by Nick Courage
Alejo inched backward, behind the broad shoulders of one of the landscapers.
He knew why he wasn’t scared: nothing bad could happen to this place. It was too big, and too expensive, but he was smart enough to know that his wasn’t the answer the manager was looking for, so he kept his mouth shut and looked at the floor.
“We’re not scared—because we’re prepared,” the manager shouted, throwing open the big silver doors. That was why she had gathered them in the kitchen, to eat the ice cream before it melted. To save them a lot of cleanup tomorrow when the storm had passed, just in case the power went out.
She tossed two pints of vanilla to Alejo.
“Special offer,” she said. “One day only.”
Alejo accepted the ice cream with a nod, the frost melting on his hands as he squeezed his way out through the growing crowd. “Sólo los perecederos, por favor,” the manager shouted behind him. In the rush, some of the staff had started reaching for pillow chocolates and jars of cherries. “Just the perishables!”
He didn’t have a spoon, so Alejo tasted the ice cream with a finger as he walked to the empty lobby. It was too sweet for him, and too cold. It made his teeth hurt, but he took another taste anyway as the lights flickered off and on again.
Just to make sure.
In the eerie quiet before the televisions rebooted, Alejo could hear wind howling outside. The loose ends of the ropes they’d used to tie everything down whipped against concrete, slapping wetly without rhythm. The staff laughed and cheered in the kitchen as the manager continued to empty the freezer—but they sounded muffled and distant. It made Alejo suddenly nervous for everyone to be celebrating while Valerie was knocking on their door.
Like they were tempting fate.
Alejo shivered.
Even though they were still talking about the storm, he felt better when the predictions of the newscasters filled the room again—less scared. Less alone. He almost smiled at the commentator with the white-blond hair…then frowned when the picture cut away to a reporter in a yellow raincoat.
There was something about the man that Alejo didn’t like.
Something that made his stomach drop.
He walked toward the television above the bar for a closer look and felt his mouth go dry. The zigzag tiles of the pool behind the reporter were eerily familiar, and he recognized the stack of blue deck chairs, too. In the background on the television, out of focus—obscured by the rain—was the lobby of the San Pilastro Resort and Casino.
Alejo clutched the two frozen pints of ice cream, his fingers pink with cold.
“Even the most popular tourist destinations are ghost towns now,” the reporter shouted. His gelled hair blew stiffly in the wind as he gestured toward the lobby, but Alejo wasn’t watching anymore. He was halfway to the revolving door, walking slowly…as if the cold marble floor might slip out from under him. When he finally pushed outside, the wall of heat and rain hit him hard, instantly soaking his wrinkled blue shirt.
Squinting against the storm, Alejo scanned the bruised green and yellow sky.
The world outside was different from when he had left it.
The last of the birds were gone, and it was bright—brighter than he expected from watching the footage on the news. Alejo took a deep breath and turned back to the lobby, peering at the televisions through his dripping reflection in the glass doors. He couldn’t hear the reporter over the dull roar of the wind and rain, but there he was, his wet shirt clinging to his sparrow’s chest in the corner of the screen.
Alejo laughed.
He couldn’t help himself.
He turned back toward the cameras, waving the ice cream behind the reporter in case Padrino Nando was somewhere, watching. Beneath him, an emergency alert ran on the bottom of the screen, bright red and flashing. From the mostly abandoned luxury suites of the San Juan Pilastro all the way to Washington, DC, viewers wondered what the boy with the big smile was so happy about….
Valerie was heading right for him.
“Wake up, Slick.”
A man in orange pants and a grease-stained shirt kicked the flimsy legs of a cot as fluorescent lights flickered overhead.
“Ride’s here.”
The man on the cot groaned as he stretched his arms toward the rivets in the low metal ceiling. Silas “Slick” Thompson had been on the rig for six days already, working twelve-hour shifts on the sweltering deck. When he wasn’t working, he was sleeping. That was the job. He didn’t see his family for six months out of every year, but the pay was good if you could handle it.
Most people couldn’t handle it.
Not all the time, anyway.
Silas had learned that the hard way when his son had gotten sick. He’d been onshore with his family for the diagnosis and for the surgery. That was the important thing. But when it had been time for him to hitch back out to the rig, his wife had grown so quiet he hadn’t known what to say.
There wasn’t anything he could say.
He had to work.
The only promise he’d been able to make was that he’d be home again for the next round of checkups—and that he’d be in touch as much as possible before then. Even if it meant getting teased for video chatting his kids from the crowded galley, he wouldn’t disappear into his job again.
He’d be there for them.
“Whaddya mean, ride?” Silas said, kicking off the sheets. He was fully dressed in clean jeans and a white shirt, ready for anything. Anything except a ride back to the mainland. The helicopter wasn’t scheduled to pick up his crew for another week. Another week minus five hours, he corrected himself.
He knew exactly when he was going home.
The other man just laughed and kicked the cot again.
“You can wait if you want,” he said, stepping into the narrow hallway. “But if it were me, I wouldn’t want to ride that chopper in a hurricane.”
The oil rig—P7 Beta—was anchored seventy-five miles off the coast of Louisiana, an operation the size of a small city in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico. At any given time, there were over two hundred men and women on the platform. Living together, eating together, and looking out for each other. Silas pulled on a pair of steel-toed boots and followed his friend onto the deck. He was expecting the surf to be choppy, but it was as flat as he’d ever seen it.
Glassy, even.
He shielded his eyes from the sun.
It wouldn’t fully set for another hour, but the sky was already blazing with more shades of pink than he could name. A flock of brown pelicans settled onto the mirrored water, wings tucked behind their backs as they floated. Serene. Below him, an industrial supply ship creaked against the rig’s huge metal pylons—ready and waiting to carry everyone to safety. A group of roughnecks in yellow hard hats joked with each other as they rode an open-aired lift down to its deck. The shipping forecast had given them an unexpected holiday.
Or an unexpected complication, depending on how you looked at it.
Silas cursed beneath his breath.
The doctors’ appointments and the postoperative tests had all been planned around his schedule over a month ago. An evacuation would throw everything off, and if his shifts got shuffled around, his wife would never forgive him.
He’d never forgive himself.
A buzzer sounded as the lift ascended back to the platform, where another group of workers shifted their rucksacks onto their shoulders. Excited for their long ride home. Silas frowned and looked away. There were too many people on the rig to evacuate with helicopters, so they had to take precautions. It made sense, even if it meant shipping most of the crew out early for a phantom storm that might not even hit.
Someone had to run the rig, though.
Someone had to lock it all down if a storm did come through.
If it meant being home when he sai
d he’d be home, Silas figured that someone might as well be him—especially since all signs pointed to a false alarm. From heliport to heliport, it was only a forty-five-minute flight to land. If the waves got choppy, he could always hitch out on a last-minute helicopter. Worst-case scenario, he’d earn some overtime. Even if he didn’t, anything was better than a cramped, four-hour float home with the rest of the crew.
Especially if the weather ended up turning.
Then it’d be a rough one.
“Have fun puking,” Silas mumbled, waving at the hard hats filing into the ship below. He took one last look at the sea before heading back inside. The sky was about as pretty as he’d ever seen it, and he hoped there was some truth to the old saying about red skies at night being a sailor’s delight. Blinking the glare from his eyes, he jogged to find his boss while the gulls laughed overhead, circling the rig in search of the silver fish that gathered there.
Emily waded slowly but confidently into the water, angling her phone for a selfie as her feet settled into the thick muck at the bottom of the lagoon. She took short, exploratory steps, trying not to slip while she snapped pictures of her crossing for Elliot…but every few feet, the mud gave way to something hard and unyielding.
A rock or a log or a pipe.
She had to concentrate to keep her footing.
Her photos could wait, she finally decided, holding her phone and book high above her head. It was slow going, but the more Emily focused, the more the city seemed to fade into a quiet buzz at the back of her head. Like a gnat, or a fly. Don’t fall, she whispered under her breath, over and over again, as she inched closer to the tiny island.
Don’t…fall.
The water was cool—cold, even—but even at its deepest, it barely reached the bottoms of her frayed jean shorts. Algae swirled around her knees and water beetles paddled wildly in her wake. Emily didn’t pay them any attention. She just breathed slowly—in and out—as she made her way across the lagoon, wishing her brother could be there to see her.
Lost in thought.
It was only when the wood ducks blinked their orange eyes and dove, disappearing beneath widening ripples, that her concentration broke. By the time their shiny green heads resurfaced, the buzz of the park in the back of Emily’s head had grown into a shout. What if someone sees me? she thought, her heart pounding in her chest. The asphalt path that looped around the park hugged the banks of the narrow lagoon, close enough that she’d be visible to any passersby—and Emily had never seen anyone in the water before.
It was so dirty that swimming was against the rules.
If anyone bothered to look, she’d stand out like…
Like I’m knee-deep in the filthy lagoon.
Halfway to the island with nowhere to hide, Emily splashed quickly to its shore.
The slippery roots knotted into the muddy banks wouldn’t have been a problem if she had taken her time. The far side of the island, where field scientists sometimes docked their canoes, had more of a beach, and the island was so small—just two or three times the size of their apartment. If Emily had stopped to think about it, she could have traced the shoreline, stepping onto the sand and out of sight without too much trouble.
She could have played it cool.
Instead, Emily felt as if the entire world were staring at her…and one goose, in particular. While Emily scrambled in the slick gray clay, he honked his displeasure as he nipped at her hair. Emily barely had time to scream before she lost her footing and stumbled backward into the muck. As she fell, she threw her book haphazardly to shore. It landed safely in a tangle of reeds—but her phone wasn’t so lucky. Emily clutched it to her chest as she paddled through the shallows, panicking as she pulled herself up onto the clay. “Please,” she said, wiping a strand of algae from its screen with the hem of her shirt. “Work.”
She held her breath as she stared into her smudged reflection….
But the screen was dark, and water dribbled from the headphone jack.
Emily sighed as she shook her phone dry.
There was nothing to do but wait.
The island was a rookery, which meant it was full of nests. Emily knew that, but hadn’t really understood in her bones what it meant until she’d climbed soddenly ashore, constellations of slimy duckweed clinging to her skin. The birds had scattered at first, feathers literally flying. It wasn’t until they returned, shrieking and nipping at her legs and fingers, that Emily realized what she’d gotten herself into.
Soaked from her fall, she found the first tree with a Y-shaped branch that she could reach and climbed it, not stopping until she was sitting as still as possible in the crook of its low-slung limbs. Barely daring to breathe. The trunk was stained white with droppings, and even though Emily was alone on the island—alone and surrounded by a thousand shrieking birds—she could hear her mother sighing as if she were right there with her, frowning at the fresh scratches on Emily’s legs and at her soaking wet shorts.
One by one, the birds settled back into the island.
All except for one old Canada goose with a crooked wing. The one that had tried to eat her hair. He was plump from overfeeding, but—hungry for more—he had curled up at the foot of Emily’s tree and honked mournfully at her. Ignoring him, Emily squeezed the power button on her phone until it vibrated to life in her dirty hands. Unaware that she’d been holding her breath, she exhaled when the screen glowed brightly with a picture of herself and Elliot before the surgery. As usual, there were no missed calls and no texts. No stars or hearts or likes. Her friends were all busy making new friends at camp and her mom was still on the couch, her hands chapped from overwashing as she watched the news and fretted about Elliot.
Preoccupied.
Propping her phone in the fork of a nearby branch, Emily leaned into the tree and watched the sun start its long descent into the horizon. Pinks and fading yellows streaked the sky, filtering through the Spanish moss on the tiny island. Emily pulled off her shoes and peeled off her socks, curling her pruned toes and smiling. Even though it would be dark soon, she wasn’t in a hurry to go home. Not yet. It had taken all her nerve to get to where was and she was determined to enjoy the view for as long as she could.
To remember every minute of it, so she could tell Elliot.
Emily closed her eyes and grinned.
It felt good in the tree. On the island. Away from everything.
She could stay there all night if she wanted to, balanced on the sun-warmed branch next to the family of ducks nestling down into their own feathers. No one could see her from land—not the joggers, anyway. She’d just be a blur to them. And early-morning birders would have to know where to look; Emily had made sure to tuck herself behind the foliage so she was nearly invisible to the outside world.
Like a stowaway.
Hidden from view, Emily daydreamed about running away for real—about making her mother worry about her for a change—as she watched a blue heron stalk and swallow a live toad. She raised her phone, zooming in on the toad as it kicked its legs, grappling against the bird’s sharp beak until it tired itself out. She swore that she could see it kicking as it slipped down the heron’s long neck.
“Gross,” she whispered, snapping picture after picture for Elliot.
“Gross, gross, gross.”
Sensing her presence, the heron whipped its head toward Emily, its entire body tensing as its yellow eyes locked on her. Like she was next. Emily held the heron’s unblinking gaze until it decided to move on, picking its way through the reeds on long black legs without a backward glance in her direction. As soon as she lost sight of it, Emily slouched against her branch, her cheeks flushed from the encounter.
She wouldn’t be able to sleep through the night in the tree, she decided.
But it did feel good to be the unpredictable one, for once.
The wild child.
Settling back down into her perch, Emily scrolled through her camera roll and smiled, then checked her messages again out of habit. She still didn’t have any, even though it was late enough for a normal mom to start freaking out. She double-checked to make sure that she still had service on the island, that her mother would be able to reach her if she wanted to…
But Emily was fully connected—that wasn’t the problem.
It would almost be worth it to stay propped in the poop-white branches, she thought, if it would make her mom get up off the couch and notice that she was gone.
Even if it meant spending the night with the heron.
Emily sighed and slipped her phone into her back pocket.
Time moved slowly on the island, so close to home and so far away.
The news crew was still camped out next to the drained pool at the San Juan Pilastro Resort and Casino, huddling beneath tarps and umbrellas as they filmed the rain-whipped reporter. Alejo knew exactly where they were because he had been watching them ever since the cameraman with the scraggly beard had clapped, scolding Alejo for waving in his shot.
“Oye, boy,” the man had shouted. “No dancing at the funeral!”
The crew had all laughed, yelling at Alejo to get lost. Red-cheeked, Alejo had hidden behind a barrel-chested palmetto, the two melting pints of vanilla ice cream still cold in his hands. After the laughter died down, he’d leaned into the rain, creeping through the cascading bougainvillea to the cabana.
Careful not to get in their way again.
That was hours ago.
Since then, not much had happened.
The paths were littered with leaves—casualties of the wind—and some of the bigger hibiscus had been crushed on the tiles, smeared into pulpy reds and pinks. But most of the flowers were still blooming from their branches. There was no flooding and no felled trees. Not yet, anyway. La tormenta del siglo or not, everything was mostly the same as when Alejo had first ventured into the storm.
Only darker.