Just a couple of problems. No anchor. And then she didn’t have the stomach for that kind of thing. Besides, he was the one who netted the fishthat they ate raw to stay alive now that the supplies were almost gone, so offing him was not her best idea.
Her worst one, however, was easy to pinpoint. She kept asking herself why she’d let that tour guide talk her and her friends into joining the cheap cruise from the mainland to the tropical island paradise of Milaou. His tiny-toothed grin flashed through her mind. She wondered if he was still smiling down there in that death trap of a ferry.
Miranda sat up as Nodfarker leaned over the side of the boat and dragged the net through the water. In minutes he had two lively, silver herring on board where he dropped them on top of the supply box and slit them open before their tails stopped flipping.
She turned her head. I can’t eat one more piece of herring. And if anyone even mentions sashimi to me when this is over, he dies.
“Here’s your share.” Nodfarker held out a chunk of grayish fish.
The smell churned her stomach, but she took the piece between her thumb and forefinger, then looking away and holding her breath, she swallowed it whole.
“You’re welcome,” he said, nibbling at the edges of his portion, taking his time as if he had a juicy Big Mac in his mouth.
Her stomach growled, demanding more food, at the same time bile rose into her throat. Lurching over the side, she cast the chunk of herring back into the sea.
When she turned around, none of them seemed to have noticed she’d hurled precious food. Winker averted his gaze. The guy whose name began with a B had his eyes rolled to Heaven, mumbling something she couldn’t hear. Nodfarker was chewing with his eyes closed.
She swiped her mouth with the back of her hand and swallowed saliva to wash down the bitter taste. She had to keep from thinking about her hunger and that revolting meal on top of the supply box.
“Where did the name Nodfarker come from?” she asked.
“Say what?” He opened his eyes and fixed them on her.
“Nodfarker. Your name.”
Winker doubled over in laughter, and the other one stopped mumbling long enough to manage a pale smile.
“It’s Ned Parker,” he said and sliced the second herring into fours. “Your ears must have been plugged with saltwater when I pulled you into the boat and said hi.”
Miranda flinched, remembering her plunge into the sea. She’d felt queasy and left her friends below to go on deck for some air. As she’d stood looking over the railing, the ferry had suddenly rolled, pitching her headfirst into the water. She’d kicked frantically, but it was as though thousands of fingers clutched at her, dragging her deeper. That’s when a single hand descended from above, grasped hers, and pulled her out of the water. Now she knew it had been Ned’s hand that had found hers. He’d saved her life.
He passed her another sliver of fish.
She took it, but this time she didn’t put it in her mouth. Instead, she studied him, doling out the herring to the others, making the portions equal. He moved deliberately, and she flashed on Communion and the way the priest presented the wafer and the cup. There was ceremony when Ned served their one meal.
On closer inspection, he wasn’t really that creepy. He was about her age, maybe a couple of years older. Nineteen? His dark hair had a boyish way of curling across his forehead and his chestnut-colored eyes were steady when he looked at her. Maybe it had been that wretched name that had made him seem so disagreeable. Maybe it had been the terror of falling into the sea and the dark, drenching rain that hadn’t eased until now.
“So how’d you get on that ferry?” Miranda asked.
“We wanted to see Milaou before heading home.” Ned shrugged. “We were down to our last few bucks, so we stowed away in this lifeboat for a free ride.”
“Bad decision.” Miranda bit off a small bite of fish. She’d try nibbling and hope she could keep it down this time.
“Better than some,” Ned said, tossing the scales and bones and entrails of the fish overboard.
“We got away. I don’t think anybody else escaped being sucked under when that ferry capsized.”
Ned held out the bottle of water and the cap. “Three capfuls each, okay? That gives us about four more days, and then we do a rain dance.”
The irony wasn’t lost on her. For almost a week they’d huddled under the tarp, wishing the rain would stop, bailing fresh water into the salty sea to stay afloat, and drinking from the sky. They’d filled the one container they had, and now they already needed to ration every drop.
She sipped her last capful of water, handed it to Winker, and closed her eyes. It was too hard to stare out over the endless water while knowing that in that plastic bottle only four days’ supply was between them and slow, thirsty death. She looked up, hoping to see clouds again.
“We’ll head south.” Ned held up the compass. “Try to find a shipping lane and pray a ship comes along.”
“Why south?” Miranda asked as she opened her eyes and focusing on his face, so all that ocean became a blue backdrop.
“Warmer weather. More chance for a cruise ship.” He shrugged. “I’m guessing.” He reached for the oars. “Time for my work out,” he said as he dug the oars into the choppy sea, then stopped, checked the compass, and rowed onward.
He was used to exercising. Miranda could tell, and as she slowly gnawed at the herring, she distracted herself by admiring the way his biceps rippled under his skin. After about twenty minutes, he stood, unzipped his fly, and sent an arc of pee over the side before he zipped up and leaned back against the side of the boat, resting.
Miranda felt her cheeks flame with embarrassment, then with anxiety. Peeing during the daylight hours and the problems it presented for her hadn’t occurred to her until that moment, and until that moment she hadn’t needed to pee. Until now, she’d managed bathroom privacy at night when the others were asleep, but today she couldn’t wait that long.
When the other two turned their backs on her and followed Ned’s example, she clenched her jaw then asked, “How do I pee on this pleasure cruise?”
Ned grinned. “Guess it’s over the side for you, mate.” He faced away. Winker and the other guy did as well. “You better strip from your waist down, hang over the side, and yell when you want us to pull you in.”
She grumbled under her breath about the injustice and the indignity and the downright crappiness of having to take off her pants, hang over the side of this…this rubberized excuse for a—
“Done?” Ned asked.
“No!”
“All right. Just asking.”
They kept their backs to her as she slipped into the water, clinging to the side, peeing and feeling lonely on the outside of the boat while they sat inside waiting, smug in their maleness.
“I’m finished,” she yelled, and Ned and Winker hauled her in with their heads turned away, then went to their places, keeping their eyes averted as she dried and dressed. The other guy leaned back, mumbling at the sky.
Once she’d finished and sat in her usual spot, Ned nudged the mumbler in the leg. “Hey, Blakie. Entertain us.” Ned answered Miranda’s next question before she asked it. “He’s a math whiz. Give him any math problem and he’ll solve it in his head. He does it all day.”
“And Blakie?” She cocked her head so he’d know how dumb that name was to her.
“That’s how his mom called him in for dinner when we were kids.”
They were longtime friends. She was the outsider in two ways: a female and a new acquaintance. “What about Winker? That’sunusual, as names go.” She hadn’t meant to say that. It had slipped out.
They stared at her, and she had no way to cover her embarrassment at being so rude. She shifted her gaze, but Winker broke the tension and pointed to his jumpy cheek. “Obvious, right?”
Ned smiled and Miranda felt grateful for being forgiven so easily. “Winker’s my word guy,” he said. “So I got things covered, right?
One solves my math problems; the other one gets me through English Lit.”
It became the routine, then, that each morning Ned portioned out the fish and the few remaining rations from the wretched box of stale supplies. Blakie amazed them by doing high-level math problems without paper and pencil. They’d spend hours trying to prove him wrong, but he never was, and he never seemed to think he’d done anything especially brilliant. He gave answers to problems like ten to the square root of 675.444 the way Miranda would say, “Two plus two equals four.”
“Blakie does it again,” Ned said, returning their pencil to the supply box for safekeeping. “Damned kid was always a genius.”
He might be a genius, Miranda thought, but as remarkable as the inside of his head had to be, he was one hundred percent unremarkable in any way on the outside. His brown hair hung limp to his shoulders and his eyes matched in color and texture. Miranda pictured him as he would look in clothes other than the Santa Cruz Slugs tee he’d chosen to wear the day of the ferry disaster. She imagined him with a wrinkled shirt—not quite white—a flip phone in one pocket and pens stuck in the other. One pen would, of course, have leaked blue, but he wouldn’t notice that. He wouldn’t notice the mustard or catsup stains on the leg of his jeans, either, or think that his sandals and socks were the biggest anti-fashion statement anyone could make.
Still, he had a gentleness to him. Some girl might want to save him from that not-quite-white and wrinkled shirt. She might find his exterior appealing because she loved his genius and wanted to free him from common concerns like fashion. Geniuses ought to have companions with average IQs and tons of common sense. She hoped Blakie would find one, but he had to get rid of that nickname. No girl would sleep with someone named Blakie.
On the fourth day, when Ned passed the bottle to her, she said she’d wait. They all voted to wait after that. Without saying so, they’d agreed to give themselves one extra day; they’d give the heavens more time to send them fresh water. But that night, thirst overcame them, and they drank their portions under the clear sky and the full moon. There was no rain the next day, either, and the moon flooded the ocean with brightness, taunting them day and night with water they couldn’t drink.
“Eskimos wish on the moon to bring them back to life.” Winker, who never said much of anything, sat and stared up, his cheek still for a change.
Miranda drew in her knees and rested her chin on them. “Eskimos make wishes like that?” “Prayers, maybe,” Winker said. “I can’t remember exactly. I read about it when I did an eighth grade social studies report on Alaska.”
“What happens when it’s dark of the moon? How do they wish…pray for it to bring them back then?”
Winker’s tic kicked into high gear, and he stammered, “Uh…don’t…know. But when it’s not up there,” he pointed skyward, “it’s…supposed to be…gathering the dead souls…taking them to earth again.”
She pulled the blanket over her head, shutting out the moon and trying not to listen to the ruffling of the waves against the boat. When she felt a tug on her blanket, she stuck her head out and stared at Winker.
“S…sorry I said…that.”
His eyes, shaped like teardrops, made him look as if he suffered from perpetual melancholy, and Miranda had an urge to touch his cheek. She thought maybe she could smooth the nervous tic away with her fingers, but she held back. Touching seemed too intimate for someone she barely knew; besides, he didn’t invite it. He was distant, tucked inside his quiet sadness. This was their first real talk.
“I’m not hiding because of what you said, Winker.” But that wasn’t true. The minute he’d told her the myth, something caught inside her chest, and she didn’t want to see the moon. She didn’t want the temptation to wish on it or pray to it to bring her back from death. If she did, she was afraid it would be like she was giving up on any hope of rescue and life. She couldn’t do that. Ever.
She shivered in the sudden wind that seemed colder than what they’d had since they’d started this survival journey.
Ned took out the compass, then dug the oars into the sea with more force than usual. When he pulled them into the boat after half an hour, he didn’t look in their direction, even though all eyes were on him, asking if there was a problem.
“Look,” he finally said, “it’s getting colder, so we should move closer together, especially at night.” He scooted next to Miranda and Winker. “Come on Blakie, let’s sleep in a pile like Wild Things.” He laughed, but it had a dryness to it.
So that night they huddled under the tarp, combining their blankets, their body heat, and not a little fear. During the night, Miranda felt Ned’s arm come around her shoulder and pull her into him. At first she held back, but she was tired and cold and the sound of his heart comforted her with its steady beat. She liked the feel of his hand in hers.
When the sun found them, her head rested on the bottom of the boat. She pushed the tarp away, blinking into the brightness of morning and staring at Ned across from her, drawing the oars in steady strokes through the water.
After an hour, he traded off with Blakie, then Blakie traded off with Winker. Miranda took her turn, too.
After another hour, Ned checked his compass, then told her to stop, and she leaned back to stare at the cloudless sky.
Blakie still moved his lips, solving math problems in his head, hiding in a place where numbers added up to perfection and the messy reality of being stranded in a lifeboat didn’t exist. This aimlessly floating island had nothing to do with the logical beauty of math. Miranda wished she had an inner place like that to distract herself. She was sick of huddling under that tarp to escape.
“We all better cover up.” Ned looked around at Blakie and Winker, who sat together. “Less sun, less water loss.” Ned tried for a smile. “You’ll have to wait for that suntan until you get back home, Miranda.”
Back Home. The place she’d wanted to escape for the past two years because her mother had turned into such a bitch. Her father had simply turned and run. The divorce was definitely going to be ugly and she didn’t want any part of it. She’d already had enough of the nightly fights with the screaming and breakage of family glass. This trip with her senior class had come at exactly the right time. She’d withdrawn enough money from her college savings to make it, and she’d relished every moment away from Back Home. Every moment until she’d landed in the sea and all of her friends, along with hundreds of others on that overcrowded ferry, had been sucked underwater…forever.
“Where’s Back Home for you?” she asked, directing the question to any of the three, trying to erase the images of her drowned classmates.
Ned answered. “Northern California. A beach town. We’ve surfed together since we could hop on a board. You?”
“Iowa. Corn-fed and Midwestern, through and through.” For a moment, the taste of hot-buttered corn on the cob filled her mouth, but it vanished almost as quickly as it had come. She licked her lips and found they were sore. Her head ached too, so she burrowed under the tarp and slept, dreaming of water, dreaming of butter and corn and the farm—the real Back Home.
When she’d been little it had been a perfect place. A tire swing at the side of the house. Mom pushing her high, so she could tap the tree branches with her toes. Dad in the kitchen every midday for dinner, his face streaked by sweat and plowed earth, earth that had belonged to the Langlies for three generations. That lifestyle had vanished along with the farm. Poor crops for three years running. Dad sold the land before he lost it to the bank. Then they’d moved to the city where none of them—
“Blakie!” Ned’s voice shattered her restless sleep, and she scooted from under the tarp.
Ned knelt over Blakie, first pressing Blakie’s wrist between his hands, then shaking his shoulder, then pushing hard on his chest. Again. Again. “Wake up, damn you!”
Winker looked at Ned, then down at Blakie and the knife lying next to his body. Then Winker fell back against the side of the boat and buried his face in
his arms.
A thin red line trickled from Blakie’s wrist and across to where Miranda sat. She threw the blanket over it and watched as the red soaked through.
Ned pulled Blakie onto his lap, holding him against his chest, swaying back and forth. “You idiot. You effin’ idiot.”
As the sun settled low, hovering just above the line between sky and sea, Ned finally released the body of his friend and set him on the bottom of the boat. “Give me that blanket.” Ned held out his hand to Miranda, and she pushed the blanket toward him with her foot, not wanting to touch it with all of Blakie’s life soaked into its fibers.
“Winker, help me.” Ned was taking charge again, giving orders.
Winker spread the blanket and Ned rolled Blakie inside. “Miranda, take one leg. Winker, take the other one.”
“Wait!” Miranda stayed where she was. “You have to say something. I mean, you have to say some words.”
When her grandmother died, the priest had said lots of words. Long life. Going to a better place. Take time for grieving, but move on to rejoice and celebrate your loved one.
“Okay. Say something.” Ned let Blakie rest on the bottom of the boat again and waited.
She didn’t have any words. Her mouth was sticky, and when she tried to focus on Ned, he blurred.
“Where are you going…and what do you wish?” Winker whispered, but his words took to the wind and sounded as if they’d been said loudly, maybe in a church sepulcher. His cheek twitched and he brushed at his eyes, but they were dry. He had no tears to wipe away. “The old moon asked the three.”
“What in the hell is that?” Ned snapped.
“Something my mom used to read to me,” Winker said. “It’s all I can think…think to say.”
The only sound was the slapping of water against the side of the boat. Then Ned lifted Blakie by his arms. Winker took one leg and Miranda the other, and they laid the body along the thick band of rubber that separated them from the sea. It was Winker who pushed Blakie over the edge. He slipped away without a splash and disappeared beneath the surface.
Two and Twenty Dark Tales Page 27