Knockdown (4 page)

The boat picked
up speed. My legs were going to be crushed if the boat got closer to the dock we were backing alongside. “Cole! Dylan!” I screamed and pulled myself up a little ways, only to fall back again.

“Please.
Help us!” a voice from the crowd screamed.

My
shoes were soaked. The water made the side slicker. My hands began to sweat. My fingers were opening. I gave up trying to get on board and focused on just holding on.

T
he support piling at the end of our slip was coming right at me. It was covered in barnacles. The side of the boat and I were going to rub against it. My left hand lost its grip. I dangled and swung back and forth, holding on with one hand. My entire leg was now immersed in the water. My shoulder ached. I shrieked.

I wasn’t going to make it. The piling was less than a foot away. I closed my eyes and gritted my teeth. My fingers were slipping.

Someone grabbed my arms. I flew in the air and landed in a wet puddle on the boat deck. Jervis stood over me and winked. “Welcome aboard.”

T
ears welled in my eyes.

“You okay?
” Dylan asked, and then left before I could answer. He shoved the bow away from the barnacle piling.

The families
gathered on the dock still called to us.

“Wait up.”

“How’d you get here?”

I
lay on the teak deck and forced myself to breathe in and out. My parents hadn’t made it. I’d almost died just getting the boat out of the slip. We were leaving families with little kids behind. How were we going to survive all this?

W
ater puddled around my ankles. My tennis shoes sloshed. Nick walked over the top of me while he untied the puffy blue fenders and stowed them in the rear locker. I crawled to the top of the cabin. A wave hit and the boat rocked. I gripped the teak hand rails and tried to tune out the desperate people on the pier.

We’d
almost made it to the marina exit. The group that had been following us now stood in small groups at the end of our pier. They were all screaming at once.

Then one voice carried over the rest. “
Your keys,” a woman screamed. “Please. Throw us your keys.”

Keys?
Is that what they wanted? I stood at the rail and held up my hand. “You want our car keys?”

One of the men stepped forward.
“I don’t know why you’re taking a boat out to sea, but we need to get to the airport. There aren’t any buses or taxis.”

I
wondered if the airport was still open, but that didn’t matter. We could at least give them a chance to survive.

“Cole, slow down.” I
put two fingers in my mouth and whistled. “Everyone! Throw your car keys to those families. They came here on an Alaskan cruise ship. They’re stranded.”

Cole
and Dylan looked at each other. Nick reached into his pocket, pulled out a set of keys, and frowned. Takumi stood beside me, dangling his keys.

“No way!”
Zoë clutched her purse. “Why should I give them my car?”

“Because your car will be d
estroyed in a few hours.” Dylan snatched our car key from Cole and held out his hand to Zoë.

“Throw them. Now! We have to get going.”
Cole fought the wheel. We were going too slowly and the current was pushing the boat around.

Zoë
held out her palm with a Mercedes key on it. Her lips trembled. Dylan threw our key, then Zoë’s. Nick and Takumi tossed theirs at the same time. Someone on the pier caught each one. The only one left was Jervis.

“I rode with Nick.” H
e shrugged.

“Take supplies from the restaurant before you go, just in case
the airport’s closed.” Takumi pointed to the marina restaurant.

Some of the guys
checked to see where he was pointing. A few nodded.

“Thank you.
Thank you,” a woman holding a baby called out.

A
curly-haired girl waved.

I tried to feel good about helping them, but all I could think was that I’d only driven the car by myself three times.
I lay back on the deck. The disaster was real now. Too real.

A
wave hit the side of the boat. Cole spun the wheel away from the breakwater and towards the choppy seas of the Puget Sound.

Our car was gone. We were heading out to sea.
There was no turning back.

Chapter Four

Fifteen Hours Before

We motored away from the only city I’d ever lived in. Seattle glistened in the sun. Mount Rainier floated like an ice-cream sundae with marshmallow topping. There was not a cloud in the sky.

Whistler
was my father’s pride and joy. It was a beautiful boat. It had two sails. A small sail called a jib hung loosely in the bow, or front, of the boat. A huge main sail was attached to a giant mast in the middle of the boat. My dad had just finished painting the teak trim.

Dad
. My parents hadn’t made it. I doubled over in pain and clutched my stomach.

A hand touched my sh
oulder. Zoë sat beside me. “At least you have part of your family with you.”

She
was right. I had my brothers. I couldn’t imagine heading out on this trip without them.

I didn’t know
Zoë well. She’d been at the house a lot over the summer, but she almost never spoke to me. I guess I was kind of in awe of her. She was beautiful, with raven black hair, and a curvy figure. She and my brother were both going to be seniors, and skinny sophomores like me were not welcome in their crowd. But now, none of that mattered.

I gazed around the boat at our crew.

Cole and Dylan stood behind the wheel, their backs to the skyline. Cole steered the boat while Dylan pointed and mumbled something about the chart system.

A lump formed in
my throat. My brothers were handsome, with their sandy hair and blue eyes. People said they had trouble telling them apart. I never understood that. Cole had a narrow face. His eyes were bigger and softer than Dylan’s. They looked clearly different from one another.

Angelina
and Makala were snuggled in the cockpit seats. Jervis sat across from them and seemed troubled. I wondered what their stories were. How had the girls ended up in a tent? Where had Jervis’s family gone?

Zoë
sniffed and I searched for something she could wipe her nose on. We hit some rough seas and a box of tissues in the front of the boat slid toward the water.

“G
rab that.” I pointed at the box.

Nick and Takumi
were sitting on the bow, not far from us. They’d been checking their cell phones and staring back at the city, quiet and still.

Takumi
dove for the box and passed it to Zoë.

The deck was
still covered in supplies. I thought about getting up and putting everything away, but I could still see the city and Mount Rainier. I didn’t want to move and miss a second of it.

The bay
sparkled in the sun. The only boat in sight was a giant car ferry. It circled around the port of Seattle, a short ways from the city. All the ferries in the area had returned to Seattle. This one couldn’t find a place to dock.

The crew
of the ferry began lowering lifeboats. Their voices carried over the water. Some of the passengers argued that they needed their cars and demanded the ferry find a place to unload. Others seemed to be pushing to get aboard the lifeboats.

Then there were screams. Terrible screams.

One of the loaded rafts dropped, flipped upside down, and dumped its passengers into the frigid salt water.

"Cole, turn
around." I gestured wildly.

Cole and Dylan
glanced back at the ferry and stared at each other. Our boat didn’t change course.

“Hurry,” I yelled
. “We have to help.”

Takumi and Nick rose up. A wave hit and they grabbed the life lines.

“What are you waiting for?” Takumi asked.

Nick yelled. “Come on
. They’re drowning.”

Zoë
whimpered.

Dylan gripped Cole’s
shoulder.

Jervis
sat up. “What do you think you’re doing? We gotta help them.”

Dylan moved to
hover above Jervis. One hand rested on the canvas dodger. “We can’t go back. We’re an hour behind schedule. If we don’t get out far enough...”

“Screw that. There are kids and old pe
ople in the water.” Jervis rose up as tall as he could under the cockpit cover, face-to-face with my brother.

Dylan didn’t flinch. “
So what happens if we pull them from the water and carry them to the marina? Then what? Do you think they’ll want to be left there, dripping wet, without their cars, or any supplies? And even if they agree to be dropped off, how long would the rescue take?”

“But we can’t just go off and
leave—” Jervis dropped his arm. “This is wrong, Dylan. I don’t care what you say. This is wrong.”

A ferry worker threw life rings to the victims. Another lifeboat was being low
ered. The screams grew weaker. Some people floated in the water, hardly moving at all.

“
I agree, but it’s what we have to do.” Dylan pushed off the dodger. “If we help them, we’ll all die.” He lowered his voice. “We’re on the sea now.”

The
guys glared. Finally Jervis scowled and sat down.

I gasp
ed. “Cole, we can’t––”

Cole put his hand up for me to stop. “Dyl
an’s right. Without transportation they won’t make it out of the city. We don’t have room to take them all. And the hours the rescue would take would mean we wouldn’t get out far enough. We’d all be crushed by the wave. I’m so sorry. I hate it. I hate all of this, but it’s the way it is.”

“No
!” I cried.

Dylan
came and sat between Zoë and me. "Don't watch." He wrapped an arm around each of us. I struggled to pull away but he held me tight. “Don’t make this harder for Cole,” he whispered.

“
My baby!” a woman in the distance screamed.

I
burst into tears. I wept for the ferry victims. I sobbed for my parents. I bawled as I hadn’t since I was a small child. The tears wouldn’t stop. I hated what was happening. I cried and cried, and at some point, fell asleep.

Dylan’s growling stomach woke me
. The sun was high overhead. It was at least two o’clock. The Seattle skyline and the ferry disaster were far behind us.

I left
Zoë asleep in Dylan’s arms.

Dylan mouthed, “You okay?”

I shrugged and picked up the box of tissues and wiped my face. The boat was still a mess of strewn about supplies. I made my way back to the back of the boat, stepping over snorkeling equipment and paper products. Cole’s face was grim.

I studied the
coastline and realized we were almost to Port Ludlow. I always liked Ludlow. We sometimes anchored in the bay for a night when we headed out on our family sailing trips. Mom liked the restaurant at the lodge.

I whispered to Cole, “I’m going below
to get some of this stuff stowed.”

“Toni, I…”

“I don’t agree,” I said. Our eyes met. “But I understand.”

“Thanks.” Cole’s shoulders straightene
d and he studied the instruments. “I wish there’d been another way.”

I touched his arm. “I know.”

Angelina and her sister had fallen asleep too. Jervis glared stonily out at the passing shore. He ignored me as I climbed over him. I missed his wink.

Below deck was worse than I expected. Bags, boxes, and equipment
had been dumped everywhere.

The
daypacks, I threw into sleeping cabins: boys’ stuff in the bow, girls’ in the stern. We could sort them later. Angelina had a full-sized hiking pack. I’d have to find a place for it once it was unloaded.

R
aising the glass hatch in the v-berth, I climbed up on the bed, and poked my head out the opening. Takumi and Nick were still on the bow.

“Hand me down all the stuff lying around the de
ck, will you?” I whispered.

The
guys startled, but moved fast. Soon the upper deck was clear.

“Need any
help?” Takumi averted his eyes as he handed me the box of tampons.

“Do you cook?”
I was too wiped out to blush.

He
shrugged. “Yeah, a little.”

“Great. You’re on f
or lunch. Come on down.”

With
hands on hips, I checked the cabin. There was more gear than storage space. I left a roasted chicken, grapes, and the bread Mom had sent sitting next to the kitchen sink.