Darkness. Black and cold. I didn’t know which way was up. How deep did I plunge? Weird hollow noises. Must get air!
Up, up, my suit pushed me up like a beach ball.
I broke the surface and gasped a loud sucking noise. Freezing water filled my lungs. I coughed and coughed.
Chaos.
Waves slammed my face. Wind screamed. The ocean spun around me. Cold water everywhere. Something shrieking. What was that noise?
“Mom!” I tried to yell, but my mouth filled with salty water. I gagged and wiped my eyes. Turning my head from the waves, I tried to look around. My breathing was fast and choppy. Something was in the water off to my right. What was that? A whale?
“The whale attacked the boat,” someone behind me sobbed.
Waves crashed against the thing in the water. People screamed all around me.
“Help! I can’t swim!”
“Hailey! Where’s Hailey?”
“Dad!” I yelled, just as a wave broke over my head. I tried again, pushing myself higher in the water. “DAD!”
Where were they? Where was my sister?
Someone was climbing the thing in the water. I realized it was the bottom of the boat. It looked so wrong upside down. I flailed my arms, trying to swim closer.
“Get away from the boat,” I heard someone yell. “It’s going down.”
“Help!” Someone close by yelled.
I turned and saw Marina barely bobbing on the surface. She was thrashing weakly with one arm, trying to twist her face away from going underwater. She moaned, holding her arm close to her body.
I spun back toward the boat, but heard Marina moan again. A wave broke over her face.
The panic cleared from my mind. I had to get her! I swam toward her and grabbed the back of her jacket.
She clung to me, screeching, “I can’t move my arm.”
The wind was blowing us farther away. There was something red in the water next to the boat. It grew on the surface like a balloon. People were helping each other climb in. A life raft.
“Come on,” I said, trying to kick toward it. Cold waves washed over my face. The salt stung my eyes. I couldn’t see. Suddenly, it seemed impossibly far to swim.
“Mom! Dad!” I yelled. “Stacey!”
“Hu-huddle with me,” Marina said. “Get into the HELP position.”
“What?” I yelled at her.
“Tuck your arms to your sides. Hug yourself. Bring your knees toward . . .” She coughed as a wave filled her mouth. “. . . chest. Keeps your heat in. Heat. Escape. Lessening. Position.”
It was getting harder to hold her up. I kept kicking toward the life raft, but it was so far now. How did it get so far away?
“We have to kick toward the island,” Marina said, nodding her head toward a small island behind us.
The wind and waves were pushing us in that direction, so it was easier to turn away from the waves that were breaking over my face. Something bumped me in the back. I screamed, thinking it was a whale.
Marina yelled, “Grab it!”
It was a long piece of plywood, just barely on the surface of the water. When we both grabbed it, it didn’t sink far. It was such a relief to have something to hold on to.
Marina stretched across it as if it were a surfboard and started kicking toward the island. “Come on! Kick!”
I draped my body next to hers on the board, and we both kicked like motorboats. But it was tough to make the board go where we wanted. It was square and didn’t move through the water well.
Waves crashed along the shoreline. Big splashes of water shot up from the rocks straight into the air. I kicked as hard as I’ve ever kicked in my life, but we were still too far away to swim to shore. The waves were going to sweep us past the tip of the island.
“Should we try to swim?” I yelled.
Marina shook her head. “Too much energy. And I think my wrist is broken.”
My heart pounded in my head. I panted big gulps of air as we surfed on top of the waves. We sailed past the island and watched it go by. I didn’t think I’d make the swim anyway.
“We lost too much body heat with all that kicking,” Marina said. “Get as much of your skin out of the water as you can. The water sucks out your heat faster than the air.”
We crawled farther up on the board, but it started to sink with my weight. I slipped off a bit.
“Here, I’m wearing the suit, you stay on the board,” I said. I craned my head as high as I could to look behind us. But I couldn’t see over the waves. I’d lost sight of the boat and the life raft. I looked around at where we had drifted.
There was nothing but endless water. We were all alone out here.