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The ship was rocking madly now, and the sky was midnight. Wind beat against the waves, lifting the boat as though it were nothing more than a piece of driftwood. McKenzie screamed below, and Noah cursed into the wind. Oddly enough, there was no rain. Just like the rumors go…

“We have to get down. We’re sure to get struck by the lightning up here!” I called out to Noah.

He nodded and we dropped down from the mast. I waited until he ran down to meet McKenzie and was out of range. There was no way we could get the other sails down. But I was going to try…

“Get down as low as you can! Go into the cabin!” I shouted to them on the deck. “The lightning is about to get worse.”

Noah ushered McKenzie into the lower cabin, but Katrina stood watching me with eyes full of fear. “Go now, Katrina!”

Suddenly the boom of the mast swung around, knocked loose by the wind and struck me. The pole slammed into my back, throwing me overboard from the ship. I heard Katrina cry my name before I hit the water. A wave tucked me under. I emerged hurriedly, fighting the sting of ocean water in my eyes and lungs. When I looked up, the boat was vertical, rising up on a wall of a wave.

She lifted higher and higher until the tip of the bow looked as though it could touch the sky, and then through a horrific flurry of lightning strikes, I watched as she capsized, with Katrina, McKenzie, and Noah still on board. Then I went under, pulled into a sea of black.

10

Castaway

Katrina

My mind raced faster than the wind around us as I watched Milo drop into the raging sea. McKenzie and Noah screamed for me to get inside, but I only ran forward to the hull. I looked for him, searching the water in desperation for only a second before the boat began to lift and sent me stumbling backward. The skin of my palm pinched against the railing as I squeezed it tightly, begging my arm strength to hold out long enough to brace against this rogue wave.

But then I was dangling in the air. The deck disappeared from beneath my feet as the bow rose higher. The boat tilted in the air, then came crashing upside down. I fought to keep my grip on the slippery smooth railing as the icy water slammed into me like a freight train. I thought the weight of a sailboat coming down on me would crush me, but somehow, it felt like falling through frigid air once I hit the water.

There was a brief moment where I thought I blacked out, but I came to quickly, realizing I was still holding onto the boat, which bobbed above me on the top of the water. I swam out from underneath and upward, bursting forth up to the surface like shattering glass. I opened my eyes, expecting to see the underside of the capsized boat floating like a white hill on a blue plain, but instead, there were only fragments. The boat was gone. Bits of canvas and wood floated around me, scattered about.

Wood?

The motorsailer was made of fiberglass. But these planks and wooden pieces looked like…

Suddenly the water shook with a boom that made me shriek. Thunder, I suspected. Salt stinging my eyes like venom, I searched my blurry surroundings for any sign of the others.

“Milo! McKenzie!” I cried, turning in a complete circle to survey the endless water on all sides of me. I saw no one. “Noah! Milo!”

My breaths became rapid as the fear settled into my skin like a stone sinking to the sand. I was alone as far as I could tell. The boat was in gone…destroyed? And the sky…it was the brightest blue. Not a sliver of evidence remained of the storm that had just struck our boat seconds earlier. And I wasn’t cold like I expected to be. The water was warm and calm.

I dove beneath the water, ignoring the sting of salt in my eyes as I forced them open. I looked around in the blue murk, desperate to catch a glimpse of any of the others. When I could hold my breath no longer, I darted back up to the surface. Then I shouted once more for my friends, praying they’d survived.

“Katrina!” A shrill voice in the distance made me whip around. I hadn’t had a chance to put on my life jacket, so I was fighting my tired arms to stay afloat. McKenzie and Noah slowly came into view, huddled against each other a few yards away as they drifted along on a piece of floating debris.

“Are you guys okay?” The thunder struck again just as I spoke, rattling the sea and sky. “Have you seen Milo?”

They both shook their heads as McKenzie sniffed back what looked like tears as another crash of thunder exploded. But the sky was still clear.

“What is that?” Noah looked up with pressed brows.

“The thunder?” McKenzie chimed in, mascara running down her porcelain face.

“That’s not thunder,” Noah kept his gaze on the miles of outstretched sea before us.

I closed my eyes, becoming aware of the water around me. Somehow, I could sense its flow, its movements, and its currents. It carried vibrations as subtle as a spring breeze along the length of my fingertips. The rumble in the distance became strangely clearer to me as the sensation of the sea rippled around me. Noah was right. It wasn’t thunder.

“It’s a ship in the distance,” I said.

“How do you know that?”

“I don’t know. I can just…feel it.”

McKenzie and Noah both looked at me through mistrusting eyes.