrugs.

  “It’s drifting toward us,” Munny says. “We’ll probably intercept it.”

  I clutch my heart. “I hope we do,” I say.

  “Enid, it’s just a shoe,” Wick says.

  “I know. But it’s my mother’s.”

  “When you tell her the story of what happened to it, I’m sure she won’t care that you lost it,” Wick says.

  “But I’ll care.”

  I don’t know why, but my mother’s shoe has taken on all this extra meaning. I sit and wait. The shoe bobs merrily along. Eventually, it drifts so close that Landon is able to lean over the side and pluck it from the sea.

  “Enjoy,” he says, tossing it to me.

  “I don’t believe it! Where are those Doritos bags?” Dale asks.

  “Get over the chips,” Landon says.

  I try to slide the shoe on, but my foot is swollen. It hurts. I decide just to hold it.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  “Any time,” Landon says. “But I wouldn’t expect to come across your other pump. Cherish the one you have.”

  I press it to my chest and lean back into Wick’s arms. I think that I’m going to stay awake and be responsible and totally look for passing ships, but I feel myself dozing off instead.

  The raft is developing a crust of salt. The sun evaporates the water, and in the creases of the rubber, the salt hangs on. I hate the salt. It’s become an enemy. I try not to look at it. I’m almost happy when the ocean laps at the salt pockets, dissolving them back into the sea. My throat aches, and more than anything else in the world, I want water. I look at my hand. The small wound has become infected. I can see yellow pus surrounding the gash. I touch it.

  “Does it hurt?” Landon asks.

  He’s seated at the other end of raft. He’s perched on a side, which requires more balance, but it keeps him elevated above the floor. He’s been watching me.

  “It hurts a little,” I say. “But I’ll be fine.”

  “I know you will,” he says.

  I want to ask him how much he drank. Sores are breaking out on his face and arms. I’m worried that he’s going to become dehydrated faster than the rest of us. Why were the guys drinking at all? That was so stupid. I look away from Landon. Next to him is Burr, seated beside Skate. Anger floods over me when I look at Burr and Skate. This is all their fault. I hate them. It was their party. It was their ship. It was their beer. It was their stupidity. Burr sees me watching him.

  “What?” he asks. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  I turn to face the water.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Burr asks. His voice is thinner than usual and very tense.

  “I wasn’t looking at you,” I say.

  “You totally were staring at Burr. I saw you,” Dale says.

  I shrug my shoulders.

  “Sorry,” I say.

  I continue to watch the water. Everybody’s nerves are on edge. I need to be careful. I’ve taken two semesters of psychology, and I know that under the right conditions, anybody can lose it. Under duress, anybody has the potential to become dangerous. And this is duress to the nth degree.

  “The Coast Guard will be here before nightfall,” Burr says.

  “You think so?” Wick asks.

  “I’m sure of it,” Burr says. “If there’s one thing you can count on in life, it’s the Coast Guard.”

  Skate moans, and Burr tries to soothe him by rubbing his shoulder. Skate sleeps more than he’s awake. His head isn’t bleeding anymore, but the wound is infected. I think back to the gash before Burr wrapped it. It’s worse than the cut on my hand. Like the kin
d of wound you’d expect to see on a death-marked character in a movie about the apocalypse, not the kind of injury you’d expect to see blooming on the back of your childhood friend’s head. He needs antibiotics. He needs a doctor. But these things are hours and hours and hours away. I don’t want my mind to arrive at this, but it does. Without medical attention, without water, how many hours does Skate have left? I feel sad and helpless. I’ve arrived at a level of despair that is lower than anything I’ve ever felt.

  I imagine that my mind is a television and I turn it to another channel. After spending a few minutes looking at my thumb, trying to will it to heal itself, I turn to the water again. I see something. It’s floating next to the raft and looks like a heap of garbage. I set my shoe beside me and lean over the side. I think it’s seaweed. I reach carefully, snatch up a fibrous bundle of it, and pull a dripping line on board.

  “What are you doing?” Dale asks. “What are you putting in the raft?”

  “Can we eat it?” I ask Munny. It has the appearance of canned spinach mixed with large grapes, except it’s much tougher and browned.

  “It’s full of salt,” Munny says. “It would dehydrate us.”

  I’m holding the messy rope of seaweed in my arms. It’s hard for me to put it back in the ocean. Then, an orange leaf of it breaks off and plops on the raft’s bottom. The leaf sprouts legs and begins rowing itself sideways toward my foot. It’s a crab. I scream. I don’t scream because I’m afraid of it, but because I wasn’t expecting it.

  “Get it out of the raft,” Dale says.

  “Enid, toss it over,” Landon says. “It’s sargassum weed and it’s full of sargasso crabs.”

  Then, as if it were possible to rain tender, damp crabs, the seaweed releases a dozen of them. They drip onto the raft’s floor and begin to swim toward our legs. I guess they’re looking for cover. I reach down and pick up the one closest to my foot. I pinch its body between my thumb and index finger. “This crap is full of them,” Burr says.

  “Wait, isn’t sargasso weed what Atlantic Ridley sea turtles swim to after they’re born? We could eat sea turtles,” Munny says.