by R. T. Martin
Maya tried to find Paige and the sandbar amidst the waves. It took her a moment, but her friend was still there, her board still covering her, a poor excuse for a tent. In the time Maya had spent getting thrown off the board and sloshed around underwater, she’d ended up closer to the sandbar than she’d been when she fell off. All that work for nothing except hitting her head and nearly drowning.
Paige had been right. There was no way Maya would be able to make it to shore. She hadn’t even made it to the part of the coast that really scared her, the sharp jagged rocks right by the beach.
Maya turned the board back toward the sandbar and started paddling for it. She made it there in half the time it had taken her to paddle the same distance away.
As Maya pulled her board up onto shore and used it to block some of the rain, Paige poked her head out from underneath her own board.
“I told you that was a bad idea! I lost sight of you. How far did you make it?”
“Not far.” Maya lay down on the wet sand next to Paige and covered herself with the board just as her friend was doing. It wasn’t much, but it did block some of the rain. Maya tried to look out across the water, but staring at the waves made her dizzy. When she sat up to get a better look, she realized the dizziness wasn’t just from the water, but rather the splitting pain coming from her head. Every move she made, her head ached and she felt slightly nauseous. Maya may not have cut her head open, but she seemed to have hit it hard enough for it to have left a lasting effect.
“We need to get to shore!” Shouting made her head throb. But Maya knew that Paige must be in more pain than she was.
Paige shook her head. “That’s not going to happen during the storm. We just have to wait it out!”
“If I can just make it to our phones . . .” Maya trailed off.
“What made you turn back?” Paige asked, still yelling over the thunderous sound of rain hitting the boards.
“What?”
“Why did you turn back?” Paige said slower and louder.
“I got knocked off,” Maya replied.
Paige shook her head and winced in pain again. “If you try to go out again and don’t make it to shore, it makes the situation a thousand times worse. I won’t be the only one who needs medical attention.” She looked out at the waves toward the shore. “We have to wait it out.”
Maya didn’t like it, but Paige was right. I nearly died out there once, she thought. And this storm is just getting worse. But it has to let up soon.
As if nature were trying to prove her wrong, lightning flashed again, followed by the thunder that sounded more like a train running them over. A gust of wind swept past that was so strong it nearly sent their boards sailing out of their hands.
The storm was not letting up. In fact, it was only getting worse.
Chapter 6
The sky was so dark it might as well have been nighttime. The only light was from the constant lightning flashes that made Maya think of a broken strobe light—uneven and random bursts of bright in the dark. The rain was heavy and only getting heavier. The surfboards were doing next to nothing in the way of protecting the two girls. The wind was pushing the rain at different angles each moment. First it would pound on their right sides, then the wind would shift, and their left sides would get soaked.
Maya stood up, fighting against her dizziness and the beating rain, to try and arrange the boards in a way that might keep them a little drier. First, she tried to prop them into the sand at an angle so they would be a little more like a tent, but the wind blew the two boards straight out of the ground. If they hadn’t had their ankle leashes still attached, they would have lost the boards forever. The fact that Paige’s leash was attached to her right leg was an unforeseen blessing. Maya shuddered as she thought about how painful it would have been for her friend’s broken left leg to be jerked in the direction of the flying board.
She tried a few other ways of arranging the boards, but the result was always that they either flew away or provided little shelter. In the end, they both decided the most practical thing was just to lie on their backs holding the boards over their bodies. At least that way, they could be sure they wouldn’t lose their only means of getting back to shore.
It wasn’t just the rain that was a problem. Some of the waves were big enough to wash over the sandbar. Every few minutes, they’d get slammed with a wall of water, not big enough to push them into the ocean but definitely big enough to cause Paige significant pain. Maya saw Paige clench her jaw and slam her eyes shut every time it happened. She’d breathe deeply for a few moments, but when she noticed Maya looking, she did her best to look like she was perfectly fine. It was obvious she wasn’t.
The minutes dragged on. The intense pain in Maya’s head was becoming more of a dull ache, but Maya became more and more concerned for her friend. Paige was turning pale.
“Maybe we can make a splint or something,” Maya suggested.
“Out of what?” Paige asked through clenched teeth.
“My board. I’ll break it apart if it’ll help.”
“Maybe if I’d just sprained it, but you saw it. The bone needs to be reset. Do you know how to do that?”
Maya shook her head.
“Then I’d rather you didn’t touch it,” Paige said flatly.
Helplessness washed over Maya. The feeling reminded her of the fourth grade. There had been a class hamster, Scoots. Each kid got to take Scoots home for a weekend to care for and play with the little guy. During the weekend he spent at Maya’s house, she got home from surfing with her parents on Saturday and went into her room to feed the hamster. He was just lying there, breathing but not moving. She put food in his dish, but the hamster didn’t seem to care. All of Sunday, she sat at her desk with her chin on her hands watching the tiny animal in its cage. Scoots didn’t move. He didn’t eat. He didn’t drink water.
There was a part of Maya that knew what was happening, even if she didn’t want to accept it. She’d felt embarrassed and ashamed then—the same way she felt now on the sandbar. She was unable to help, paralyzed by circumstances beyond her control, forced to just wait for the outcome.
On Monday, after that weekend in fourth grade, Maya had brought Scoots’ cage back to the teacher, but the hamster wasn’t in it. Maya tried to shake the memory. Paige is going to be fine, she told herself. But even as she did, Maya wasn’t sure she believed it.
“I’m going to try again,” Maya said.
“Try what again?”
“I’m going to try for the shore.”
“Are you out of your mind?” Paige sounded equally confused and angry. “The storm’s gotten ten times worse! There’s no way you’ll make it!”
“You need help, and this thing isn’t letting up!”
Paige grabbed her hand. “You’re not going out there! I don’t care if I have to tackle you, broken leg or not! You’re not doing it!” She paused for a second, then gave Maya a sad little smile. “All in favor say ‘aye!’” she shouted over the rain and ocean.
Maya shook her head and started grinding her teeth, but she stayed put. “Aye.”
The storm seemed to have reached its peak. It was bad, but at least it wasn’t getting any worse. Anything worse would be a hurricane, Maya thought. She kept one hand holding her board in place and rhythmically pounded the other one on the sand. The pounding gave her something to focus on other than the lightning, the rain, and her friend’s broken leg. There wasn’t anything she could do, at least not right now.
Another flash of lightning lit up the dark water in front of them. Maya thought she saw something. The strobe effect of the storm made it hard to see clearly, but for just a second, she was sure it was there. It was floating farther out, somewhere between the sandbar and the coast, and even the briefest sight of it made Maya’s skin crawl and gave her the sensation of a centipede crawling up and down her spine.
She could have sworn she saw a shark’s fin cutting through the top of a wave.
Chap
ter 7
Maya spent the next twenty minutes scanning the water with each flash of lightning. The sloshing water and the rain made the task difficult. Everything was hazy at best, but she focused hard on the water in front of her. After maybe two dozen more flashes, she hadn’t caught sight of it again.
A part of her wanted to tell Paige what she’d seen. But Paige was looking worse and worse. Not only was she pale, but her lips were definitely blue now. She looked sick—like she had pretty bad case of the flu—and her eyes were fluttering as if she were actively trying to keep them from closing. The last thing she needed was to find out there might be a shark in the water. Besides, Maya had only seen it for a brief second. She didn’t want to worry her friend over nothing.
She stared hard, scanning the water to the best of her ability, but Maya didn’t see the fin again. She remembered what Paige had told her on their way to Ripper’s Cove—the news about the windsurfer who’d been attacked by a bull shark not long ago.
I’m just imagining things, she told herself. The idea of a shark was planted in her mind, and now she was just projecting the image onto something harmless in the water. I saw driftwood or some kid’s arm floatie. Nature wouldn’t be cruel enough to make this situation worse. She almost believed herself, but she continued to scan the water for the fin. Sooner or later, they were going to have to make their way across the waves and onto land. She wanted to be as sure as possible that there wasn’t a dangerous predator blocking their path.
It took what felt like at least an hour, but eventually the lightning flashes became less frequent. The rain began to get lighter, the sky turned from almost pitch black to a deep gray, and the wind began to die down.
“Okay, I think it’s safe,” Maya said. “I’m going to go for it.”
Paige didn’t respond.
“Paige?” Maya said, looking to her friend. Paige was unconscious, lying motionless beneath the surfboard. “Paige!” Maya shouted, shaking her gently. Paige didn’t wake up. Sometime during the storm, she must have passed out from pain or exhaustion. Either way, Maya needed to get her medical attention as soon as possible. Maya ran into the water, jumped on her board, and began paddling as fast as she could. Normally, she would have surfed into the shore, but this was no time to take unnecessary risks. She was far past the point where she and Paige had agreed to bail off their boards for fear of hitting the rocks below. She’d paddle until she could run.
It wasn’t easy. Her head felt as though it was full of cotton and the water wasn’t helping much either. There were still some swells and waves that Maya didn’t anticipate. They threatened to push her off the board, or at the very least, farther down the coast.
Just get to the phone. Just get to the phone. Just get to the phone, she kept repeating in her mind. Her heart was racing, and she was tired and cold, but she could deal with all that later—after she got Paige the help she needed.
Maya paddled harder than she had ever done in her life. As soon as she got close enough that she could touch the bottom, she got up, picked up her board, and sprinted to where she saw their bags. The towels were gone, and one of Paige’s shoes had vanished, having blown away in the storm, but the bags had miraculously stayed put.
Kneeling down, she undid her ankle leash and dug in her bag to get her phone. She tried to unlock her phone, but nothing happened. The screen stayed dark. Maybe it turned off, she desperately hoped. She held down on the power button, but still, nothing happened.
“No, no, no, no, no!” she shouted out loud without meaning to. It must have gotten too wet in the rain!
She tossed it back into her bag and began digging in Paige’s bag for her phone. She hit the power button, but just like with the first phone, nothing happened.
Maya didn’t know whether she wanted to scream or cry. Maybe both. She took a few deep breaths to force her mind to slow down. Home. Her parents. It would take nearly thirty minutes, but her parents should be there. They could call an ambulance, the Coast Guard, someone. Maya didn’t like the idea of leaving Paige out there alone, but there weren’t any other options at this point.
Maya looked at her friend lying on the sandbar. She felt like she was forgetting something, some pivotal danger that she hadn’t accounted for. There was some reason she couldn’t leave her friend lying there while she ran for help.
The tide! Maya’s mind screamed.
It would come in soon, which meant the water level near shore would be rising. It was approaching late afternoon, and within a couple of hours, the sandbar would be completely underwater. Even if Paige wasn’t already unconscious, she had a badly broken leg. She wouldn’t be able to tread water very well, much less swim to shore.
Every muscle in Maya’s body ached, but she gritted her teeth, strapped the ankle leash back on, and headed toward the water. She had to bring Paige back to shore. As painful as this will be for me, it’s going to be worse for Paige, she told herself as she ran back out into the waves.
She got on the board and started paddling. Her body wanted so badly to rest, but she continued.
She caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of her eye. It was about forty feet from her. It sliced through the water briefly before dipping under again.
Maya felt her heart skip a beat as she remembered the fin she thought she saw during the storm. She sat up on her board and stayed perfectly still. Maybe it was just her mind playing tricks on her again. There wasn’t anything there, just driftwood.
A seagull landed on the water and started cleaning its wing with its beak right where Maya thought she had seen the shark. She stared at it hard.
The bull shark leaped out of the water and attacked the bird so quickly that Maya flinched and fell off her board and into the water. When she resurfaced, the bird was gone, but a single feather was floating on the water where it had been.
Maya scrambled back on her board so quickly she surprised even herself. Back above the water and safely on her surfboard, she turned and started paddling as fast as she could back to the shore. The second she could run, she did, sprinting like her life depended on it—back onto the rocks of Ripper’s Cove, back onto dry land where that creature couldn’t get her.
She’d only seen it for a second, but she saw it clearly. Not only was it a bull shark, it was a full-grown adult—much bigger than even the ones at the zoo. Maya tried to control her breathing. Adrenaline was pumping through her body, and she realized she was shaking.
Just then, the shark’s dorsal fin appeared again. It cut through the water halfway between the coast and the sandbar. It was patrolling the waters between Maya and the spot where Paige lay helplessly on the ever-shrinking sandbar.
Chapter 8
Going back in the water wasn’t an option. Maya undid her ankle leash and put her shoes on. They were soaking wet, but that didn’t matter. She just needed something on her feet as she ran.
It was going to be a long run, and she had to make it fast. She slipped twice just trying to get off the beach of Ripper’s Cove. The shale rocks were slick with rain and slid out from under her feet. She picked herself up each time, and even though her hands hurt from each fall, she didn’t bother to check for injuries. There simply wasn’t time.
She bolted down the cove’s rocky beach, feeling especially unsteady, and up the hill onto the boardwalk. Running on the boardwalk was easier, but Maya still felt sluggish. She didn’t know exactly how long she had before Paige would be underwater. Shark infested water, Maya thought. As if it wasn’t bad enough that Paige might drown, the shark swimming around the sandbar would be sure to go for the easy, injured prey.
Maya started pumping her legs a little faster, fighting against her body’s urge to slow down. There was absolutely no way she was going to let anything else happen to Paige. She needed to make it home. Her parents could help, call the police or an ambulance, maybe the Coast Guard. They needed to get someone out to Ripper’s Cove and fast.
She reached the beach where they’d intended to surf
. Maya’s legs were burning from the effort. Her quads felt like they were going numb, and she was sure she’d have blisters on her feet for the next few days. Can’t stop, she thought. Push through it. Push through it.
She passed the dividing mound between the surfing part of the beach and the casual area, ran for another block, and hung a left toward the residential neighborhood. Still a couple of miles to go.
Her chest hurt from heavy breathing, and even though she was cold and wet, she could feel beads of sweat running down her back.
Just then she realized her parents might not be home. It was Saturday, and sometimes they went out to dinner on the weekends. But she didn’t stop. I’ll have to go to the neighbors, she thought, her feet pounding beneath her.
“You trying to ditch your friend?”
Maya snapped her head to the side. Kai was sitting on the front porch of his house with his feet up on the wooden railing.
Maya took a sharp turn. Instead of continuing down the street, she ran right up to Kai’s porch. For a second he looked nervous. He probably thought that Maya was coming to confront him . . . or worse.
“Give me your phone,” she said, trying to catch her breath.
“No,” he replied, looking confused.
“Give me your phone!” she cried louder and angrier.
“No!” he shouted back. “Use your own!”
“It’s broken! Give me yours!”
“Not if you broke your own phone. These things cost money, you know,” he said, holding up his cell phone and wiggling it in the air.
“I need it! Paige is—” Maya was trying to catch her breath and fight the pounding in her head. She swayed. Her vision was blurry, and she felt like she was about to pass out. “Paige is—” She tried to steady herself on the porch railing.