Now Mrs. Laghari is gone. We are nine people left in the raft. Even as I write the words, I cannot believe it. What’s happening to us?
I realize I haven’t written about how Mrs. Laghari or Alice or any of the others wound up in the raft the night the Galaxy went down. The truth is, I don’t remember much. I was so exhausted after pulling myself in that I must have blacked out. When I came to, I was on my back, and I felt someone tapping my face. I blinked my eyes to see a short-haired woman staring at me.
“Did you set the sea anchors?” Geri said.
It was surreal, the question, the setting, her face, the faces of people behind her, barely lit by the hazy moonlight. I recognized Jean Philippe and Nina from the staff. The others were so wet and terrified-looking, I couldn’t place them. My mouth hung open and I turned my head as if looking at a dream.
“Sea anchors?” Geri repeated.
I shook my head no, and she quickly moved away. I saw her rifling through the ditch bag as the others helped to sit me up. That’s when I realized there were eight of us: Yannis, Nevin, Mrs. Laghari, Nina, Geri, Jean Philippe, Bernadette—who was lying under the canopy, her head bandaged—and me.
Geri found the sea anchors, two small yellow fabric parachutes, and she threw them in the water and tied them through grommets on the raft.
“These will slow us down so they can find us,” she said. “But we already drifted a lot.”
Nina was crying. “Does anyone know we’re out here?”
“The yacht must have sent distress signals. We just have to wait.”
“Wait for what?” Mrs. Laghari asked.
“A plane, a helicopter, another boat,” Geri said. “We gotta stay alert and use the flares if we see something.”
She suggested we get out of any clothes that were holding the cold water, and she gave Mrs. Laghari a large pink T-shirt from the backpack she’d grabbed before abandoning ship. I remember Mrs. Laghari asking Nina to unzip the back of her gown, then requesting we turn away while she struggled to get out of it. Even on a lifeboat, people have their modesty. The explosion had come during a dinner party, and the sight of most of us in dress clothes, now soaked and ripped as we huddled inside a raft, was a grim reminder of how little the natural world cares for our plans.
After that, we were mostly silent, just staring at the heavens, hoping to see an approaching airplane. None of us slept. A few of us prayed. It wasn’t until the sky began to lighten that we spotted anyone else. Geri had found a flashlight in the ditch bag, and we took turns waving it like a beacon. Somewhere around five in the morning, we heard a distant yell.
“There,” Geri said, pointing, “about twenty degrees to our right.”
Up ahead, in the flashlight beam, was a man gripping a chunk of something. As we drew closer, I realized it was actually a piece of the Galaxy’s fiberglass hull, and the man clinging to it was the ship’s owner, Jason Lambert.
I fell backward, trying to catch my breath. Not him! He made a guttural moaning sound as the others struggled to pull his corpulent body into the raft.
“It’s Jason!” Mrs. Laghari yelled.
He rolled on his side and vomited.
Geri turned to the horizon, which was coming clear with the daylight. “Everyone look carefully out there! This is our best chance to see if anyone else survived!”
When she said that word, it hit me like a bell chime. Survived? We were the survivors? No one else? No. I could not accept that. There must be others. In some other raft. In some other part of this angry sea. I thought of Dobby. What had happened to him? Where had he gone? Was he responsible for this disaster?
Geri pulled binoculars from her backpack, and we spread about the raft and passed them around. My turn came. At first glance, through those lenses, every small wave seemed like something alive; you’d swear you saw a dolphin, or a piece of equipment flashing in the chop. Then I saw a spot of something red, and red is not a color you confuse with the ocean.
“I think I see someone!” I yelled.
Geri grabbed the binoculars and confirmed it. She removed a soggy piece of paper from her pocket and ripped off a small corner, then threw it in the water and leaned over to watch it.
“What are you doing?” Mrs. Laghari asked.
“The currents,” Geri replied. “See how that paper comes back to the raft? Whatever’s out there will come our way if we hold our position.”
She had us paddle with our hands against the drift. I watched the red figure draw closer and closer. Finally, Yannis, who now had the binoculars, blurted out, “Oh my god … It’s a kid.”