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 darkhair 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.
