by Carrie Ryan
Of course it doesn’t help. The night is thick with humidity and the smells of the marsh: pluff mud; salt water; decaying fish. Even so, Grey fills my head and my senses.
He’s a means to an end, I remind myself again. But telling myself doesn’t make it truth. Somehow that end I’ve been searching for has grown fuzzier. I’ve reached the point where my carefully crafted plans are no longer relevant. Too many variables have entered the equation, jumbling things, forcing me to course-correct on the fly—before I have time to stop and think. To play out the consequences in my head before putting them in action.
If I needed any proof of how much my control over the situation has slipped, I need only listen to the stutter of my heart, feel the flexing of desire in my abdomen.
Run my tongue over my lips and taste Grey.
It has to stop. I need to refocus, regain control. And so I head to the one place I know that will remind me of the reason I’m here.
That will reorient me on my quest: the Caldwell Island Marina.
When I turn into the parking lot it’s dark and empty, sleek expensive cars lined up like soldiers along the outside rows. I flip open the glove compartment and pull out a set of keys before making my way toward the docks.
Only about half the slips are occupied, most folks taking advantage of the recent good weather to head out for deeper waters. But the boats that remain are impressive, their hulking hulls glimmering under lights strung between towering masts.
It’s late enough that everything’s quiet, the only sound muffled music playing against the hushing roll of waves. I keep my head down as I walk to the far dock and make my way out to the slip at the end. One of the few reserved for the larger, more impressive yachts.
I approach her slowly and stand for a while, staring at the name stenciled across the hull. LIBBY TOO. Cecil had once told me he named her that because his first yacht—a larger one—had been named after his wife, and as a kid Libby used to say, “I want one too.”
And so he bought her one.
It’s the first time I’ve seen the boat since I was pulled from the ocean four years ago. At the time, the yacht seemed enormous, towering over our tiny life raft. The ship represented every wish come true—the perfect embodiment of heaven to a fourteen-year-old girl who’d embraced the truth that she was going to die.
I step on board, tentative. Unlocking the door to the cabin feels like unsealing a tomb. There’s a puff of air as the seal breaks, and when I step inside everything’s dim and musty. The blinds have been pulled tight across the windows, everything lashed into place.
Cecil had arranged for someone from the marina to check on her every few weeks, and they’ve continued to do so after his death. There’s no dust on the table, no mildew along the walls. As far as I know, no one’s taken her out since my rescue which is perhaps why she carries such a feeling of pervasive emptiness.
As I make my way through the ship, I catch glimpses of my own ghost. A girl straddling the space between living and dead. By all rights I never should have survived.
Arguably I haven’t survived.
Eventually I find myself standing in the doorway to the room where they’d put Libby’s body. Now it’s just a cabin like any other on the ship. But in my mind I still see her on her side, face to the wall and blanket pulled to her shoulders.
Almost as though she’d simply fallen asleep.
I move to the bed and sit, swinging my legs up until I’ve arranged myself in the same position she’d been in. Ahead of me nothing but a blank wall.
And I think: What if it had been me instead?
What sort of life would Libby have lived if she’d been the one pulled from the ocean alive? Could she have returned to her old school, resumed her relationship with Shepherd? Would she have done as her father asked and forgotten about the incident, letting it all fall into the past?
Let me fall into the past as well?
Or, like me, would she have held on. Unable to let go. The screams and images of that night seared so deep that the burn never faded.
But that’s not really the kind of person Libby was either. She wouldn’t have kept the truth quiet like I have. She’d have spoken out against Grey and his father. Secure in her place in life, she wouldn’t have been afraid.
Like I’ve been.
She wouldn’t have let it control her life.
Like I have.
She wouldn’t have been content to live a lie.
A tear slips free. Followed by another and another. Lying here in the spot that had been rightfully mine, I realize that my recovery from the Persephone has only been an illusion. As superficial as I am.
All I know to do anymore—all I know who to be—is this. And I have no idea what or who that is. For so long I’ve been a girl who no longer exists, chasing a path no longer visible.
To what end?
It would be so easy to let it go. Walk away. There’s no one left to condemn me for such a decision. Except that I don’t even know what that means or where I would go. Because for four years my life has been defined by the Persephone—by someone else’s preferences and desires. Someone else’s life.
I slip my phone from my pocket and enter the familiar terms in the image search: “Persephone disaster passengers.” It pulls up a page of pictures, memorials for those lost when the Persephone sank. Formal photos of families, candid pics of friends, casual group shots of coworkers. I’ve spent so much time researching every one of them that their histories are almost as familiar as my own. The environmentalists by the Amazon; the Dorsey family gathered around a Christmas tree; Jeff and Jane Stier with their latest rescue dog.
And then there’s Frances Mace and her horrid school photo. There are other pictures as well, though I have no idea where the media got them—whether someone rooted through our empty house, searching for abandoned photo albums, or whether these were somehow donated by friends.
But they’re the only pictures I have left of my family. A Christmas card from six years ago, the photo ironically taken from another cruise we’d been on. We’re standing on the gangplank, my mother’s wide tortoiseshell sunglasses pushed up on her head, her arm around my father and her other hand draped over my shoulder. Me leaning back against them both, an outline of Darth Vader reading a book on my red shirt, my hair in a frizzing ponytail, and my smiling mouth filled with braces.
That had been my favorite shirt—a birthday gift from my friend Jackie. I used to go over to her house sometimes on the weekend and she’d pull out an old Ouija board and we’d drink root beer and stay up late asking the spirits questions and pretending we weren’t the ones pushing the disk around the board, making up stupid answers.
On a whim, I look her up and find a blog filled with photos. Her at graduation, long dark braids twisted into a knot at the nape of her neck, one arm around a tall, lanky redhead and the other clutching her diploma. Her on the beach, her two younger sisters helping her bury that same redhead, his nose an alarming sunburned red. Her slouched with a group of girls, all of them wearing glittering dresses and wrist corsages as they pose in front of a limo.
I try imagine myself with them, on the end with my arm draped over Rebecca’s narrow shoulders. But I can’t. Because when I picture myself now, it’s as Libby. Sleek, sophisticated, always-put-together Elizabeth O’Martin. The kind of girl who knows how to write a thank-you note, who attends boarding school in Switzerland and spends her summer vacations in Provence, who wears couture.
The kind of girl who would never fit in with Jackie and Rebecca. Or rather, they wouldn’t have fit in with Libby.
Though who knows how much they’ve changed in the years I’ve been gone as well.
The only one who never changed at all was Frances. The girl in suspension, stuck in time. Pulled onto the Libby Too as one person and stepping off again someone else.
I reach up and slide
a finger along the hair covering my cheek, carefully tucking it behind my ear the way I’d wanted to do for Libby years ago when she’d been lying here. And I think about crouching in that cruise ship dumbwaiter, watching through the mirrored porthole window while a man kicked open the door to my family’s stateroom.
He’d pointed his gun at my parents and my mother had looked past him to my hiding place. There’d been so much hope in her eyes—that I would somehow survive. That I would live—be something more than a victim of these monsters. I know it’s the thought that carried her into death: belief in me.
She would be so disappointed to see what I’ve become. To see how I’ve wasted everything that came before.
To see how cruel I now am.
A victim of the Persephone nonetheless.
She would tell me that it’s never too late to change. It’s never too late to strike out on a different path.
But she would be wrong.
And it doesn’t matter anyway, because she is gone. Something in my chest catches, razor-sharp bands squeezing tight. I clench my teeth against the pain of it. Even now I can’t think of my parents without seeing how they were at the end.
Blood-soaked, faces shattered. Gone. Gone. Gone.
THIRTY-NINE
I snap awake in the darkness, heart screaming in my chest. At first I think it must have been a nightmare, but my body remains rigid, on high alert. I hold my breath, listening.
The Libby Too isn’t a small boat by any stretch, and yet she still dips under the weight of someone walking on her decks. That, I realize, is what has woken me up. The echo of footsteps, the almost-imperceptible shift in her movement.
Slowly, as silently as possible, I sit up, straining to listen. “Hello?” I call out. Nothing. I stand. “Hello?” I call again.
In response, there’s a massive burst of sound and light. I fly through the air. My shoulder slams into the wall and I fall to the floor, knocking my head against the corner of a table. Starbursts explode in my vision as I push to my hands and knees, groggy.
The room’s a solid wall of darkness, my own fingers nothing more than deep shadows as I wave them in front of my eyes. There’s a loud, horrible groaning noise and the floor begins to tilt under me, sharp enough that I have to brace my feet against the wall to keep from crumpling against it.
Something big and heavy crashes on the other side of the room and I’m barely able to roll out of its path as I hear it skidding toward me. At first I think the rushing in my ears is blood from my racing heart, but as the intensity of it grows and builds, I recognize the sound: water.
The ship tilts again, and cold salt water oozes along the floor, sliding in under the door and sloshing against my legs. The Libby Too is sinking.
I pat at my pockets, finding the bulge of my keys but no phone. I’d fallen asleep clutching it. Who knows where it is now? There’s no way I’ll be able to find it in this wreckage.
“Damn,” I whisper. It’s so impossible to see in the dark that it doesn’t matter my eyes blur with tears.
Twice I try to stand, and twice I wobble and fall as the boat pitches beneath me. I half crawl, half throw myself toward the far wall, sliding my hands over it until I find the door.
I flick the knob and push, but it doesn’t budge. From overhead I hear a series of crashes, the cabinets in the salon falling open and disgorging their contents. I throw my shoulder against the door over and over, trying to get as much leverage as I can, but there’s something on the other side blocking it.
I’m trapped.
“Is anyone out there?!” I scream, slamming my hand against the door. “Help me!”
But there’s no one to save me. I’m completely alone.
A series of shudders rocks through the ship—vibrating up my legs and down my arms. Something buckles against the other side of the door, scraping across it. I push again, this time creating a gap large enough to fit an arm through.
There’s a muffled blast and somewhere deep in the bowels of the ship something gives way. The floor tilts violently, almost falling out from underneath me. The Libby Too is almost completely on her side now, which leaves me hanging, my fingernails digging into the doorjamb as I try to pull myself up. Water pours into the room, pummeling at my face. It’s like trying to hold on to the lip of a waterfall and I can’t do it anymore.
My hands lose their grip, and I fall. I plunge underwater and come up sputtering. Everything’s turned on its side, the wall by the bed now practically the floor, the door out of reach above me.
I can barely stand, my toes just grazing the side of a table. And then even that becomes impossible and I’m treading water. The room’s an interior berth and there’s no other escape—no porthole or vent.
My only option is to keep my head above the surface and wait until it’s deep enough that I can reach the door again. Even to my own ears, my breathing sounds ragged and wheezy. Desperate. All I can do is flail at the water, try to stay calm.
Inch by inch, the water level rises. Once it reaches the door, the hallway will fill quickly, and if I can’t find my way out before that happens, I’m dead. A whimper sounds in my throat.
When I’m close enough, I kick as hard as I can, reaching for the edge of the doorway over my head. I grab hold of the jamb, but as I try to pull myself up, my arms wobble and give out. I splash back down again.
I surface screaming. In pain. In rage. In terror. This time, with the water level higher, I’m able to pull myself up, into the hallway. Everything’s turned on its side, the water a rushing river creating rapids over the debris scattered in its path. It’s a fight to gain traction, to move at all against the current.
The water’s at my knees, and then my thighs and hips. I’m only halfway to the stairs when it reaches my waist and suddenly I lose my footing. It’s like swimming against a riptide: impossible and deadly.
I dive under, scrabbling for handholds as I pull myself forward. Kicking to the surface to swallow a breath of air before doing it all over again. Inch by inch, I fight my way down the hallway until I push for the surface and it’s no longer there.
The hall’s completely submerged. Panic’s a hot coal burning in my lungs, my brain screaming breathe, breathe, breathe as I force my lips to clamp shut. Static hazes around my vision, my thoughts turning fuzzy, and then my hand brushes against the edge of the staircase railing.
I’m clawing at it, wrenching myself forward hand over hand. My mouth is already open, my lungs already sucking in when my fingers break into air and I come up sputtering and coughing. Retching, doubled over, as I shudder and gasp.
All around, an orange haze echoes off the surface of the water, the air thick and sticky, burning my eyes. Fire eats at the stern of the ship, loud and frenzied. I push myself in the other direction, toward the bow. The salon is a chaos of broken furniture and floating debris. And though the water continues to rise, it’s not rushing as furiously.
The double doors leading out to the front deck are broken open, the glass shattered and jagged. As careful as I try to be easing through it, the sharp tip of one of the shards catches at my arm, tearing open the skin. Blood glistens black, like oil, under the glow of the fire.
Outside I’m surprised to find the ship unmoored. It’s drifted into the middle of the bay—the marina a collection of lights in the distance.
Underneath me the boat groans and shudders again and I feel the vibrations of her tearing apart. The entire deck of the bow is tilted, a smooth wall of varnished teak. With nothing to hold on to, I slip down it like a child on a slide at an amusement park. When I crash into the water, the world goes muffled and dark.
I kick away from the sinking ship, swimming as hard as I can to put distance between us. I reach the surface and gasp, fighting against the churning water, bubbling and frothing as the Libby Too lets out her last protests and breaks apart.
The night�
��s lit by her flames and little else. Behind me, the marina’s several football fields away, the crowds beginning to gather, appearing little more than flickers of fireflies with their flashlights aimed toward the sinking ship.
I swim into the darkness, cutting through the water as smoothly as I can, trying not to draw attention. There’s enough debris and chaos surrounding the dying ship that I can easily go unnoticed, just another shadow against the midnight water.
The far side of the marina is practically empty, everyone else crowded at the other end, eyes glued on the spectacular wreckage. I’m able to haul myself onto one of the docks and slip back toward the parking lot, leaving a trail of water in my path.
I reach my car just as two fire trucks and a cop car come screaming through the entrance, barreling their way toward the docks. The air becomes a riot of color and sound, activity and screaming orders. Thankfully the keys are still in my pocket and I slip behind the wheel, slumping gratefully into the cradle of the leather seat.
Safe, I tell myself. And the thought causes my breath to strain, my body quivering and teeth chattering, as the reality of it all crashes through me. I let out a gasping sob.
How safe can I really be? There’d been someone on board. Someone had unmoored the ship. Someone had set her adrift, rigged her to blow, intending for her to sink. And someone had barricaded the door to my room.
Goose bumps flare down the back of my neck and along my arms. They’d known I was there. They’d known exactly where I was on board.
And I’d been completely unaware.
They could still be here now. Watching.
I fumble for the door lock button and then push it again twice more just to make sure before staring the car. As I pull out of the parking lot, I keep my eyes on the rearview mirror, watching to see whether anyone follows.
But all I see is the final belch of flames and frothing water as the Libby Too sinks beneath the surface. The ship that rescued me had almost taken me down with her.
