Through the night, the storm raged, and Sam floated on the sea and waited, hoping morning would bring salvation.
On his back, he rode the waves, staring at the moon, his mind wandering through the past.
The first memory that the night and the sea dredged up was from college. In it, he was standing in his dorm room shaking his head.
“It’s not mine,” Sam said.
Their sophomore year, he and Elliott lived with two suitemates on a substance-free hall. The floor’s resident advisor was nosy, annoying, and fanatical about the rules. He never missed an opportunity to exercise his authority, and at that moment he was holding up a half-gallon of Jack Daniels whiskey he had found under Sam’s bed.
“I don’t make the rules, Anderson. But I have to enforce them.”
Sam wondered how many times he had recited that line.
The door opened, and Elliott strode in and glanced between Sam and the bottle the RA was holding in the air.
Sam opened his mouth to speak, but Elliott beat him to it. “Give it back.”
He reached for the bottle, but the RA dodged him, taking a step toward the door. “It’s yours?”
“Of course it’s mine.”
The RA pointed at Sam. “I found it under his bed.”
“Of course you did.”
The RA squinted, confused.
“I figured hiding it under the honor roll kid’s bed would be safer than mine. Congrats. You found it. Now what do you want?”
“I’m turning it in, and I’m writing both of you up.”
And he had. When Sam asked Elliott why he had falsely confessed, his friend smiled. “It was the obvious solution. My grandfather went broke a few years ago, but for decades before that, he gave millions to this school. I figure those deposits will square this. Mom and Dad will come down, and we’ll meet with the school, and it will be tense, but it’ll be fine. I’ll catch hell at home and probably have to go to some alcohol abuse awareness class—and we will probably have to change dorms, but it will all be fine. But you wouldn’t be, Sam. Not by yourself. You’d lose your scholarship at the very least.”
It was probably the kindest, most self-sacrificing thing anyone had ever done for him.
“We’re not just friends,” Elliott had said. “We’re brothers.”
It was a good thing he had. A week later, after finals, Sam was standing in the kitchen at a house party, holding a red cup full of warm beer, staring out past the bar into the family room at a girl from his calculus class. She wore a striped sweater, a shy smile, and shoulder-length blonde hair. Her name was Sarah Reynolds, and that night Sam walked over to her and said, “Hi,” and after that, and until her death, she was the center of his life.
*
A tall wave flowed over Sam, sloshing saltwater into his mouth. He flailed and coughed and fought with his arms and legs as another wave slammed into him.
When he finally caught his breath, the rain had slowed. He was thankful for that. But a thought occurred to him—the rain was his only source of fresh water. If it stopped, he’d die of thirst before he starved to death. That was all from Daniele’s crash course in survival: generally, a person could survive for three minutes without oxygen, three days without water, and three weeks without food. Every person’s body was different, but those were a good rough estimate.
His survival books had made it clear that he couldn’t survive on seawater alone. The salt was the problem. To clear excess salt from the body, the body combines the salt with water and excretes it as urine. The trouble was that saltwater was too salty. It didn’t contain enough water for the body to clear the salt. So, with each gulp of seawater, the body would use more of its store of water to clear the salt it took in. As Sam drank more seawater, he would become more dehydrated. Eventually, without fresh water to replenish what his body had lost clearing the salt, his kidneys and other organs would fail completely.
As such, when the rain stopped, he kept his mouth shut and hoped he saw land soon.
Floating on the sea, it was easy for Sam to imagine giving up. Simply taking off the outfit and letting the ocean take him. That was easier than fighting. But he had something to fight for. A reason to survive.
He imagined himself stepping out of the Absolom machine, holding his arms wide, reaching out and bracing himself as Adeline and Ryan ran to him. That mental image—of reuniting with his children—was his anchor in this harsh wilderness. They were his hull against the waves. He hung on for them, for a future that might not happen, but one he could never give up on.
Slowly, the night sky faded, and the stars dissolved as the sun rose.
In the light of day, Sam rolled off his back and worked his arms in the water and spun and gazed in every direction.
But all he saw was water and waves. And not a single sign of Pangea’s coast.