The sun started to set, and Shy was now on the opposite end of the boat. But Addie still wanted to talk. “Tell me more about your grandma,” she called out to him from the front of the boat.
“My grandma?” Shy asked.
Addie pulled the oar out of the water and faced him. “It’s just, I heard Romero Disease was made up by the media to scare people.”
Shy recast his line with the last of his hooks, trying not to get pissed off at her ignorance. “Didn’t seem made up when her eyes filled with blood and she started clawing at her own skin. Or when she died within two days.”
“I didn’t mean—” Addie looked down at the oar in her hands. “God, that’s what happened? I’m sorry.”
“Who told you it was made up?”
Addie turned back to the ocean and resumed digging into the water with the oar. “My dad. I figured he’d know since he spent a bunch of time in Mexico the last couple years. That’s where it started, right?”
Shy wished he could tell Addie the truth. That her dad was an idiot. But it didn’t seem right with him missing, so instead he told her what he knew about Romero Disease. She was right, it had started in Mexico and then crossed into U.S. border towns like his. He listed all the symptoms his grandma had, explained how quickly her condition got worse and how freaked out his whole family was when she died so quickly of dehydration. He also told Addie, for the first time, how his nephew had it now, too.
“I’m so sorry,” she mumbled.
It went quiet between them for a while, and then she cleared her throat and added: “I don’t understand why he would lie to me. I’m not some naïve little girl he has to protect from reality.”
A few minutes later Shy felt a powerful tug on his line. He peered over the jagged side of the boat and saw a pale fish, three times the size of the first one he’d caught, fighting to break free of his hook.
He wrapped the line around his shirt-covered hand several times, his heart speeding up in excitement, and lodged his foot against the base of the boat.
Addie was beside him now, peering over the side at the struggling fish. “Look how big it is!” she shouted.
Shy jerked the line toward him again, wrapping the slack around his wrist. He did this several times, as fast as he could, watching the fish get closer and closer to the surface. But then, out of the corner of his eye, he spotted movement—one of the sharks was darting toward the fish.
“Shy!” Addie shouted, ducking behind his line of vision.
It looked like the shark was preparing to launch itself right at the boat. But the fish was only a few feet away from the surface now, and Shy continued pulling. There was no way he was going to lose this fish.
At the last second, the shark opened its massive jaw, and Shy’s gaze locked onto the rows of jagged teeth before turning his head, still pulling the fish but also bracing for impact.
The shark crashed right into the side of the boat, nearly tipping it over. Shy fell onto his back, staring at the severed line still wrapped around his shirt-covered hand and wrist. Not only had the shark made off with the fish, it had taken their last hook.
When he looked up again, he saw Addie leaning over the side of the boat, aiming the flare gun at the shark. Shy scrambled to his feet just as she fired, a ball of light shooting down into the water, where it quickly sputtered out and died.
“What are you doing!” he shouted.
But she was already loading the second flare and aiming the gun at the water. Shy got to her just as she was pulling the trigger and all he succeeded in doing was changing the direction of the flare. Instead of slicing though the water, at the shark, it launched overhead, and they both stood there watching it arc through the darkening sky and then fall uselessly onto the ocean’s surface less than fifty yards away.
Addie fell to her knees, sobbing. “I can’t take this anymore!” she shouted. “I just want it to be over!”
“It’s okay,” Shy said, kneeling down beside her. “We’ll figure something out, Addie. I swear.”
But they both knew there was nothing left to figure out. Not without the fish. Or hooks. Or flares. Or strength. With barely any water.
“It’s okay,” he repeated again and again.
Even when he saw that the water was dripping through a crack in his patch job again—because of the impact of the shark. Or when he realized the oar was no longer in the boat, but floating on the surface of the ocean somewhere.
Still.
He repeated these words to Addie.
“It’s okay.”
“It’s okay.”