by Holly Hook
Chapter Eighteen
April 15, 2:06 a.m.
I'm not sure that the knots will hold, but it's the best option we have.
The only option we have. We don’t have any rope or time to go find any.
I run down the stairs to A Deck, dodging a river of people on their way up. Simon thuds after me. He has no choice. I'm in charge now.
"They're getting another boat down," Simon shouts. His hand brushes the back of my dress and fails to grab on. "I saw it, Julia. They're pushing it off the top of the officers' quarters."
A sudden wave of claustrophobia washes over me in the enclosed space. We're not the only ones here. A couple, one not much older than us, rushes out from one of the doors farther down and races up to the last stand on the stern, plugging up the hill in a fruitless effort to survive.
“They won't get it down in time.” I run, staying out of his grip, searching the windows for any sign of dining rooms. A lounge spreads out behind the windows nearest us, complete with dark wood and paintings, but nothing we can tie. A lone man in a suit stands inside, standing on the checkered carpet and staring at a painting on the wall like he wants to disappear into it. His life jacket sits folded beside him. Whoever he is, he's given up and accepted his fate.
But I won't.
There has to be something on this deck we can tie. The restaurant is three decks below. We'll never get down there and back up in time.
Melvin hiccups. The couple runs past, panting. The woman yells something to us in a language that, even though it's not English, I can understand. Run. Get out of here. There are no barriers between the doomed.
They dart up the steps that we came down, and my gaze slips beyond them, to a small lounge at the very end of the deck, farthest from the water. The light flickers again and comes back, reddish and near the end of its life. It's enough for me to catch a glimpse of white cloth-covered tables inside.
“Knife out,” I tell Simon as I start another run uphill.
The room on the other side of the glass is a small restaurant, its tables draped in white and waiting for the East Side's 1912 counterparts. I should know the name of this place, but it's gone, run away. “We need to cut one of these tablecloths in half.” I rip one off, let the silverware fall to the floor, and hold one half down with my foot. “Cut!”
Simon fumbles in his pocket for his knife and sets Melvin down on one of the tables, where he hiccups again. Screams crescendo outside and fall. Something's happening. “Now.”
A knife blade appears in the middle of the cloth and slices down. “Julia, what are you thinking?”
“Keeping us all together.”
“And how is this going to save us?” The knife rips down the tablecloth, exposing his jacket on the other side. His voice rises in panic. “We need to go for that last boat they're getting down!”
“It'll get washed off and end up upside down in the water,” I bark. Simon and I have almost no chance of getting on and Melvin won't be able to stand for hours on an overturned boat to wait for rescue. “Trust me. I know a way out.”
Rolled napkins slip off the table next to me and hit the floor, spewing out silverware. The tear reaches the end of the tablecloth, leaving it hanging in my arms as twin white flags. Simon stares at them, jaw slack. He doesn't know what to think.
"Trust me," I repeat, staring hard at him.
He nods. "Okay."
“We tie our arms together and you tie Melvin to me.” We've got to leave the cafe before the ocean rushes in to finish its job. Water will rush over the top any second. What time does it do that? 2:15?
Another stampede of people rush past us towards the stern. I hang back in the doorway, cloths in hand as they bolt past, a solid wall. There's men. Women, some with faces red from crying. Even some children, some younger than Melvin, carried in arms as they stare ahead with mouths gaping open and arms limp at their sides. I hang back in the doorway to avoid the trampling bodies.
“Arm!” I hold out the cloth to Simon.
He gives me his wrist. He helps me tie the knot—I have one hand while I'm holding Melvin—but my hands shake with the biting cold and growing terror. Someone rams into me and keeps going as if I don't exist. A woman stumbles and lands on her face. Others leap over her. Some miss the jump and join the pile right outside the door.
We get the first knot bound. Once, twice. Tight. “Now mine.” I hold out my free arm.
Simon's chin trembles. He stares down at my wrist in concentration, tying the other side so tight I'm sure my circulation is gone. But it doesn't matter. Not in this cold. We're joined by a length of thick fabric only a few feet long. It might not hold. My stomach drops with the memories of the plunge we've taken every night. Another awful groan sounds through the air. The ship trembles underneath.
“Now Melvin,” he says, eyes pleading with me again. Why are we doing this? He does a dance of panic on the deck but stays and takes the second cloth. “I'll wrap this around you both. He's small.”
The crowd clears on the deck outside. I stand still as I can, straining my feet to keep my balance. Simon wraps the cloth around us both, binding Melvin to me so tight that I feel the pulse in his neck, hammering with terror. I taste salt mingling with the stiff wetness of my hair.
My brother's tears.
"Julia," he moans, hugging me tight. "Don't let me fall."
"I won’t," I say, carrying him out into the frozen night. We emerge from the lounge, all three of us joined.
“Here it comes,” Simon yells, facing the way we came.
A horrible roar fills the air from everywhere at once.
It's the water, rushing up the deck, undulating as it grows closer. The tilt of the ship grows steeper. My feet almost go out from under me, sending me sliding down the deck and into its jaws. A pair of men trying to outrun it falls as it splashes over them. They're debris in a stream for a second before they're gone.
Melvin chokes me and screams. "Run, Julia!"
“Go!” Simon shouts.
I balance Melvin in one arm. His weight threatens to send me falling back. Simon pushes me along, his hands strong, keeping me from tripping and going back. Without him, I would.
Bodies brush against me. Skirts fly. Suits flap. Life vests flash white all around me. Breath spirals into the air. I climb the stairs to the Boat Deck, barely able to breathe with Melvin on my chest. The railing's so cold it hurts. Stars twist overhead as the last strains of the waltz meet my ears. They're dismal and unimportant over the screaming and roaring.
The stern stretches uphill ahead of us, gigantic and helpless. A crowd gathers at the railings. More pour up onto the deck, our fellow third class passengers finally free of the gates. They're a fountain of humanity bursting from below.
My father might be among them.
I stop to avoid the crowd.
“One of the knots is coming undone,” Simon shouts. A man rams into him, nearly knocking him forward. “We'll have to try another--”
Water slams its way over my feet.
They slip out from under me.
I fall.
Scream as the ocean invades my ears, muffling the world. Feet splash and thud past me, throwing water everywhere. The high pitched noise of human terror is in a neighboring universe.
The sea forces its way into my arms.
Between me and Melvin.
Runs over my face and my body like a liquid shroud. I hug water that slips away from me, lifeless and cruel.
My brother is gone.
"Melvin!" I sit up and grasp again, grabbing at water and air and struggling to open my eyes. There's a tug on my arm. The cloth. Simon and I are still linked.
I hack up the water as I open my eyes. They sting. Around me others stand, splashing and dripping as the ocean continues to foam and rise. A fresh spray of the icy Atlantic hits me in the face as legs rush up and out of it.
"Melvin!"
The first of the ship's funnels tumbles into the water, sending twin fountains toward
s the sky and crushing screams. A tremendous crash sounds as I whirl around for any sign of a small figure. I can't tell the deck from the ocean except for the dim light. It's a frothing mass of water and bodies. They flail out in the expanse, lost forever. Melvin--
"My brother!" People shove and cry their way past, treading water, shapes in the flickering light in the ship, not hearing my pleas. "Has anyone seen my brother?" Somehow I stand, hollowing inside. The cloth pulls at my wrist again. What was it for? Melvin's gone. My brother--
"Simon! Anyone! Help!"
Simon splashes to my side, upright, his hair stuck to his head and his face pale and wide. "Where is he?" he mouths and leans over to dig into the ocean.
I join him, pawing through the rising sea.
"Melvin!"
My brother my brother my brother is gone--
With an eruption of screaming, another stampede crashes around us, sending water up into my eyes. A body knocks the wind out of me. I fall, but another tug on my lifeline keeps me upright. Simon rams his hand into my back, forcing me along with the crowd that there's no hope of fighting against.
"Melvin!"
No small cry. No answer.
My insides flatten and die, but my legs push me uphill towards the end.
Chapter Nineteen
April 15, 1912, 2:16 a.m.
We're climbing higher.
And higher.
The ocean stretches out below us, a calm, black mirror smeared with the struggles of tiny people. It's deep. Dark. Deadly.
My brother's there.
I let out a scream.
It molds into the others, lost.
Simon leads me to the rail that marks off the third class section. We pour over in the river of people trying to outrun the icy death behind us. I want to let go. Slide back into the ocean to where my brother and father will rest forever. My body grows heavy, weak with the weight that's no longer in my arms.
A third groan, a louder one, echoes from below. Something crashes. A deck chair races down the deck, tripping a teenage girl and taking her with it.
Simon mouths something at me. His words are lost. The cloth keeping us together in the crowd is nothing but a flimsy rag, hanging wet between us. A man—hardly more than a boy—ducks underneath it and continues his pointless run.
I slip back, hitting the rail behind me. It's almost impossible to stand. My legs are lead. They want to give up. I should give up.
Melvin is--
Simon's face appears in front of mine as the crowd rushes away behind him.
He presses his lips to mine.
2:17 a.m.--
It could be our last kiss.
Heat rushes through me, chasing away the frigid night air. The warmth is comfort. Hope. Hope that if I make it out of here alive, we can find a way to come back and save Melvin and my father.
We part, and Simon's brown eyes stare hard into mine.
“We have to jump!” he shouts, looking over at the railing. The doomed climb over railings and plunge into the darkness below. Cries of anguish echo up like we're hovering over an underworld of tortured souls.
The stabbing cold. This is it.
“I can't!”
“We have to!” Simon grips my shoulders as the cloth hangs from his wrist. It twists in between us. Is it even still tied? “We won't be able to stand much longer.”
He's right.
The ship rises high into the night air. The slant grows steeper, the water, farther away. I'm delaying the inevitable. If that gold light is going to open and take us, I need to keep this as close to the nightmare as possible. I might have already taken too long.
I hesitate for a split second and follow him closer to the edge.
“Hurry!” I urge Simon. We stagger and push our way towards the railing. There's a bare spot there, waiting for us.
It's our spot.
The beginning.
Simon grabs the rail and pulls me to him with his free hand as my legs slip out from under me. “Hold on,” he shouts.
I do, and dare a look down.
I nearly faint with the sight. The ocean spreads out far below. The splashes from the falling victims are tiny in the smooth expanse. One...two...a small group fall past the enormous propellers hanging over the water. I catch a glimpse of someone's tan coat, pressed and ready for a meal in the first class restaurant. A blue skirt flying in the air.
My legs crumple and I land on my knees, holding the rail. There's no standing now. Simon joins me, gripping the rail with one hand and pulling me close with the other. It's too late to jump. The angle's too high for us to stand. Titanic is the world's largest slide now, the second and first funnels gone under the water. The third touches the ocean and begins its plunge. People slide past, grabbing for anything to hold onto, screaming for anyone to save them. More leap over the rail to the death that waits.
2:18 a.m.--
All we can do now is hold on.
I lock my knee inside the rail, keeping my legs from getting pulled down.
The lights on the ship flicker, casting us in darkness.
Come back on.
Then go out forever.
Every cry of human fear and pain explode around us. The world is a black and gray scream.
Then I remember.
I shout a warning to Simon, but it's hopeless that he'll hear it in the noise that crushes our ears. “The ship's going to break in--”
The sound of a monster of metal biting down sounds through the air and drowns out the screams. It grows louder, screeching and roaring and thundering as if the gods themselves are trying to break out from below decks. I press closer to Simon, burying my face between his shoulder and his neck. He wraps his arms around me like he'll never see me again.
My heart shoots up into my throat as the deck below us falls.
I fly, then ram into the deck as the stern meets the water with a roar that leaves a loud ringing in my ears. My teeth crash together, making spots erupt behind my closed eyelids. The railing bangs into my knee, sending a scream of pain through my leg. Simon and I bash heads.
I open my eyes.
The deck is level, covered in stunned bodies.
The entire front of the ship is gone, starting its trip to the bottom of the ocean. We're on a wood and metal island.
That'll change in a minute.
Simon's bleeding just above his right eye, but he blinks at me.
Our cloth link hangs dead and limp over the barrier several feet away, near where a woman lies in a heap.
We're no longer tied together.
2:19 a.m.--
He stares at me, not comprehending, not quite there. My leg throbs, then seethes, then pounds with agony. It's broken. Broken like the ship. A darkness even deeper than the night around us marches in, closing my vision as my stomach threatens to heave up its contents. I'm about to pass out. The last of the Titanic is about to sink and my brother and father are probably dead by now and I'm going to faint and go into the water and drown while time sniffs out Simon's code and sucks him away…
Simon's code.
His blood runs down the side of his face.
Time will open and pull it in.
I suck in a breath. The deck tilts under us again, faster this time, preparing for its final plunge.
The screams around us and under us are far away. Pain makes spots flare in my vision. I crawl closer to where Simon holds onto the rail, dragging my leg across what must be a deck of nails. He leans his head on his shoulder, breathing hard. A jackhammer pounds inside my shin. The darkness suffocates me, begging me to give up and not be awake for the fall. Inviting me to join Melvin and my father.
I hold onto the pain, focusing on it. With one last rake of my leg across the deck, I reach Simon and throw my arms around him. It's the only thing keeping me awake. Alive.
"I love you." I touch my forehead to his, taking in the stickiness of his wound, the red paint that I pray will mark me as worthy.
"Julia," he manages, looking
at me through his half-closed eyelids. Even though his voice is soft, I can hear it over the screams. It's the loudest thing in the world.
My feet slip on the deck. A black shape falls past me, and then another, and another. We're all dropping off the stern like smoked bees.
I hold onto Simon, keeping one arm around his neck, the other on the rail. He holds on. Somehow, he keeps his grip.
We're vertical, dangling now with my feet hanging in space. The stern treads water for what feels like minutes. Another body drops past us. A woman screams, loses her grip above us and plummets.
With a soft roar, we start to sink.
Water rushes up towards us, eating rails and swallowing everyone swimming near the base.
Simon's fingers grow looser and looser on the rail, slipping off--
2:20 a.m.--
--and then we fall.
The wooden deck zips past. Along with it, my life.
My mother, leaving for the market and not coming back.
Melvin begging me to read him Alice in Wonderland before bed.
Melvin sucking his thumb.
Nancy making me tea.
Monica and I falling on our butts skating at the Branch.
Simon walking up to me on the beach for the first time.
Falling with me and shouting my name.
Air whips past my skin. I dig my fingers into the back of Simon's jacket as the icy knives ready themselves below.
The sun explodes, brilliant and warm.
The wind stops. Its rays heat my skin. Its light consumes the world around us. Simon opens his eyes all the way to face me. His mouth falls open and he hugs me harder.
He doesn't lose his grip this time.
It's tight. Unbreakable.
The sun pulls at him.
At the blood on my forehead. At Simon's code.
And at me.
Time pulls us into the golden explosion and the roaring water and the screams of pain fade like a bad dream.
With one last flash of light, I slip down into a comfortable sleep.
