My lungs contract. My heart knocks against my ribs. Adrenaline fills my veins, and my thoughts go haywire. I’ve never mixed well with loud noises…nor immense panic…nor chaos.
I force myself to think of only one thing—the most important thing.
“My parents,” I blurt. “I have to find them. They were supposed to be on the sun deck.”
“Let’s go.” Bodin grabs my hand. Even in this mess, I can’t help but squirm my fingers out of his grasp.
We clatter down the stairs, and he leads me in the opposite direction from where I turned. Good thing I’m not navigating this yacht, or we’d end up in the Koh Samui Triangle.
Within seconds, we come upon a deck lined with loungers. Strewn across the bar tables are discarded coconuts and empty banana leaves that used to hold sticky rice cakes. But there’s no flash of a brightly colored scarf. No Mama. No Papa.
Where are they? Where?
People surge across the deck like high tide over sand, breaking us apart. They’re in all manners of beachwear. Wet suits, swim trunks, traditional sarongs that have been fashioned into cover-ups.
A little kid clutches his mother’s skirt while she frantically shoves beige, purple, and pink Thai baht into her purse.
“Is this like at school?” the boy asks shrilly. “When we have drills and I have to hide under my desk. Is that what this is?”
“Something like that,” the mom mutters, urging him forward.
I push into the crowd but get stymied by person after person heading in the other direction. I want to cry. In fact, I do scream, long and loud and frustrated.
Without a word, Bodin maneuvers in front of me, plowing a path through the throng with his broad shoulders. I fall into step behind him, too shell-shocked to do anything but follow.
And then I see Mama, pinned into a corner, her orange scarf askew, revealing a few inches of her bristled head.
“There!” I shout, grabbing at Bodin’s shoulder as relief courses through me. “I don’t see Papa, though.”
“I’ve got her,” Bodin calls over his shoulder. “Go find your dad and meet us on the aft deck, next to the lifeboats.”
Implicitly trusting him to take care of Mama, I turn and let the crowd carry me forward, the way a current might sweep you across slimy, river-coated rocks. Elbows and chests jostle me, but I maintain my footing—just barely.
Thick, black curls of smoke rise from the center of the yacht. And then, another explosion sends shattered glass flying through the air, skimming the heads of my fellow passengers and grazing my cheek.
OOOUCH. I yelp at the sharp sting of pain, but my voice is drowned out by countless other panicked screams.
I bring my fingers to my cheek and pull away blood. The deep red color and the sticky feel turn my panic into a full-blown freak-out.
Beads of sweat break out on my forehead. I can’t feel my hands; my feet don’t exist. All I can do is pant, in and out. In and out. In and out. Too fast, too shallow. I’ve got to stop this, or I’ll hyperventilate. Already, my vision’s blurring around the edges. Stop this. Stop this. STOP THIS.
With incredible effort, I drop into a squat and hang my head between my knees. Papa. I have to think of Papa. He’s somewhere on this yacht, and I need to find him.
I take deep breaths, the way my therapist taught me. Four beats in and four beats out. I can’t give in to my fear now. My family will only suffer as a result.
You have to fight, Alaia. Fight.
After eleven breaths, I’m able to convince myself to move again. The panic’s not gone, but I’ve erected large, solid walls in my mind to keep it at bay. When I emerge on the foredeck, however, to find it similarly crowded, the anxiety pounds its thousands of hands against my walls, demanding to be let in.
That’s when I hear Captain Xander’s voice over the loudspeaker. “Attention, all passengers. This is not a drill. I repeat, this is not a drill.” His voice is smooth and melodic, as though this were a normal afternoon of splashing in turquoise waters. As though he wasn’t just popping raw fish eyes into his mouth like Skittles. “There’s been an explosion in the engine room. We must abandon this vessel.”
My pulse roars ahead of me, not knowing or caring if I follow. Abandon vessel? That means we have to exit the relative comfort of this yacht to go…down there? Into the depths of the ever-increasing swells?
No way. There’s a reason I declined the snorkel tour today, and that’s because I can’t see the seafloor—which means I can’t trust it. Any number of creatures could be lurking down there, especially that enormous monster with the golden fins. Uh-uh, nope, and mai ao.
“Please report to your assigned lifeboat,” Xander continues. “If you cannot remember if you’ve been assigned to starboard or port, a crew member will assist you.”
I steel my jaw and climb onto a raised platform, more determined than ever to find Papa. I scan the crowd, but my vision is blurry. I didn’t even realize that I was crying. A steady trickle of tears runs down my cheeks. I swipe at my eyes—one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven times. And then, I finally spot Papa.
He’s boxed into the corner of the deck, too, but unlike Mama, he’s kneeling next to a woman lying on a lounger with a very swollen belly. She’s got her knees pulled up on either side of her, sweat plastering down her hair and shiny on her face.
You have got to be kidding. She’s having a baby in the middle of this chaos? And chaining Papa to her side? What fresh hell is this?
I leap from the platform and shove my way toward Papa and the pregnant woman. When I reach them, they’re counting breaths together.
“Contractions are three minutes apart,” he tells me. A flush tinges his cheeks, and his eyes are bright, focused. Too focused.
Damn it. I know that look. It’s his Doctor Face. And I don’t need him to be a hero saving lives right now. He needs to be in that lifeboat with Mama and me. Where he’ll be safe.
“The captain says we have to go,” I say unnecessarily. “We’re supposed to meet Mama by the lifeboats.”
“There are complications,” Papa responds. “I need to stay here, with Suzie and the baby, for as long as possible. We’ll escape on a lifeboat at the last possible moment.”
I want to howl. Of course there are complications. There always are. When you’re the only child of two physicians, complication is a daily occurrence.
But not now. Not when our yacht is sinking in the middle of the Gulf of Thailand.
“Papa,” I say, hating myself for the selfishness. “We need you.”
“I’m the only obstetrician here.” His words cut through the din like glass. “I took an oath. First, do no harm. There’s no corollary to that vow.”
He’s right. Even before he opened his mouth, even before Suzie clutches her stomach and moans, I know the morally correct choice. It’s been drilled into me since birth. Suzie needs him more than I do.
“Go find Mama. Stay with her.”
I throw myself at Papa, wrapping my arms tightly around his back. He’s a good six inches taller than Mama; his coloring is fair, while hers is dark. And yet, I always thought they looked a perfect match. It baffles me that strangers are often surprised to learn that they are a couple. The goodness in their faces binds them together more than any race, any religion.
“Hurry after us, okay?”
“I’ll be there before you know it.” His eyes are a deep, hazel promise that he doesn’t have the authority to make.
“Hey, Alaia?” he adds as though it is an afterthought. “How come ants never get sick?”
My father, the comedian. He never met a punch line he didn’t like. “I don’t know, Papa. How?”
“Because of their little ant-y bodies.” He grins, and it transforms his somber face into something youthful and vibrant.
I laugh a little, since that’s what he wants. But the humor is largely swallowed by the lump in my throat.
“Now, go make sure your mother’s safe.”
I nod. With a “good luck” to Suzie and a final good-bye to Papa, I plunge into the crowd once more, trying not to wonder if those will be the last words I ever hear from him.
The next few minutes pass in a blur of automatic movements. I find Mama by the lifeboats, just like Bodin promised, even if the boatswain himself has disappeared. She puts orange life vests on me and herself, as I’m too overcome to function, and crew members lower us into a long, oval-shaped lifeboat.
A couple more hours, I think as I perch on the hard bench. A hundred and twenty minutes, and this will surely be over. We’ll be back on a dry, safe vessel. My family will be reunited once more.
The lifeboat fills with about a dozen people—including Bodin—and Xander himself settles at the stern to steer. Ew. I can’t help but remember those poor fish. I’ll forgive him for whatever that was—as long as he gets us to shore safely. But right now I can’t look at him. I stare out at the water instead, and for an instant, I glimpse a large, golden fin. Again? It’s less than ten feet from our raft. One blink later, it is gone once more.
We speed away from the yacht, and a stiff breeze buffets us. Mama wraps her scarf around both our shoulders. She has both of our duffel bags, too, so at least I don’t have to worry about my possessions. I lean my head against her shoulder and feel a tiny bit better. As always, Mama can make even the worst things feel manageable, just by her presence alone. I don’t know how she does it. Magic, she always says with a wink. Even though I know better, I’m always tempted to believe it.
Behind us, the yacht looms, no longer weathered but proud, like it had been on the loading dock. No longer fast and efficient, now that it’s idling in the middle of the sea. It becomes smaller and farther away, and I catch Bodin’s eye as he passes out bottles of water.
He nods once.
It’s okay. It will be okay. It has to be okay, his gesture seems to tell me.
I want to believe it so desperately that I’m willing to take this assurance from a guy I barely know. So much bad stuff has happened to our family this last year—Mama’s cancer, the resulting flare-up of my OCD. I’m not sure if I can handle any more.
If only Papa was safe. If only he could be with us once more. Maybe, then, I’ll be able to relax and know that I’ll be able to survive whatever life throws at me.
I gulp down some water. All around me, people are slouching over, eyes closed. I place my elbows on my knees. Now that the adrenaline is fleeing, my limbs, my muscles, my very bones are tired.
The yacht is little more than a glow in the distance. To the left, I see dots of light—another marine vessel?—but those, too, seem to be getting smaller.
I drink some more water. The liquid is nice and cool on my parched throat. There’s a slight aftertaste to it. Something…almost sweet? Is water sweeter in this part of the world?
The legend goes that seawater is salty because a merchant wished upon a magical mill for all the salt he could sell. His boat filled with so much salt that it sank. Is there a similar legend about spring water and sugar?
Bodin swims in my vision. Floating by on his back, legs scissoring up and out in the air. Bumping into the other passengers. No, that’s not right. They’re not swimming.
They’re sleeping, every last one of them. A woman in the middle of unwrapping her beef jerky and sticky rice. A boy conked out over his iPad. Even Mama, who has to take ten milligrams of melatonin to get some much-needed rest.
“Why is everyone asleep?” I try to say, but the words sound funny on my lips. Maybe because they’re the consistency of coconut and pandan woon. So are my vision, my limbs, my brain. Everything sags in the middle and droops on the sides, as though the layers of my body are melting into one another.
Xander appears in front of me and takes the bottle from my hands.
“You drank all of it,” he says, pleased.
The truth comes to me slowly, reluctantly. Something’s not right. We’re moving away from the lights. Away from…help.
The chingchoks tried to warn me.
They tried to prepare me for death and destruction.
That’s my last conscious thought before I black out.