Authors: Lisa McMann
The teacher hesitates, most likely because we look so horrible today, and finally relents. “Inside your backpacks, then. Don’t let me see them again. You can check for news after class.”
Phew.
“Thank you,” I say. “I’m sorry.” We put our phones in our respective backpacks and fake like we’re working on our vase projects as time slows down to a stop. I strain my ears, listening for my phone’s vibration, but I don’t hear anything. And I start to lose hope.
After class, there’s nothing new. The press conference happens during last hour and reveals stuff we already know or suspected: The ferry was diverted because of the weather. On the way into the intended harbor, the ferry hit a sandbar, the engines cut, the pilot was injured, and the ferry smashed into a breakwall, which tore open the vessel. It began taking on water, and within forty minutes, the wreck had sunk. All but two passengers made it off the ferry. A third reportedly drowned while attempting rescue. They aren’t releasing the names of the victims yet because families haven’t been notified.
We three meet up after school. “One of them on the ferry was that guy in first class,” Rowan says when Trey and I reach her locker. She shudders. “Ben said he was probably dead, and there was no time, so we had to leave him.”
“So that’s one of the three. But none of us saw Sawyer jump. The girl, Bridget, said he went back for another life vest . . . so maybe he never made it out. And I saw Ben swimming far off the rear end of the ferry. That’s the last time anybody saw him. Could he be the third?”
Neither responds.
I want to die.
I think I really am losing my mind.
And speaking of that, I’ve put it off long enough. And I know what it’s time to do. “I’m going to talk to Dad,” I tell Trey and Rowan as we trudge to the car after school. “I don’t care anymore what they do to me.”
It was Food Truck Tuesday
from eleven to one today at a nearby factory, which means Mom and Dad are home for a couple of hours to restock before heading out for the dinner hour. They’re sitting at the kitchen table when we get home, having coffee and looking over some early sketches—plans for the new restaurant. It’s still weird to see my dad acting like this. Like a normal human.
Trey and Rowan decide to stick by me, so I guess this is kind of an intervention. I can’t even think right now. Part of me knows this is a bad idea, but I’m exhausted and sick and furious that my Sawyer is gone and my dad has done all these things to me, and I’m feeling reckless.
We walk into the kitchen.
Mom and Dad look up. “Oh, hi,” Mom says. “I
thought you were our tomatoes being delivered.” She smiles. “How was school?”
I stare at my dad. He looks nice today. His hair is smoothed back and his face looks healthy. Happy. My determination wavers.
But then I remember Sawyer, and how he wouldn’t be dead right now if it weren’t for my dad.
“I want to talk to you,” I say.
My dad’s face slackens. He looks at Mom. “She’s pregnant,” he says. He looks back at me. “You’re pregnant?”
I have never hated him more than at this moment. “No!” I say, and I feel like I have no control over anything that is happening in my head right now. “Don’t ask me that ever again!” My mouth screws up all weird and I fight hard not to cry.
“Oh, honey.” Mom reaches out and touches my arm. She gives my dad a disapproving look, and he just sits there, probably trying to figure out why I’m falling apart. “He was kidding. Right, Antonio?”
My dad nods. “I’m sorry. That’s not funny.”
I don’t even know who he is anymore. Since when does my dad joke? Since our house and restaurant burned to the ground, apparently. I can feel Trey and Rowan behind me, giving me strength.
I suck in a breath, trying to calm down. And then I say, “Can we talk about you and your, um, your . . . health
problems? I want to know more about your depression and the hoarding and all that.”
My dad leans back in his chair as if the questions threaten his personal space.
“Like,” I continue, “I remember when it started—the hoarding—and I want to know why. I want you to tell me why it started. And if it’s weird or crazy sounding, don’t worry, just please tell me.”
Mom frowns and lowers her gaze, turning slightly to look at my dad.
And he’s got this strained, horrible look on his face, like I’m betraying him just by asking.
I refuse to look away.
Finally he nods toward Trey and Rowan and says in a low voice, “You told them?”
I stare. “What?” I have no idea what he’s talking about.
He raises his voice a little, sounding stern now. “Did you tell them?”
I’m confused. Does he already know he passed the vision curse to me? “You mean,” I say, my voice faltering, “about the visions?”
He leans forward, an intense, questioning look on his face. “The
what
?” He looks at Mom and back at me. “The
what
?” he repeats.
My lips part, then close again. “Wait. What are
you
talking about?”
“You’re the one who has something to talk about,” he says. “I want to know if you told them. If they know what you told me. That day you quit the restaurant.”
And it hits me like a ton of bricks. He thinks I told Trey and Rowan about his affair. I press my hand to my eyes. And my hand slides away and I look at him again, at the hurt in his eyes. “No, Dad,” I say softly. “That’s not my story to tell.”
I can feel the awkwardness penetrating the back of my brain as Trey and Rowan shift on their feet. When the doorbell rings, Trey hastily pulls Rowan with him to answer it.
Mom stands up. “That’s probably our farmer with the tomatoes,” she says like she’s relieved to be squeezing past me and following Trey and Rowan.
When they’re gone, I shake my head. “I can’t believe this is what we’re talking about, Dad. Is that really it? Your affair? That’s what set off the hoarding and the depression? The years of us never knowing if we were going to come home to find that you killed yourself?”
He looks at me, pain washing over his face, making him look old again. “Depression is a disease,” he says. “But the affair, the recipe that Fortuno stole—those things ruined my life.”
I feel fury rising up so fast I can’t stop it. “No, Dad. You own those things. That stuff didn’t have to ruin your life. You just let it.”
He takes it. And then he nods. “Maybe.”
I let out a breath. “Okay.”
He hesitates, and lowers his eyes. His big fingers lace together on the table and he taps his thumbs a few times. “So,” he says, “you’re seeing visions? What’s that about?”
I stare at him. But before I can say anything, I hear the floor creak behind me, and my dad’s gaze flits to a spot over my shoulder. Dad’s eyes narrow the slightest bit, and then he frowns and says in rough voice, “What happened to you?”
I whirl around.
Standing in the kitchen doorway is a boy.
A boy with deep green eyes the color of the sea, and thick black lashes.
A boy with matted-down hair, wearing strange clothes, and wrapped in a blanket.
My lip quivers. “You’re not the tomatoes.” And when I throw myself into his arms, he collapses to the floor, and we lie there, sobbing together.
As my dad shakes his
head and steps over us, apparently unconcerned, or mistaking our crying for laughter, Sawyer reaches up and holds my face with his cool hands and looks into my eyes. “Ben’s here too,” he rasps. His voice is gone.
I roll off him and my eyes threaten to start crying all over again. “Are you okay?”
He nods. “I am now.”
“I’ll be right back,” I say, feeling heartless, but having to see for myself. I take off for the living room, where Trey and Ben are locked in an embrace that looks like it may never end. I wrap my arms around them both and kiss Ben on the cheek, and then I kiss Trey on the cheek too. And I have no words for how this feels right now.
Rowan, the come-through champion, is somehow giving Mom an explanation of what’s happening. I have no idea if she’s making up some story or going with the truth here, and I don’t even care. I run back to Sawyer, who is still on the floor in the kitchen doorway. He smiles up at me through half-closed lids. He looks rough.
“Let’s get you home to bed,” I say.
“But I’m so tired. . . . I wanna sleep in your bed with you.” He slings an arm over his eyes. “Please?”
“Um, somehow I don’t think that’s going to be okay with the parentals. How about the couch?”
He nods and strains to get up.
“Does Kate know you’re okay?”
“Yeah, Trey just texted her for me. I don’t have my phone.” He starts crawling toward the living room.
“I
know
you don’t have your phone, you big jerk. What happened to you promising not to take your stupid life vest off? We had a deal!”
“I just knew you were going to yell at me,” he says glumly.
We round the corner and see that the couch is already occupied by Ben.
“Oh no.” Sawyer says. He looks longingly at the cushions, then collapses on the floor and lies there. It’s like he’s drunk with exhaustion or something.
“So what happened to you guys?” I say. “Have you slept at all?”
“In the taxi.”
“You took a taxi here? Why the heck didn’t you call?”
“I don’t know anybody’s phone numbers. Tried to get people on the street to let me google your landline, but they pretty much took one look at the two of us and ran. When I finally got the taxi driver to look the number up for me, he just wrote it down and wouldn’t let me use his phone at first. I guess we look like scary, drug-addicted homeless guys.” He takes a breath. “Later I finally convinced him I wasn’t going to steal it and I called, but I got the recording.”
“But—” I sputter. “But what about Ben? Didn’t he have his phone?”
“No,” he says sadly. “It fell in the water because I’m a loser.”
“You’re not a loser, you just need to fucking learn how to swim,” Ben says in a muffled voice from the couch. “It’s really not that hard.”
But Sawyer doesn’t respond. A moment later, I realize he’s asleep.
I look at Rowan and Trey, and we don’t know what to think. Finally I shrug and go into our bedroom, pull blankets from our beds to drape over them, and give Sawyer my pillow. All we can do is hang around and wait
and make up more crazy shit to answer our parents’ questions about why Ben and Sawyer are crashed out in the living room.
When it becomes clear that Ben and Sawyer are down for the night, we three Demarcos go to bed early, since we’re exhausted too, and everyone sleeps until morning, when we finally get to hear the whole story.
Rowan and I get up
at five to take showers and make some breakfast. When I tiptoe past Sawyer, he grabs my foot and scares the crap out of me.
“Hey,” he says. He eases his way to his feet with a little help from me, and gives me a long hug. He follows me to the kitchen and sits by the table. “I just need to be near you,” he says in his hoarse voice.
By six forty-five, all five of us are sitting around the kitchen table.
“I’m so hungry,” Sawyer says. “I have never been this hungry in my entire life.” He shovels a forkful of scrambled eggs and a biscuit into his mouth, and Ben chows down as well. While they eat, I fill them in on what happened on our end, and how Tori couldn’t tell who the three dead
people were, and how the news practically confirmed to us that it must have been Sawyer and Ben who had drowned.
“But I didn’t give up hoping,” Trey says. “By the way, information about the three dead was released this morning. They were the guy with the glass in his head, some woman I can’t figure out from the victim list, and the pilot, who I don’t think was even on Tori’s list, unless he looked like one of the other passengers. I don’t know what happened there.”
“We must have confused something,” I say. “I’m sad three people died, but that means we saved twenty-four. And our boys are alive, which means more than anything.”
Sawyer squeezes my thigh under the table.
“So tell us everything,” I say. “I saw you with the girl with the polka-dot headband up at the railing, but then I looked away and you were gone.”
“Ah, Bridget,” Sawyer says. “What a piece of work that girl is. I’m sure her ankle was broken but she was a total trouper.”
“Yeah, I noticed that. I also noticed the life vest she was wearing.” I give him a patronizing smile.
“Okay, look,” Sawyer says, wiping his mouth with a napkin and sitting back. “What do you want me to do? Throw a thirteen-year-old girl with a broken ankle out into the water without one? The ferry was rolling onto its side, and there was no time, and I’d already given out
all the ones I was carrying. I figured once I had her safely in the water, you guys would take care of her, and I could more easily get another life vest without her on my back. So I gave her mine. And I’m not sorry, because according to the death list, she’s not on it.”
“But
you
almost were,” I say. “I’m not letting this one go. I have to be able to trust you.”
He sighs. “Fair enough. Anyway, I dropped her down into the water and then tried to scale the deck, but the ferry tilted even farther until I felt like I was trying to climb straight up. And just when I’d almost made it to one of the benches with the life vests inside, the ferry shifted hard and rolled, and I lost my grip and slid down the decline, hitting the railing and flipping over it into the water.” He scrunches his eyes shut for a moment and gingerly rubs the nape of his neck. “That sucked bad. Good thing I have such a hard head.”
“I saw him go over,” Ben says. “I was in the water on that end of the ferry. I thought he might be knocked out, because he hit the railing pretty hard. So I swam out there and saw him flailing and realized he didn’t have his life vest on. So I grabbed him and started looking for debris to hang on to.”
“But,” Sawyer says, “it was almost dark by then, so we had to rely on lightning to see anything.”
Ben continues. “I decided our best option was to try to
make it to the breakwall we’d hit, even though the waves were washing over it at the mouth of the channel. I could see the higher part of it, and that was closer to us than the lifeboats at this point. But then we got caught in a riptide that took us out even farther away from you guys, and honestly, I thought that was going to be the end of us. I was tired, hanging on to Sawyer, and trying to coach him on what to do without losing all of my energy talking.”