The Lifeboat Clique (6 page)

“If you bitches are going to fight, then I'm going to drum,” Trevor said, drumming.

“I can't wait till we're rescued,” Abigail said to me. “Then I won't have to talk to you anymore.”

“Think about it,” I told her. “It's the middle of the night. There are probably thousands of people dead or
missing up and down the coast. We have no working phones, no GPS. There's no way to get in touch with us, and even if all your parents knew you went to a party, I'm sure none of them knew you broke into a house in Malibu that isn't there anymore.”

“They'll send choppers, dummy,” she said.

“Choppers? Don't you think there might be other people who need choppers right now? I know all of you think you're everyone's top priority, but you're not. No one from the Coast Guard is running up and down screaming, ‘Who'll save the cool kids?'”

“You don't know anything, so stop pretending you do,” Hayley said.

“Or what, you'll burst into song?” (Hayley once tried out for
American Idol
and made it through the first audition. No one had ever heard the end of it.)

“Okay, okay, you're giving me a headache,” Abigail said. “I suppose we've got to try and be a team.”

“Right,” I said, looking at Abigail pointedly. “A team.”

“Yes,” she said, glaring right back at me. “A team. For now at least. Once we're rescued we can go on about our lives.”

“Ironic, isn't it?” I said to Abigail, but also to the others.

“What?” Sienna asked.

“Here I am, trying to survive
with
you, when before
my whole plan was just trying to
survive you
.”

“I'm not sure what that means,” Hayley said. “And I wish you'd stop talking in puzzles and just say normal things, because I've had a big shock. This morning I was looking at a YouTube video of a hamster eating a tiny burrito and now I'm floating on this stupid raft and my friends are dead so just keep that in mind.”

I CAN'T RECOMMEND
apocalypse in the springtime highly enough. The night was clear, and the nearly complete moon shone down on water that grew calmer the farther we drifted. A couple of seals surfaced. Our possibly sinking rooftop gently rocked us. Trevor drummed, and slowly the others stopped talking and sank back to lie on the roof and stare up at the sky, each to her own thoughts. It was strange. The reality of what had happened seemed to hit everyone in waves. It was just so preposterous that this shallow, glitzy town would serve as the landing place for something as ancient and terrifying as a monster wave. Such a wave seemed to demand a primitive tribe shaking its spears and calling out to its gods and fleeing, not the people of Malibu. And not us.

I turned my thoughts to my mother. My poor mother, last seen reading the affirming words of Robert Pathway under a swag lamp she'd bought off Sky Mall. She had
probably gone to bed before the earthquake hit. Bolted wide-awake and tried to make her way to the stairs with the house still shaking. Calling my name: “Denver! Denver!” Finally arriving at the doorway to my room to find the furniture moved and photos down, and my bed perfectly empty and made, while a shaken-awake Sonny Boy perched on my pillow, one front paw pointing straight at the damning evidence of the open window. She must have stuck her head out that window and spied the broken bushes where my ungainly, hurtling body had landed. She must have rushed to the garage and discovered the missing car and realized that her daughter was unaccounted for, possibly dead and certainly a liar.

In my imagination, I watched her as she ran back inside and grabbed the phone and coded my name, seeing it rise ghostlike on the screen . . . DENVER . . . the phone ringing and then connecting to a cheerful voice saying,
“The liar you have reached cannot be located, as her phone is turned off right now so she can talk to the man of her dreams before the tsunami hits and washes them both out to sea. Please leave a message at the sound of the beep.”

At this very moment, she was probably calling police and firemen and relatives and officials and news stations and hospitals and everyone she could possibly think of. And since she had no car to look for me, she might, in her terror
and desperation, be on foot right now, trying to flag down a ride through the chaos of that damaged city, because what choice did a mother of her quality have?

I should have called her. She'd still be terrified right now, but at least she would have a lock on my last location. At least she would have the sound of my voice one more time. At least I could tell her I loved her, something I didn't say so often anymore.

I was lying on my back at this point, the roof feeling rough against me, my bare feet cold in the night air, looking up at the stars.

“I'm sorry,” I said to my mother, wherever she was.

I heard Trevor's drumming stop and felt the roof shift as he settled himself for the rest of the night. Then all was silent but for the sound of breathing and the occasional sniffle or cry as someone woke up and remembered that the world was both a whirling sphere and a cruel inflictor of sudden and staggering loss.

Croix. He had been breathing beside me hours earlier. And then he had died. Just like that.

My eyes welled up as I thought of him. I knew that our time together was short, too short to sit in the front row of his funeral and accept the flag, but that was the worst part of the whole sad tale to me—we had something. Maybe it had taken him a year or two to get up the nerve to talk to
me, but he had, hadn't he? And the way we had connected in that living room with voices and music all around us as a sneaky wave crept up the coastal shelf—that was real.

His lips so close.

I cursed this wave for undoing what should have been done long before. Because I deserved to have a boyfriend like Croix. I deserved to walk down the hallway holding his hand. I deserved to be popular, and known, and seen, because if popularity was something bestowed on the dipshits at that party, then it was all a game, and I deserved to play.

I HAD ALWAYS
been unsure about God, who he was and what form he took. Did God have a beard? On which side did he part his hair? Was his hair white, and would he ever consider using Grecian Formula? That was the problem with God. I couldn't think of him without thinking of a million questions. Like, why did he make the color burnt orange, the ugliest color on Earth? God could have prevented burnt orange, but he just stood by and let it happen.

Sometimes I had said disrespectful things about God and gotten absolutely no reaction from him. Did that mean that God was quietly pissed off and waiting for a chance to get me back? The giant wave may have pointed to option B, though I couldn't see why he'd punished a whole part of
a coastline just to smack one whippersnapper. And didn't God make me that whippersnapper? If God didn't want me to make fun of him, why wouldn't he have made me a saint like Audrey?

I imagined that after all this doubt and sassiness, I would get a nosebleed seat in heaven at best.

That night on that slowly moving roof, I asked God to welcome Croix into heaven, because if there was a heaven, that handsome dead boy was surely a candidate. Next, I asked God to please save me, and though I knew there were many souls out there worthy of saving, I had dreams and hopes and a straight B+ average and would have written a short essay on my qualifications had I any paper. I also apologized for all the jokes I had made at his expense and said I hoped he didn't hold it against me.
“It's human nature, God,”
I said silently,
“to taunt the larger mystery. And you are very large.”

I asked him to watch over my mother and Sonny Boy, and keep them safe and dry, and to watch over and protect all the people affected by the wave (although I felt guilty, because I didn't care so much. I mean, I did in a theoretical way, but it is hard, I found, to care for people you have never met while you are slowly drying out on a rooftop drifting farther and farther away with a bunch of assholes who hate you).

Speaking of which, I prayed for the assholes on the rooftop with me because, I admit, I thought God would look favorably on it, and besides, it seemed selfish not to. So as sincerely as I could, I prayed for their lives, too. Their entitled, arrogant, somewhat useless lives. Then I went back and prayed again and took out
arrogant
and
useless
so it would seem softer.

I even said a special prayer for Abigail, because I was the better person.

TSUNAMIS GIVE YOU WEIRD DREAMS. IN THE DREAM, I WAS
floating on the roof with Sonny Boy, and it seemed perfectly reasonable that he was there, never mind that he was a cat and hated water.

He said,
“How's it going, dipshit?”

But here's the strange part. His voice was, like, an octave lower.

I said, “Sonny Boy, what happened to your voice?”

“I got my balls back, no thanks to you.”

He lifted his leg so I could see them. They were huge—the size of golf balls.

“You touch them again and I'll kill you.”
I woke up, and
there was no Sonny Boy in sight, just a rising sun and a bunch of sleeping cool kids. I lay there for a minute, my cheek against the shingles of the roof, just letting my senses return to me. There had been a tsunami. A lot of people had died. And I might die, too. My eyes stung and tears ran down that funny way when you cry lying on your side, and a deep sniff drew seawater snot to the back of my throat and I sat up. Sienna and Hayley spooned each other. Abigail slept in a vampire position, her arms crossed over her. In her sleep, she looked so young, and I wondered what plans, if any, were forming in her dreams. Trevor also slept on his back, his fingers cupped and resting on his chest. Occasionally his fingers twitched and tapped. I noticed he had very long eyelashes and wondered why I'd never noticed that before.

I looked out to a flat, endless sea.

And something else.

A boat.

I rubbed my eyes in case my dream wasn't over, and Sonny Boy was going to rise out of that boat and flash his newly restored balls at me.

But no. It was a real boat, bobbing about a hundred yards away. It didn't look very big, but something told me that roofs don't float forever. And perhaps there was food on the boat. Water. A radio.

“Hey!” I shouted. “Wake up, wake up!”

Abigail lifted her head up. She looked confused.

“Where are we?”

“We're on the ocean. The tsunami, remember? Now look! Look over there.”

She shielded her eyes and straightened.

“Wake up!” she screamed to the others. “It's a boat!”

The others slowly came to.

“Shit!” said Trevor.

“It's drifting away from us!” Abigail said.

Let me just take a very brief moment to tell you something about lonely girls. While other girls are flirting and texting and listening to whatever they listen to or shopping or telling their parents to go to hell without getting grounded, lonely girls swim. At least this one did. Every afternoon from three to five. I used to be on the swim team in my neighborhood in elementary school, and I was competent at butterfly and breaststroke, but a total badass at freestyle.

So I did what any other lonely girl did who had swum countless hours until the chlorine was a trusted confidant and red eyes were an ordinary thing. I dove into the water and swam toward that boat.

The water was bracingly cold, but I warmed up quickly. Even in my clothes I was quick as a seal as my
body recognized the water as an ally and immediately fell into synchronicity, my bare feet kicking.

The boat had drifted another ten yards or so by the time I got to it. It was an old boat. Either the tsunami or someone's neglect had done a number on it. Its side was dotted with scrapes and dents, and the plastic awning had seen better days. The entire sunshade, in fact, was bent so that it covered the front of the boat rather than the back.

“Hello!” I called, treading water.

I waited, but no answer came. The boat was abandoned. I moved around to the back and was hoisting myself up the ladder when I noticed Abigail and Trevor swimming toward me. Abigail was a pretty good swimmer herself. I know this because she had a pool in her backyard in the Palisades, something we enjoyed together back when we were best friends.

Sienna and Hayley were still waiting on the piece of roof. I motioned for them to come, too, but they just shook their heads at me.

I took a look around the boat. First of all, and of paramount importance, there was no engine in the back. Just a few wires where an engine was supposed to be. The deck was covered with wet, stinking carpeting that squished under my feet. There was a captain's seat, two seats built into the back, a swivel seat in the middle of the boat, and a
raised, carpeted place up in front where more people could sit. The cracked leather cushions spilled wet foam.

Of course God would answer my prayers with a boat like this.

Abigail climbed up the ladder in back and stood dripping beside me. Her hair was slicked to her head again.

She looked around, studying the boat, holding on to the rail for balance. “What a piece of shit.”

“Agreed.”

This boat wasn't taking us anywhere, but it was at least a little bit better than a floating roof.

Trevor climbed into the boat.

“It's beautiful,” he breathed.

Abigail shot him a disgusted look. “You're joking.”

He flipped his wet hair out of his eyes. “You should learn to appreciate things.”

I looked over at Hayley and Sienna, who were still staring at us from on top of the roof. Hayley had her purse over her shoulder like she was ready to go.

“Why aren't they coming?” I asked Abigail.

“They can't swim, that's how come.”

“They're drifting farther away. We've got to do something!”

I opened a hatch and found some supplies and a coiled-up rope. I quickly uncoiled it.

“It's not going to be long enough,” I said.

“Shit,” said Trevor. “Well, we tried.”

Sienna and Hayley were looking worried.

“Come get us!” Hayley called.

“We can't,” I shouted back. “There's no engine!”

I opened another hatch and searched around frantically. “Great. No life preservers.”

“Help us!” Sienna called.

“Don't leave us!” cried Hayley.

“Why don't you get off my ass?” Trevor called back. “You're the ones who can't swim.”

“Hold on!” Abigail shouted. “I'm comin' for ya!”

“What good is that gonna do?” I asked her. “You can't haul them one by one to the boat.”

“You just watch me.”

“Don't be stupid. I have an idea.”

Abigail gave me a sneering look. But she was listening.

“Take your clothes off,” I said. “Down to the underwear. You too, Trevor. Do it now.” I was busy peeling off my clothes myself. I had no time to be embarrassed. I just knew that we were going to go back in the water, and we didn't need to be weighed down by our clothes.

Shockingly, they didn't question me. They obeyed me as Hayley and Sienna watched us from the drifting rooftop.

I tied one end of the rope to the rail of the boat. “I'm
not positive, but I'm guessing the boat is more buoyant than that roof. So it will be easier to bring the boat to the roof than the roof to the boat.”

I threw the other end of the rope into the water.

“Get in,” I said. “We're going to tow this boat over to the roof.”

We jumped overboard and arranged ourselves with me in front, then Abigail, then Trevor. We grabbed the rope and began to pull.

It was harder than we thought. A lot harder.

“Pull harder!” I said. “Harder!”

My arms ached. My back hurt. My feet kicked in the water. Sea foam went up my nose. A couple hundred feet below me were probably the bones of other idiots who had seen this in a movie and had also tried it.

Finally the boat slowly began to come our way.

Hayley started singing an encouraging, up-tempo Miley Cyrus song in an attempt to give us strength.

“Shut up!” Abigail shouted at her. “We're trying to concentrate.”

The warbling annoyance ceased, and we kept pulling. Slowly, slowly, we closed the distance to where the others stood, waiting anxiously. After about half an hour, we finally got the boat over to the rooftop, and Hayley and Sienna clambered aboard, then the rest of us hoisted
ourselves up the ladder and pulled in the rope. We watched as the distance increased between our new floating device and the rooftop that had once served as our savior.

Trevor, Abigail, and I slumped down on the gross carpeting of the deck. We were exhausted. Hayley and Sienna looked much more refreshed, having done nothing but add “Can't Swim” to the history of their utter uselessness.

“It stinks in here,” Hayley said.

“Smells like a bunch of dead fish,” said Abigail.

Sienna paced the boat. “I need an e-cigarette,” she said. “I'm getting twitchy.”

Trevor stared at me. “I can see your boobs,” he said.

I looked down. Of course I'd had to wear my thinnest underwire bra to the party, and indeed my nipples showed through. I put on my wet clothes, discovering in the process how hard it is to put on wet clothes.

“Hey,” Abigail said to her friends, “we figured out how to save you. The least you can do is thank us.”

“I think she means,” I said, “thank me. Because it was my idea, not hers.”

Abigail smirked and rolled her eyes. “Well, aren't you the credit hawg,” she said.

“Thank you,” Hayley said suddenly. She still had her purse and was nervously touching her dangly earring.

Sienna gave her a look.

“What?” Hayley said. “I know she's unpopular but she just saved us and I didn't even have to get wet, you know I hate getting wet so anyway I was raised to be grateful so there you go.”

I shot a cold glance at Hayley. “I don't need your charity. I helped save you because it was the right thing to do. I don't need a medal every time I do something right.”

The last of Abigail's camouflage had come off in the water, and now her freckles stood out in the light. Her shirt was still half on, and more freckles showed on her chest and arms. She took a hank of her wet hair and squeezed it. Water dripped onto the deck.

Trevor had taken a seat and was leaning back in his wet underwear. I dragged my eyes away from the somewhat large bulge that I would later find out was named Ranger Todd.

“No use fighting,” he said. “We're stuck with each other unless we all die.”

He began to drum.