NOW
SEVEN
My morning watch on the ship ends as the sun comes up.
The sky almost looks like it’s on fire, and the soft pinks I’m accustomed to are instead a blazing red, bleeding into orange.
The colors are reflected in the glass-like surface of the ocean all around us, and even though it’s beautiful, my stomach sinks.
Red sky at night, sailor’s delight. Red sky at morning, sailors take warning.
It was one of the first things Nico taught me when he was teaching me about sailing. Looking at this bloodred sky right now, it’s hard to imagine a storm heading our way, but I can almost smell it on the air, a hint of a cold, metallic tinge.
Nico pops his head out of the cabin and frowns. “Fuck,” he mutters, and then he’s gone again.
Alarm skitters up my spine, and I follow him below.
He’s sitting at the table in the galley, scowling at a weather radar map open on his laptop. When I come closer, he taps at a big blob of green on the screen. “There it is,” he says, and the simple phrase makes my knees watery. “Not too big, and if we alter course now, I think we can mostly skate around the edges of it, but…” He releases a breath, ruffling his hair. “I’m not gonna lie, it’s gonna get a little gnarly.”
“What exactly is your definition of ‘a little gnarly’？” I ask, folding my arms across my chest, but before he can answer, the door to the cabin opens. Brittany appears, with a loose and faded T-shirt slipping off one of her tanned shoulders, her dark hair a tangled mess as she looks at us with sleepy eyes. “Something wrong?” she asks, and I shake my head even as Nico says, “We’re just in for a bit of rough weather.”
That wakes her up. Her eyes go wide, and she turns to say something to Amma, who I can see sliding out of the bed behind her.
“What do we need to do?” Amma asks.
Nico pauses. “Look, I’m going to do my best to keep us out of the worst, but you should go ahead and get dressed, and grab life jackets. And even if you don’t usually get seasick, take some meds now.”
He goes to the counter and pulls out the red plastic medical kit, grabs a blister pack, and tosses it to Amma.
“And be sure to stay below,” he tells them both. “Just hunker down.”
Then Nico lifts his eyes to me, his expression as serious as I’ve ever seen it. “You’re with me, babe.”
The words warm me even as real fear takes hold.
We’re a team.
We’re in this together.
* * *
IT COMES ON SLOW, THEN all at once.
The first sign is the way the air gets colder, enough that I’m eager to slide on the slicker Nico gave me. I have a life jacket on under that, and the entire getup is bulky, and only made worse by the fact that I also have a nylon belt around my waist, clipping me into the ship.
That’s what suddenly makes it feel real for me: the idea of wind and waves that are strong enough to send me over the side, with this one strap the only thing between safety and all that ocean.
I’ve had sailing lessons, both from Nico back in San Diego and in Maui. Sometimes Nico teaches me, sometimes it’s one of the guys at the marina, and I’ve gotten a lot more comfortable on the water, enough so that I’ve taken a boat out on my own several times now. But all of those lessons had happened on calm water under bright blue skies.
This is different.
Within a few hours, the sky goes so dark it almost feels like night. The wind that slaps me in the face is cold, the rain that slithers inside my jacket even more so, and I feel like the whole world has turned upside down, almost literally.
Nico is at the wheel, his feet planted firmly, and I blink, my vision blurry with rain and seawater. I tell myself it’s better being out here on the deck, that if I were below like Brittany and Amma, it would drive me insane to not actually see what was happening.
But as I watch a wave swell up in front of us, higher and higher, I close my eyes instinctively. I don’t want to see this, don’t want to witness climbing that wall of water even as I feel the Susannah begin to rise. The wind is howling so loudly that I can’t hear what Nico is shouting to me, and I try to stay on my feet even as the boat tilts at a crazy angle.
This is not how I want to die, swept overboard into that roiling water.
The deck is slippery as I clutch the handholds bolted to the sides. The sails are down, obviously, but our engine is still running, propelling us through the water, and I slowly make my way to Nico, shouting to be heard over the fury of the storm.