The Raft (11 page)

The smaller fish jumped right out of the water where any bird worth its feathers snatched them up. As they came nearer, I wondered whether I could use my hoodie as a net, either to scoop some out or catch them as they jumped. I took it in both hands and stretched it out, then doubled my grip. Everything depended on whether or not they avoided the raft.

Kneeling, poised with my hoodie in trembling hands, I held my breath as the edge of the bird cloud reached me. All the calls and cries and screeches were a cacophony after so much silence. The small fish were so close I could almost reach out and touch them. Something warm and sticky plopped on my head. Then on my shoulder.

Bird poop.

Like a reflex, my nose scrunched, causing me to wince in pain. As I did, several of the little flying fish jumped up, so close, and with my hoodie I swatted them down into the raft, where they flopped on the bottom.

“Yes!” I hooted. “Take that
SURVIVAL AT FRICKIN’ SEA!
Woohoo!”

The bait ball seemed to stall over me, and I put the hoodie over my head to ward off the assault of the birds. Their cries continued as I watched the small fish die. Too bad. I needed them.

One of the fish finally stopped thrashing right next to the plastic Santa Claus. As I reached for it, the Santa Claus jumped about six inches off the bottom of the raft.

I fell back as something bumped my butt, shoving me upward.

“Oh, God.”

Something was under the raft. Something big.

thirty-five

I tried to see into the water. There were small fish and larger shapes under them, a couple feet long, which were probably tuna or wahoo or ulua. But under those? Could be anything. The guys who fished on Midway sometimes complained of Galapagos sharks trailing them, stealing their fish just as they try to haul them aboard.

Another bump from under.

Crap.

I stopped trying to look. My hands began to shake. Maybe I didn’t want to know.

Please don’t tip over the raft.

I picked up one of the little flying fish. If I didn’t get tipped over and eaten, I would still be hungry.

I grabbed my hook and stuck the fish on.

“Sorry, little guy.”

Gripping the line, I wrapped it once around my fist and tossed it over.

The line was short, about two feet, so the fish was barely in the water. Immediately, there was a tug. On Midway we fished with huge reels attached to the back of boats. But I’d been fishing for small stuff with a rod before on my grandparents’ lake in Wisconsin. I knew enough to wait, let them set the hook in their mouth, then yank. I waited.

Another tug.

I yanked.

The fish yanked back and the raft began to move. It was all I could do to hang on. I had a good-size one.

Sitting back down so I could use my whole body’s weight, I held tight. I wished I’d remembered to wrap the hoodie around it, just in case the line did end up being sharp enough to cut through my skin. But it was too late, so the only thing to do was hold on as best as I could.

One fist at a time, I started pulling the line in. The striped face of a yellow skipjack appeared above the water, its eyes shiny and dark. The sight gave me more strength and I pulled harder. The fish was almost all the way above water, and I grinned, even though I had no idea how I was going to gut the thing.

“Oh man! Max, I caught a—”

The words died as a big open mouth with rows of razor-sharp teeth burst out of the water just below the skipjack and snapped shut, taking a mouthful of water and most of the fish below the waves. The shark was gone almost before I’d registered what happened.

I let out a belated but still startled shriek.

As hard as I’d been pulling, the force brought the rest of the skipjack into my lap. I quickly shoved it off, onto the floor of the raft where it lay, bloody, next to the Santa and the other little flying fish.

Another bump under my butt made me shriek louder.

“Get out of here!” I started waving my hands, shooing the birds, hoping maybe if they moved, the bait ball would leave, and take that shark with it. “Go! Go away!”

Within seconds, the birds had moved off, and the surface of the water no longer churned. The bait ball had moved on.

My gaze went to the mangled skipjack, who stared up at me with glazed, lifeless eyes. Well, the shark had done me one favor. I no longer had to worry about how to gut the thing.

I blew out the breath I didn’t even know I’d been holding. My thirst wasn’t at the point where I was desperate enough to try eating the eyeballs or sucking the spinal fluid.

Skipjack was in the tuna family, and I liked sashimi, which was raw tuna. It couldn’t be that different, could it?

The fish was slippery and slid right out of my hands. Then I picked it back up and cradled it with one arm against my chest. My white camisole was already filthy; a few fish guts wouldn’t make it any worse.

I dug out a piece of pink flesh with my fingers.

“It’s just sashimi.” Although my mom always let the tuna rest in the fridge for a day before she cut and served it, I didn’t have that luxury, and with the sun going down before too long, I might not be able to even dry it in time. If I wanted to eat that day, I would have to eat that fish. Raw.

Sashimi. Just sashimi.

I popped the morsel into my mouth and chewed. The fish was slimy and salty and I started to gag, but managed to swallow.

“Not that bad.” Saying it out loud didn’t make it any more real. But I dug in for another piece and ate that too. Trying to distract myself, so I wasn’t totally focused on the dead fish in my lap, I decided to count my blessings.

I’d caught a fish. I’d actually caught a fish.

Another good thing? Catching the fish in the open ocean meant I wouldn’t have to worry about diseases I could catch from eating reef fish. Like ciguatera. Fish caught the toxin by eating small reef creatures and cooking didn’t even kill the poison.

Ciguatera brought nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. And after those symptoms, neurological ones set in, like the loss of coordination and a constant feeling of pins and needles.

Nasty. And pretty much incurable too.

I popped another piece of fish in my mouth. Yup, I was very happy to be eating from the ocean.

My stomach gurgled.

I swallowed and paused. Maybe my poor shrunken tummy was just happy to be getting some protein after three days of nothing but a few off-colored Skittles. I continued eating, hoping Max would wake up so he could have some too. I considered trying to rouse him.

But I didn’t.

I kept eating until I was so stuffed, I burped.

I set aside the rest of the fish for Max, hoping he’d wake up soon to eat something. But it didn’t take long for what remained of the skipjack to smell. The only smart thing to do would be to get rid of it, because as soon as I got hungry again, I’d be tempted. I threw the remains as far away from the raft as I could and washed my hands in the salt water. I lay back against the side of the raft and tried to adjust to the full feeling in my stomach.

It wasn’t very hard to do. Then Max woke up. If he knew I’d eaten, he didn’t say anything about it. And I didn’t mention it. I just listened.

thirty-six

Max sounded so determined. “I refused to come that close ever again without winning. I started eating again. Over the summer, I grew about five inches and put on thirty pounds.”

“Wow, that’s a lot.” I guiltily stifled another burp. “But how did you get back to one twelve?”

“After that I wrestled one thirty-five and was state champ the next two years.”

I smiled. “Congratulations.”

“Wrestling wasn’t everything. She meant more to me. I would have given it up for her. I would have given anything up for her.”

I wondered who
she
was.

Max told me. “Brandy Thomas and I started going out sophomore year. Kinda weird, since I’d known her since kindergarten, when she wore her black hair in braids.”

Growing up as I had, that was hard for me to imagine. I hadn’t known anyone since kindergarten. Sometimes I missed that, having classmates I had known forever. Was it odd to miss something I’d never had?

Max went on. “Sophomore year, the girls who had been about my height were suddenly shorter than I was. They saw me differently. I saw me differently. I’d never dated, not even prom.”

I’d never dated. I’d never even talked to a boy, really, other than a couple I met at AJ’s pool. Would I ever get the chance to date? I realized a tear was trickling down my face and I quickly wiped it away.

Max smiled. “When homecoming came up, my friends kept telling me to ask someone out. Brandy and I had always been friendly. She lived out on the reservation and was quiet, but funny. Very opinionated. Good in school. A few weeks before homecoming our sophomore year, I walked up to her at her locker and asked her to homecoming. That was it. Neither of us ever dated anyone else.”

I smiled. Max sounded so in love.

“Brandy’s mom never liked me that much.”

I wondered how she could possibly not like him. I barely knew him, but I could just tell he was a good person.

“I was always polite. But she didn’t trust me with her daughter. I could tell. Maybe she had a feeling, an intuition. Maybe she knew something we didn’t.”

I wasn’t sure what that meant, but Max didn’t say anything else.

thirty-seven

Evening came and I took stock. Max was asleep again. With all I’d had to eat, I felt so much better. I even had to pee for the first time in a while. But I was still sunburned, and the piercing in my nose was hurting more and more.

And I was still stuck in a raft in the middle of nowhere.

Clouds covered up the stars and moon, making the night very black. I took out the Coastal Commander, extracted the flashlight, and turned it on. The immediate area of the raft lit up as I shone the light around me and checked on Max. I clicked it off, and black swallowed everything. That dark was even worse than before.

So I clicked it back on.

I couldn’t keep turning the flashlight off and on all night. I held a flare in my hand. It would be a waste. I needed to save those in case I heard a plane or a boat. Fumbling in the dark, I stuck everything back in the Coastal Commander and fastened it into its pocket.

Then I laid my head on the side of the raft and tried to sleep. The water was calm, pushing us up and down so slightly I barely noticed.

I’d grown used to the motion.

And the quiet. At first, the quiet was so loud. There was so much nothing that I couldn’t block it out. But I was getting used to that too, the quiet. Which is probably why, when I dozed off, the distant sound woke me up.

My eyes blinked in the darkness, straining to see. The sound didn’t register at first and it took me a moment to break it down.

A drone.

I knew that sound. It was a C-130.

The Coast Guard.

Rescue.

I waved both my arms. “Hey! Hey!”

Stupid. Like they could hear or see you.

The flares. I needed the flares.

“Max! A plane!”

Patting with my hands in the dark, I found the pocket and unzipped it, then pulled out the Coastal Commander. I turned on the flashlight and shone it into the bag, then pulled out a flare. Was it like the one Max had used? I held it closer so I could read the directions. From what I could tell, I just needed to strip off the wax seal and pull the string.

How long had Max’s flare lasted?

Should I wait until the plane sounded closer?

It still sounded far away.

There were more flares. I could use this one as a demo, and then wait until the plane was closer to fire up another.

I propped the flashlight in my mouth so I could use both hands, then peeled the wax off the top of the flare. I held it out in one hand, pulled the string, and then pointed it away from the raft. I flicked off the flashlight and waited for the fireworks.

I heard a low hiss and some puffing. But there was no light.

A slight breeze picked up and I couldn’t breathe. Coughing and choking, I switched hands, pointed the flare downwind, and turned the flashlight on.

Orange smoke. That was the only thing flooding out of the flare. Nothing but orange smoke. Heaving the flare into the water, I swore.

I’d lit the wrong kind. A smoke flare was for daytime.

I shone the flashlight back in the bag. Two left. I was more careful about reading the labels. One was another smoke signal flare so the other had to be the real kind. I pulled it out and readied myself, waiting until the plane came closer.

So I sat there, heartbeat pulsing in my ears, hands shaking.

“Come on, come on.”

The drone grew closer, although with the cloudy sky, I still couldn’t see any lights and had no way of telling how close it truly was. Then I couldn’t wait any longer. I hoped the flare would go for at least ten minutes, maybe more. And that C-130 sounded like it was only a minute or two away.

I put the flashlight in my mouth and got up on my knees. I peeled off the wax, said a silent prayer, and pointed the flare toward the direction of the plane. I pulled the fuse and held out the flare with one hand, keeping the other tight on the side of the raft.

Sparks flew out and with a great rushing whistle, the flare went off. And up. The cylinder in my hand was empty.

All the fireworks followed an arc up into the sky where they lasted about ten seconds then dispersed into small stars trickling back down.

My mouth dropped open, and the flashlight fell into the water. “No!” I grabbed for it but was too late, and could only watch the light spiral down and around, down and around, growing fainter and fainter, then finally fading away.

With engines roaring, the C-130 burst through the clouds overhead, red lights blinking.

“Hey! I’m down here!” I waved my arms.

But the plane didn’t slow.

The pilot didn’t dip his wings in acknowledgment.

No one dropped out in a parachute.