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CHAPTER THREE

ELLIOT

I throw my arms from side to side, desperately waving the makeshift flag in the rain and wind. We’ve been at this for what feels like hours, but every boat stays in the distance, and the storm is growing as the raft rocks on the waves.

“Hey!” I yell as loud as I can at the passing boat, and even though I know we can’t possibly be heard, I throw all my breath into it as I wave the shirts. “Hey! We’re right here!”

Thunder rumbles, and my disaster companion Hank weakly waves his flag, too. “One, two, three,” he says as he heaves it from side to side with his remaining strength. “One, two, three! ”

Exhausted, I sink to my knees. I can see the dim lights on the boat, but the waves are pulling us away.

Tears fill my eyes. I’m so cold and tired, and so guilty.

Before I can regain control, I break down. I cry to myself in steady, shallow sobs. My head hurts, and my body hurts, and everything is wet. I’ve finally screwed up so majorly that I might get myself killed, and I’m going to take one of my dad’s employees down with me, too.

I don’t know how much longer I can go on like this, but Hank doesn’t waver. He keeps counting and heaving his flag, eyes fixed on the boat as we drift away. He’s a burly guy with dark hair and round cheeks, stronger than me and probably ten years older.

He’s kind of bossy, but maybe that’s just the stress we’re under. Anyway, you don’t get to pick your company when you’re lost at sea.

My mouth is dry as a cotton ball. There’s dirty water at the bottom of our raft, and I’m beyond the point of caring. Bending down, I slurp it up.

“Elliot!” Hank says, finally noticing me again. “Careful. We shouldn’t.”

I splash dirty water into my mouth. “I’m thirsty.”

He drops his flag and gets down with me. “Elliot,” he says again, firmly this time, his voice loud over the stormy ocean. “It’s brackish and dirty. It’s more likely to make you sick than it is to help. And if we aren’t rescued soon, stomach distress is the last thing you need.”

I look up, prickly at being told what to do, and by one of my dad’s accountants, no less. “What does brackish mean?”

“It’s probably half seawater. Too salty to hydrate you.”

“It doesn’t taste salty,” I tell him and slurp again to prove my point. Hank looks distressed, because of the circumstances we’re in, I’m sure. But I can also tell I’m stressing him out.

I wipe my mouth off, begrudgingly aware that he’s just trying to help. “Fine, thanks, done,” I mumble and hug my knees to my chest. “That ship is passing us,” I say, louder.

Hank leans back against the side of the raft. “I know. We should save our energy for the next one.”

“Aren’t you thirsty?” I ask.

“Of course. But I know salt water doesn’t help.”

Hank tilts his head up to the sky and opens his mouth, catching rain. It’s dark enough that I can barely see, except for when lightning flashes in the distance, illuminating his hairy chest.

He turns his face back toward me. “Try that way. It’s not much, but it helps.”

I turn my head back, letting rain fall into my mouth, and start crying again.

“How long do you think we’ve been lost?” I ask.

“I don’t know. A few hours?” Hank cups water with his hands and splashes it out of the raft. “Long enough that someone has certainly noticed we’re missing.”

I try to splash water out of the raft, too, but my arms feel like they weigh a hundred pounds each, and I think I’m doing a bad job of it. Instead, I pull the wet lighter out and test it, flicking it, and when it doesn’t make a flame, I return to weakly splashing.

I’m so humiliated that I got us into this mess. It feels like we’re a lost cause. For all I know, we’ve been dragged further out to sea with every wave, and the storm threatens to turn into a full-on tempest. Regardless of whether we make it or not, everyone is going to know this was my fault.

Defeated, I wallow in the bad feelings. Everything my family believes about me is true. I’m a joke and a failure, and I’m never going to have a chance to prove myself. I’ll never have a chance to repair my relationship with my parents or my siblings, either.

I’ll forever be the embarrassing son who got himself lost at sea with one of my dad’s employees. Dad’s last memory will be that I came back groveling for money, unable to pay my own rent, forced to prostrate myself before the casino boat.

When I look up, I see that Hank is shivering. Guilt wrenches in my gut. He tried to save me, and this is what he gets in return. Poor guy deserves so much better than my mess, even if he is bossy.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

He looks up at me, exhaustion on his face. “What?”

“I’m sorry,” I repeat, louder this time. “About everything. Climbing into the life rafts. Stopping you from getting help to retrieve me.” I rub at my eyes. “Getting us killed.”

“We’re doomed, but not dead yet,” he offers. “If we ride out this storm, someone might find us. Daybreak.”

Hank holds strong to his logic, but I hear the fear in his voice, too. The silence stretches on, and I talk just to break it.

“I don’t know anything about you,” I tell Hank as I brace myself through a rough patch of the storm.

He steadies himself in the middle of the raft. “Does it really matter?”

“Considering the circumstances, I should know more than your name.”

Hank shivers, and another wave rocks us, nearly knocking me down.

“It’s not like I can rest. Distract me. Please.”

“I don’t know what to say,” he tells me. “I’m the Finance Director of Audits at your dad’s accounting firm. I’ve lived in Seattle since my early twenties. I’m really not that interesting, I swear.”

“Are you single?”

“Yes. No boyfriend. But I really don’t see why that matters at the moment!”

“It matters because we need to humanize ourselves. That’s what they say to do in situations like this.”

“That’s hostages!” Hank argues. “You humanize yourself when you’re being held hostage.”

“Okay, fine!” I yell over the storm and turn my head, looking out over the terrifying ocean. “We’ll die strangers!”

I sit there, rejected on top of everything else.

After a moment, Hank grumbles something and inches closer to me. “I guess it wouldn’t hurt to know each other, and also to remind ourselves what we’re living for.”

I turn back to him, cautious. “I want to get back to my friends,” I tell him. “We’re having a level-up summer.”

“I don’t know what that means,” he yells over the wind.

“I have an art project, and my friends are organizing a drag show and a dance party. We’re all supporting each other to accomplish our goals.”

The sea roars louder. “My sister is going to be worried sick!” he yells. “I just want to get back and tell her that I’m okay. Before my parents find out I disappeared overboard! I hate to scare them.”

“I can’t die because I haven’t fallen in love yet!” I yell at him. “I’ve had lots of casual sex with guys. Like, so much! But never a real romance!”

“I haven’t hiked the Pacific Crest Trail!” he says, and I see that he’s crying, too. “I’ve always promised myself I would.”

Another jolt of the raft sends me to my hands and knees. Hank helps me up, and we lean against each other as thunder cracks. His body is bigger than mine, sturdy and warm, and I let him hold my weight until the raft steadies again.

Hank eases back. “You okay?” he asks.

“Are you sure you don’t want the life jacket?” I ask. “It seems like you should have the life jacket.”

“Stop trying to give me the life jacket!” Hank says, distressed again.

Guiltily, I keep the life jacket on.

I go back to flicking the wet lighter, trying not to freak out. The storm is really starting to rage, and the moon and stars are gone.

“Is the lighter working?” Hank asks.

“No, I’m just fidgeting.”

“We might need it. Make sure you don’t wear it out.”

I bristle. The upper management at my dad’s firm always treats me like another one of their employees, and Hank’s clearly no exception.

I shove the lighter back in my pocket, where I keep my hand and continue to flick it, because it’s a new lighter and it’s worth the cost of a few flicks to relieve my anxiety.

“Hopefully, we don’t encounter a scenario where we need a flame,” Hank says. The raft lifts up and sinks back down, and when the wind whistles, he has to yell. “But I don’t feel confident about anything right now!”

My heart pounding, I brace against the raft. It takes all my energy, but I force myself to think about my friends, and our apartment, and the art I want to create and the life I want to live.

When I open my eyes, I see Hank clutching the raft in the middle and steadying it in the waves. It doesn’t really matter what I think about him, because right now, I need to survive.

I crawl over to Hank. “Can we link arms or something?” I ask.

He nods. “Good idea.”

It takes a second, but we figure out a way to position ourselves back-to-back. We link one arm at the elbow, and each hold a side of the raft with the other hand, stabilizing the craft.

Ocean water splashes in my face.

“We’ll stay like this!” Hank yells. “Ride out the storm!”

“Okay!” I yell.

It feels like if I let go or lose Hank’s arm, I might fly overboard. But as I position myself carefully, tucked up close against him, I find a stable spot.

The rhythmic storm pours across the ocean. In the distance, I see more lightning, but I have no idea if it’s coming or going.

My brain is reeling. Exhaustion takes hold, and somehow, eventually, I pass out.