What did I drink that night? My legs turned to rubber at one point, I remember. I take pride in my ability to handle booze. But that night . . . what did they put in their gin bottles—jet fuel?
I haven’t been able to eat much since then. Knowing what happened. I carry around that truth with me like a molten piece of lava in my belly. It smolders, day in and day out, burrowing into the folds of my gut, burning small holes into my flesh.
Why did Erin call me? She’s such a nutcase. I wouldn’t be surprised if she called to chat, imagining that we’re best friends now despite everything that had happened between us.
I stood in the kitchen, looking down at my phone, knowing full well that Brynn was watching me. I could feel her gaze bore into me, even if she was staring at my reflection in the windowpane. When I saw Erin’s name on my phone display, I felt my blood pressure drop as if someone had pulled a plug out of my heel. Brynn knew that Erin had called me. Of course she knew.
I find that I’m reminding myself to eat now, to get some gut luggage down there, or else I’ll waste away and lose my strength. Then what will I do? How will I get though my missions? Don’t think about it, man. It was a white lie. You told Brynn the part of the truth that she needed to know, the part she asked about. Did you guys get together? That absolutely never happened.
Good thing she didn’t ask if something else happened, casting her net far and wide. Is that it then? I wonder. Is the truth on a need to know basis? I think so, yes. Yes, if I can swear it will never happen again. On that, I swear on my life.
But Brynn, she can’t know what happened that night. She can never, ever know . . .
Briggs, our squadron leader, sticks his blonde sunburnt head into my bunk compartment. "Your beauty sleep ain’t workin.’ You’re still ugly."
"I haven’t heard your mom complaining."
He smirks. "Be ready to move out in twenty, pecker checker."
And it’s my turn to smirk. "Yes, sir."
7
GIA
It’s noon on Saturday. Standing in the Newport Marina parking lot, I feel cold prickles sweep across my skin as the wind picks up. Early March isn’t known for warm perfect weather, but for the first time in recent memory, the skies are leaden, threatening bad weather. I walk down the entrance ramp to the docks where all the boats are tied up, where my day sail with my best friend Nikki and the guy she’s seeing, James, is set to occur.
They met at Nikki’s twenty-fifth birthday party, while we were standing at the bar, ordering drinks. He bumped into her, wearing a wide grin and carefully mussed hair.
She fought her attraction to him because he’s a Peter Pan Man, recently divorced, chasing his endless summer, not cut out for commitment or not any time soon anyway, at least that what his ex-wife would probably say.
Nikki gave me a slip number and the name of the boat, Fair Thee Well. I’ll just walk up and down the floating walkway here until I find them. Easy.
Except it’s not easy. There’s about a hundred boats down here, a tangle of masts stretching up to the darkening sky. After I make my way up and down a row or two, I stop and unearth my cell phone from my bag. While I’m punching in my passcode, I hear Nikki call out, "Hey, Gia!"
I turn and find Nikki and James standing in the cockpit behind a faded red canvas cover, James with his arm resting on the frame, Nikki waving next to him. She’s wearing her favorite pair of cropped chinos, matched with a nautical inspired polo shirt, and a striped sweater. Her chin-length blonde bob is tucked behind her ears, framing her high cheekbones.
"Glad you found us. I was beginning to worry," Nikki says as I walk toward them.
I glance up at the sky. "I already am worried. Do you think we should go out in this weather?"
"You can’t sail without wind, can you?" James grins and moves to the side runnel, extending his hand toward me. "Welcome aboard."
"Thanks," I say, taking his hand, climbing up and swinging my leg over the wires that stretch around the boat. Then I catch the tip of my tennis shoe and stumble. It wasn’t the most graceful of entrances. I hope I didn’t look like an idiot.
I give Nikki a hug, and can tell by the glimmer in her eyes that she’s thrilled to be dating a captain and a good-looking one too, in charge of a real life sailboat.
Fair Thee Well is a lot smaller than many of the other boats docked at the marina, but it looks cute and capable. A sporty red stripe runs alongside two tiny topside windows. There’s a confusing mess of ropes and lines and blocks and clamps, leading here, there and everywhere, and the sails are flapping half-heartedly in the breeze. Am I glad James knows what he’s doing.
"I can’t believe you own a boat. Wow," I say to him.
"Partly own. And sometimes I wish I didn’t. You know what they say about boats?"
"That they’re super fun to sail?" I ask.
"Ha! That they’re holes in the water where you dump your money."
"Oh dear."
James chuckles and slips his arm around Nikki. "Good thing they’re super fun to sail." Nikki looks up at him, smiling grandly, her half-moon shaped eyes disappearing into squints. "Go ahead and put your bag down below. I’ll get the engine started."
Inside the boat, I find old ropes piled onto the faded canvas cushions of the couch. A bucket filled with tools sits off to the side, and a small wooden countertop topped with a single gas burner makes up the kitchen. The boat has a musty smell that makes me feel queasy or maybe it’s the unsettling way the boat keeps bumping against the dock, knocking my sense of balance out of whack.
Quickly, I put my bag down and climb out into the fresh air again. The wind picks up, clattering ropes against masts all across the marina. Suddenly, I have a misgiving. I wouldn’t call it ESP because I turned my back on my extra special power long ago.
But I do have an inkling. Call it nerves. I have a feeling that something is going to happen today, something big, possibly bad. Maybe it’s just my imagination. What’s that saying about fear? Is it something to be heeded or pushed aside? I’m not sure. I can’t remember.
I sit down next to Nikki, while James fires up the engine and checks on a few dials. "Isn’t this exciting?" She asks with a big smile, squeezing my hand with both of hers.
"Mmhm. Yeah."
"You okay?" she asks, her smile fading.
"I’m just a little nervous, I guess."
"About what?"
"I wish I knew."
She smirks and wafts a hand. "Don’t worry, James knows what he’s doing." She looks over at him. "Right, babe?"
James chimes in. He’s seen it all before, he’s telling me. Big seas, bad weather, you name it. He sailed the boat to Catalina Island with six of his friends just a few weeks ago. Nothing broke. The boat didn’t sink. Nobody died of privacy invasion. He’s a real professional. People pay him to sail in inclement weather. In fact, he’s off to a regatta on Martha’s Vineyard in a few days to crew. "I’ll get you home safe and sound," he’s saying as he pats the yellowing deck of the boat. "She won’t let us down."
"It’ll be fun!" adds Nikki.
"Okay," I mumble. "Thanks guys . . ."
He’s up at the front of the boat now—the bow—tossing ropes onto the dock. Then he hurries back and slips the engine into gear. So I sit back and try to relax as the boat pulls away from the dock, while James steers us into the great windy unknown.
8
GIA
It’s definitely windy. Gusty, James calls it, with blasts up to thirty knots. That’s what his little wind-o-meter reports anyway, he calls it the Windex. I squeeze my hands between my knees and think about blue cleaning fluid. Thirty knots seems to be his threshold for concern. He’s looking very busy now, and Nikki is looking very green.
"Keep your eyes on the horizon," James tells Nikki, who turns to the side and stares into the distance.
"Can you winch in the sheet?" he asks me, voice raised against the wind, pointing at a thingy. Boats have a lot of thingies. Thingies with names that don�
��t make any sense. I look around for said sheet, trying to find a big white fabric-like item that one might find in bed. Does he mean the sail? I know what a sail is. Sheets and sails are kind of similar. Both are big and billowy. Right?
"The rope!"
Nope. Okay, I see a lot of ropes. There’s a thin blue one, a red one with black specks, and a dirty white one.
"The blue one. Put the winch handle on the winch and crank it up!"
Okay. Okay. I can do this. I grab a handle-looking device and try to fit it into the star shaped hole on top of the winch, but no matter how hard I push it won’t go in.
"Push the button!" he yells into the wind.
I find the button on the top of the handle and engage it. Some edges retract, allowing for easy insertion. In it goes, and around I crank, praying the wind will die down, praying the sun will come out and rescue us from this terrible situation.
I look up at the leaden sky. Storm clouds are gathering thick and dark now. I’m definitely frightened. And if it wasn’t for James’ sailing skills, I would be crying right now. Instead, I’m teetering on the brink of ‘terrified’ and retreating back to ‘shaken up.’ Rinse and repeat.
"Twenty-five knots!" he cries, a wide grin plastered across his face, while my hair is plastered across mine.
Nikki and I hold on tight to the arched canvas covered frame that thankfully blocks wind and seawater spray. He calls it the dodger. I call it our lifeline.
"I think we should stay close to land," I suggest, staring longingly at the coastal cliffs. I contemplate jumping over board and swimming to terra firma, where I won’t lose my lunch, where I don’t have to pull on sheets and cling to dodgers, where I will never, ever, capsize and drown.
"No way!" James cries. "That’s the worst thing you can do. You have to aim for the open ocean and ride it out, otherwise you risk running aground." He motions toward land, where heavy waves crash and crumble over a wide bed of jutting rocks that lead up to the cliff face.
"Seems like a wise thing to do," I mumble, grateful that James knows what he’s doing, especially when, clearly, I have no idea.
Through the opening, I can see that my beach bag spilled its contents inside the boat. My suntan lotion rolls from one side of the boat to the other. A tampon makes a similar round-trip journey. I want to slip down the ladder and tidy up my belongings, but another gust of wind bum-rushes us.
"Hang on!" James cries.
I hang on, mostly to my big fat baby tears, and ride it out, thinking about my other problems. My queasy stomach, for one, feeling worse every time boaty smells waft up from down below. I stare at the horizon alongside Nikki and pull in deep breaths. Except it isn’t helping. It’s making me cold. Shivering, I look down at the rattling sleeves of my cute pink ‘wind breaker’ that breaks exactly zero force wind.
I hadn’t bothered my head about performance when I bought it. It was cute, on sale, and had a sufficiently technical sounding name. The flimsy jacket was really built for a pleasant afternoon breeze, not Cyclone Mary here bearing down on us.
It’ll be fun, Nikki had said. This is not fun. And I think Nikki would agree. She leans over the cockpit railing and dry heaves.
"Are you okay?" I ask, moving over to her. I put my arm around her, holding her hair away from her face, doing my level best to keep my stomach contents down where they belong.
"I’m fine," she mumbles.
"Nikki, take in deep breaths," James calls out. "That should help."
"Did you hear that, Nik?"
"Yeah," she says, "I think I need to lay down though . . ." And she settles her head onto my lap.
"Is it going to get worse?" I ask James, not sure if Nikki and I can take much more.
"It’s just a squall," he replies, strong hands on the big wheel he calls the helm, steering us out to sea. He points toward a lighter area in the sky, past a dark shelf-like cloud that hovers overhead." See that? It’s called a squall line. Once we pass it, the wind should calm down."
Thank God for small mercies. Literally.
"When will we pass it?" I ask.
"Soon! Let’s just hope I’m reading those clouds wrong,"—he motions toward a billowing cloud mass on the distant horizon, dark on the underside, puffy and white on top—"cuz that looks like lightning and thunder to me."
Well, James must be a weather genius because the next thing that arrives after the wind dies down some is thunder and lightning. This makes him nervous.
I nearly jump out of my seat when the first bolt thunders out of the sky. It’s one thing to sit in the comfort of your own home, watching Mother Nature in her full glory. It’s quite another to have a front row seat to her fury, while sitting on bobbing little cork in the vast churning ocean.
"Is that bad?" I ask.
He nods. Affirmative. "A direct hit can take out all the electrical equipment. The maps, the navigation instruments . . . everything."
"Everything?" I ask, looking around. I gaze out at the steely gray horizon, and for once in my life, I pray for bland weather.
We sail on for another half an hour or so, while I hang onto the dodger frame for dear life, watching the lightning spark on distant whitecaps. Then one strikes pretty darn close to home.
We’ve all heard stories of people getting struck by lightning. Those are the types of things that happen to the unfortunate segment of society called Other People. Not me. I’m not Other People. I’m me. Gia Eastland, the—
Crack!
The mast sparks, and a faint current of electricity races through the palm of my hand. Was that a direct hit? Lightning kills people, but here I am, pretty much alive. It must have been a trick of the eye, I reason. Nothing to worry about. Nothing—
"Shit," James says, tapping on a screen mounted on the helm station. He doesn’t need to say any more. I already know. The lightning struck, frying all the electronics, ushering us into the terrible calamity that he just detailed.
Looks like we’re about to spend much more time together than we originally planned.
"Can you go down below and flip the master circuit breaker?"
I stare at James, aghast. "What? Are you off your nut? I don’t know anything about boats!"
"OK. You can either flip the circuit breaker or steer. But I can’t do both." I think about it for a second. How hard can it be to steer a boat? It’s not like we’re going to hit anything.
"You ready?" James motions me over to helm. "Make sure you drive up on a wave or else we can capsize."
Never mind. "Where’s the circuit breaker?"
"It’s behind a panel underneath the nav station."
I blink.
"The nav station is where all the maps and crap are. The panel is below the table. It’s white. You can’t miss it."
"Maps and crap," I mumble. And to Nikki, "Hang on, Nik. I’ll be right back."
I much prefer James to handle all the circuitry, but he’s busy manhandling the helm, driving up waves, making sure we don’t capsize. And Nikki is out of commission, so I make my way down the ladder and inside the boat.
Electricity makes me nervous. I’m not sure how much this little boat carries, but I’m pretty sure it’s enough to make my hair stand on end. Plus, there’s the problem of the thick malodor inside the boat, smelling of dried saliva, old fish, and diesel. The diesel part is especially hard to handle for some reason.
I descend the short ladder and I find the maps and crap on a little wooden table on the side of the cramped cabin. The boat pitches and bucks. I wobble over, landing a good handhold on the desk ledge. Made it.
I pause for a moment and hold my breath, trying to calm my stomach. Focus, I tell myself. Just open the panel, flip the switch, and get out of here pronto before something embarrassing happens.
I grab a flashlight rolling side to side on the nav station and turn it on. Thank God it works. Sorta. I point the dim beam of light at the panel and tug on the handle until the door pops open.
Inside I find our salvation: the master
circuit breaker. It’s a circular switch with a lever that twists to the position at three o’clock marked ON. Right now it’s tripped to the twelve o’clock position marked OFF.
"Did you find it?" James yells from outside.
"Yeah," I call back, staring at the mechanism. I swallow and reach into the murky darkness as careful as a kid playing Operation.
You’ve done this before, I tell myself, thinking about the time my banker’s lamp blew a bulb and plunged my apartment into darkness. I remember the jolt when I flipped the circuit breaker. But I survived, as I will now. I hope.
I grit my teeth and twist.
Nothing.
"It’s stuck!" I call out.
"Try harder!"
Harder. Okay. I stick the end of the flashlight in my mouth, keeping the dimming beam of light on the switch so I can kind of see what I’m doing. With both hands now, I twist the lever as hard as I can, but still it won’t budge.
"Anytime now . . ." I hear James grumble.
My initial trepidation fades. Instead, I feel a surge of frustration tinged with my old friend Fear. If I can’t get this stupid switch back into the Action Jackson position, we’re going spend the entire night out here getting thrashed around. And how much more can this floating can of beans take? Right now, there isn’t anything I want more than to get off this beater of a boat.
I try again, twisting so hard my fingers ache, pushing through the pain. Suddenly the switch jumps to the three o’clock position, and my hand slips off, striking a wire.
Zap!
A sizzling current surges up my arm, striking like a great snake. The power of the sting takes my breath away. The flashlight falls to the floor, killing the light.
I scramble backward, body buzzing, holding my aching hand up to my chest. A wave of nausea washes over me. Grey fuzzy stars dance before my eyes. I hear the distant sound of waves washing against the side of the boat, followed by, sometime later, the rustling sound of James’ foul weather jacket as he rushes inside the boat.
Keep Me In Sight Page 3
