The Lifeboat Clique (12 page)

OUR THIRD DAY AT SEA BEGAN WITHOUT INCIDENT
BUT
quickly went south. We got up, reality set in, we divided our rations and passed around the jug, arguing a bit more loudly over the difference between a sip and a drink and a gulp and whatever. . . . The water wouldn't last, and the fact was a fact.

Abigail and I volunteered to watch for boats and planes. She looked out one way and I looked out the other, while Trevor sat drumming on himself in his swivel chair and Hayley and Sienna took shelter under the sunshade. I flashed my mirror and let my thoughts drift as my tired eyes looked for something out there in the shape of a
rescue. Below us was the natural habitat of fish and sharks and whales. Frantic thoughts were reserved for above the waterline, where five exhausted teenagers struggled through another day. If only to be a little fish, moving naked through the cool sea. I imagined them in those peaceful depths, so much like LA, no change in seasons, just one day after the other, their gills moving slowly, their eyes blank, empty of the concerns of linear time.

Oh to be like those—
Splash.

Splash? It took a moment for my groggy daydream to twist and turn like a Rubik's Cube until it had reconfigured into a panic. That splash was substantial, ominous.

“Hayley fell overboard!” Sienna cried. “She was on the rail trying to adjust the—”

Abigail and I were still blinking when Trevor dove overboard after her. We rushed to the rail and watched as he swam toward Hayley, who floundered a few yards from the bow.

“I'm goin' in,” Abigail said.

“No,” I said. “Just wait.”

“Hell with that. Git out of my way.”

But just then Trevor reached Hayley, and she grabbed him by his wet hair and pulled so hard he winced in pain.

“Hayley, let him go!” Abigail shouted.

But she was fighting him, grabbing on to him and
trying to pull him under in her panic. Finally Trevor got behind her and put his arm around her neck. I could see him talking to her and even hear his soothing voice, but he was too far away for me to understand what he was saying. Probably reciting some lyrics designed to make teen girls lose their motor skills so he could drag them out into the alleyway, or rescue them from drowning.

Trevor tugged Hayley to the back of the boat, and Abigail and I reached down and pulled her to safety, while useless Sienna did nothing as usual except chatter excitedly about how terrifying it felt to watch her friend plunge overboard and how glad she was that Hayley wasn't dead.

We laid Hayley down on the deck and helped her sit up as she coughed and sputtered and gasped. Trevor crawled up the ladder and joined us in the boat, sinking to his knees in front of Hayley, who reached up and grabbed him and pulled him down to her. The two of them lay gasping for air on the deck. Finally they pulled apart, and the drama was over.

“You saved my life,” Hayley told Trevor.

“Nah,” he said.

That was it as far as excitement went for the day, unless you count hunger and thirst and desperation as action-movie fare.

We watched, and no one came. Not even a far-distant
ship or plane that was only appearing to tease us.

The last of the Spam would be gone by nightfall. Soon the water would be gone, too.

“Can't you think of something?” Hayley pleaded to me. “You're smart. You know things.”

“Hey,” Abigail said. “I know things too.” But her voice was weaker, less obnoxious. “I just wish I could think of some of 'em now.”

“I don't know how to invent fresh water,” I said. “I wish I did.” My tone was not sarcastic. It was gentle, regretful. I wished I did know how to make water appear like a magician. I would have traded that for any other trick in the world. The desire for water trumped even my hunger pains. All I wanted was a drink. All I imagined were cool, running faucets and waterfalls. Showers and rivers and geysers. Aquariums. The dripping of icicles.

And grapes. A handful of grapes in my hand right from the refrigerator, the seedless kind that take no effort. Green, fleshy, watery grapes. Peaches, oranges, Slurpees from 7-Eleven. I tortured myself with that last thought and then I said the word out loud.

“Slurpee,” I said.

“Oh, God,” said Hayley. “Slurpee.”

“Beer,” said Trevor. “Right out of the cooler, poured down my throat.”

“Kool-Aid,” Sienna murmured. “I used to like the orange kind when I was a kid.”

“Milk shakes,” said Hayley, and we kept going, a round-robin of imaginative torture. As we imagined this gallery of liquids, we were only too aware that there existed vast amounts of water beneath us, cruel, undrinkable, spreading out for miles and miles until it hit the rocks of islands we would never find.

“Ya'll stop it,” Abigail said all of a sudden.

“Stop what?” I asked.

“Talking about cold liquid stuff. You're just making it worse. So stuff a cork in it.”

Her face and arms had begun to blister and peel. All her freckles were present and accounted for. Her body had no more freckles to give. It seemed to me that the others on the boat had warmed up to me a little, but Abigail, while not as unfriendly as she'd been at first, remained distant. And even within the context of our dire straits, this made me sad. If an act of God and the prospect of dying couldn't bring us back together, what in the world could?

We all took turns under the shade, where three people could fit at once. We divided up according to what was fair, not who was who, and I thought,
Wouldn't it be great if every high school were drained of water, and all people were equal,
all just trying to survive, just looking for a ship or a boat or a cloud full of rain?

Trevor wouldn't sit under the shade.

“I'm a man” was all he said as he sat drumming in his swivel chair, his shirt open and the sun darkening the bare skin of his chest. If he felt like a hero for rescuing Hayley, it didn't show on his face. He seemed to have adapted to the vast, unknown jam session of fate and luck and circumstance, and was nodding his head to its beat. I wished I could be more like him, calm and seemingly unconcerned, because the terror in me was beginning to rise. That ever-growing prospect of dying out here on the endless sea.

Sienna thought she saw a boat, but it was nothing. Hayley thought she heard a helicopter, but the sky was empty. Abigail saw something dart across the boat and gasped, but it was a ghost that only she could see.

The day hours went on and on. The sky was a teal blue, the color of time running out. Clouds did not come with gifts of water. The rain poured only as a dream. The sun went down, and the stars came out, and the moon was waning like the water in the jug. Abigail settled down in the bow of the boat, holding the water jug in her arms like a baby, protecting it from some thirst-maddened thief who might grab it and drink it all during the night.

Sienna had first watch and so I lay down and looked at the stars and tried to sleep, but the night was warm, and my mind kept going back to cool things, wet things. Lemonade, shadows, drawn curtains. A coconut leaking milk. I imagined holding a candle to a snowman and drinking his face as it melted. I'd drink anything. Oil, syrup, the green blood of a moth. Cyanide tea, slaking my thirst before it turned me blue. My tongue kept sticking to the roof of my mouth, and when I tried to say the word
Mom
, no sound came out.

I woke up sometime in the night, star patterns as annoying as car lights through a window, a cramp in my leg. I sat up to rub the cramp away and saw Sienna asleep at her watch, draped over the rail of the boat. I was just about to stand and wake her when I noticed something a few feet away from me. I blinked and stared, focusing my astonished gaze.

Hayley and Trevor lay in each other's arms. His fingers moved through her hair. They stared into each other's eyes in the solitude they had earned by being awake while others slept. Their lips came together.

I couldn't move. I could only watch them, incredulous. The ocean had steadily subtracted from them, but this was some defiant algebra in which they gave integers to each other they no longer had to give. Though they themselves
were parched and weakened, their silhouettes made something strong and whole and calm, like the ocean creatures that drifted beneath our boat.

I thought again of Croix, the way I'd felt with him the brief time we were together. What would have happened had the wave not come? Would he have tried to win his bet? Or had I won him over? Had I been talking to the true Croix, the sensitive guy, the nice guy, the one who thought I was worth talking to? Now I would never know.

They kissed again, and I sank back down. No one was watching the sea. No one was watching the lovers. So wrong and so right. But I kept quiet and pretended to be asleep, envying the fact that Trevor and Hayley each had someone in whom to confide. I looked over at Abigail, sound asleep, her freckles standing out in the moonlight. I still thought she was a pain in the ass, but when she complimented me on almost catching that fish, a little bit of the old Abigail came through. Now I found myself missing that old Abigail. And I wondered: Did she even exist anymore?

ONE DAY DURING THE SUMMER BEFORE WE STARTED NINTH
grade, I found a tiny, scruffy kitten crying in a drainpipe, nary a teat to call his own, no mommy's belly to knead with his poor, shivering paws. I put him inside my shirt and took him home, where my mother wrapped him in a towel and drove us to the vet as I held him on my lap, listening to his small, uncertain cries and stroking him, murmuring, “It's a cruel world, isn't it, boy? But you're with me now.”

I named him Sonny Boy.

The vet said he was too frail and probably wouldn't live through the night, but I refused to give up. I got some
formula from the vet and woke myself up every two hours to give it to Sonny Boy with an eyedropper. The dawn came and the kitten was still with us, and my mother and I did shifts. My father even joined in when he got home from teaching his classes, and the three of us nursed Sonny Boy back to health.

Abigail came over to inspect the tiny creature. She leaned over his blanket and moved the flap out of the way so she could look into his bright-yellow eyes. He blinked at her and stretched out a tiny paw to place on her wrist.

“He'll make it,” she said as though she were a vet or a fortune-teller. “He'll grow up to be a spoiled jackass and not appreciate a single damn thing you did for him.”

“What are you talking about? He's the sweetest kitten in the world. He just likes to lick my face and cuddle.”

“Mark my words. I see dick potential. It's in the eyes. Also, he's a cat.”

HIGH SCHOOL SOCCER
tryouts were held in late August, so all summer long I helped Abigail with her drills. We juggled, we dribbled, we passed, we sprinted. We kicked the ball as high as we could. Used both sides of our feet. Practiced on grass, cement, wood, carpet. We visualized success. All the while, Maxwell taunted his sister from the sideline.

“You suck! You'll never make it! You look like a moose! Your feet are so big!”

“Shut the hell up!”

“I can run faster than you, and I'm a little kid!”

“Listen, you little spaz-faced son of a bitch . . .”

Abigail's mother would come out and separate the two, and the process would begin all over again.

“You're letting him get to you,” I said. “Concentrate on your game.”

“I can't help it,” she said. “He gets me so riled up I can't see straight.”

I had to admit, I was a little jealous of Abigail's dedication to her dream. I myself had no real dream beyond having a boyfriend someday, and a great career of some kind. Or maybe I'd get my real dream when I was sixteen, along with my driver's license.

Abigail, though, did give me a hobby. One day when I came over, a present was waiting on the counter: a video camera. It had a big, red bow on it. Abigail looked at me expectantly.

“For me?” I asked.

“Yep.”

“But, why? It's not even my birthday.”

“Well, I thought you could maybe film my moves from different angles and then I could study the film. If
you want to, of course.”

“Of course I do!” I said. “But this is a really expensive present.”

She shrugged. “My daddy's a lawyer. Got to spend it on something.”

Turned out I was pretty good at playing camerawoman.

“I like the way you frame stuff,” she said in admiration, gazing into the computer screen at my clips of her floundering around her yard with the soccer ball. “You got some real talent, cowgirl.”

“Thank you,” I said, flattered. “I'm learning how to edit.”

By the end of August, Abigail was not exactly lean and mean, but of medium weight and passably coordinated. And no one could beat her fighting spirit or dedication to making the team.

My parents invited Abigail's family over for dinner the night before the big tryout. Our parents had been spending more and more time together, though I still could not put my mother and her mother together as friends, or, for that matter, our fathers. My father was tall and professorial and athletic, and Abigail's dad was a kind of chubby, indoor, rich-lawyer type. My dad actually had more in common with Abigail's mom. He'd been on the polo team in college, and they spent a lot of time talking about horses.

My dad proposed a toast with our iced tea at dinner.

“The girls have been training hard all summer,” he said. “This is to Abigail's success.”

We all raised our glasses.

“She's going to fail,” Maxwell said.

WE ARRIVED
AT
the tryouts the next day in fine spirits. Abigail's parents went with us, and Maxwell and his big, self-confidence-crushing mouth stayed at home with a sitter. Abigail was nervous but confident, springing into a spirited set of jumping jacks to warm up, which I dutifully filmed.

The coach came in and made the girls do sprints in groups of ten. Abigail was pretty fast, finishing near the front of the pack despite her weird gait and flailing arms.

Next, everyone got in a line and practiced passing and juggling—laces, thighs, shoulders, heads—as the coach watched. Abigail did pretty well, and I myself did a great job of catching her moves on tape. Later I was going to add music and slo-mo for dramatic effect. Abigail noticed me filming and gave me the thumbs-up. I was impressed by how much she'd improved over the summer.

Finally the coach had the girls put on pinnies and divide into teams and scrimmage, red versus yellow. Abigail was a yellow. She had asked to try out as a forward,
and she took that position as the scrimmage got under way.

My dear friend was a disaster. She couldn't find her lanes, she kept missing the ball when she tried to kick it, and a skinny girl with a don't-mess-with-me expression constantly outmaneuvered her. Late in the scrimmage Abigail got an easy shot at the goal and hit the post instead, her feet going out from under her. She landed on her back in the grass with a thump. I put down my camera.

She trudged back to the car in utter defeat.

“You held your own,” her father said, trying to be nice.

“Righhhht,” she said. “Held my own. A cross-eyed cow could have done better.”

“Have you thought about yoga?” her mom asked helpfully. “Not so competitive and no grass stains.”

“Nah,” she said. “Douche Face was right. I suck. But I'm not giving up.”

NINTH GRADE. HIGH
school. A totally different world. Gone was the relative peace of middle school. Now we were in dog-eat-dog land, popularity quotients being sorted, the golden table forming in the middle of the cafeteria whereas before it had just been a table like any other. Sienna Martin had blossomed into a bitch who wore lots of makeup and the latest fashions and was already on the varsity soccer team. A sidekick had materialized by Sienna's side:
Hayley Amherst, a high-strung cheerleader full of run-on sentences and nervous energy whose never-ending monologues about why couldn't cells multiply and make a handbag dominated my biology class.

Abigail and I were basically ignored. But we didn't care. We had each other's company and support and inside jokes and perspective on the world. We were our own clique of two, and it worked just fine for us. The drama filling the hallways and the constant jockeying for social dominance of that pack of wildly insecure teenagers didn't affect us at all. We ate lunch together, had geometry class together, and spent every afternoon together after school. I was a bit tired of Abigail's constant soccer drills and her dreams of stardom, but I had to admit she was getting better.

My parents were glad that I had a friend. But sometimes they tried to nag me into getting more—as though one was a good start but not enough.

“Don't put all your eggs in one basket,” my father said. “I had a best friend since I was in first grade. Name was Danny. We did everything together. When he was seventeen, he skateboarded off a cliff and died.”

“That doesn't seem very relevant,” my mother said.

“I think it is.”

“I don't want to hang out with other girls,” I said. “They're boring compared to Abigail. And why should I
take time away from Abigail and spend it with someone who would just waste it? Makes no sense.”

“She has a point,” my mother said.

“And besides,” I continued, “you two don't seem to have that many friends other than Abigail's parents. You do everything with them. Why don't you make other friends?”

The question seemed to make my father angry. “Don't be sassy, young lady. We're adults. What we do is our own business.”

My mother gave him an odd look. There was a mood around the table that I didn't understand. We ate the rest of the meal in silence, and I still kept all my eggs in one basket woven from Abigail's crazy red hair.

ALTHOUGH WE HAD
advanced to the ninth grade, Mr. Shriek was still stuck in the seventh, where he'd been, supposedly, for the last decade or so. We kept sneaking back into his room to visit him, forgiving him for his unwillingness to escape or to learn any words.

“He is what he is,” Abigail said. “He's not a parrot from the movies. He's a parrot from real life, and that's what we've got to work with.”

One day, however, we were astonished to enter the class and find that Mr. Shriek's life had suddenly changed.
His small cage had been replaced with a bigger one, and he had a mate; another parrot, with a delicate beak and sensitive eyes, cuddled with Mr. Shriek on his perch.

They were completely immersed in each other when we entered. Mr. Shriek was nuzzling his mate's head and making some kind of cooing sound we'd never heard before. He didn't even notice us standing there.

“Oh, my God,” Abigail whispered. “Mr. Shriek has his cowgirl.”

At the sound of his name, Mr. Shriek swung his head toward us. His bug eyes stared.

“FUUUUUUUUUUH,”
he said.

“Is he bragging?” I asked.

Abigail actually wiped her eyes, she was so overcome. “I've always felt so sorry for him. But now I know he's going to be all right.”

Later we found out someone at the pet shop had made a mistake, and the female parrot the science department had ordered for Mr. Shriek was not a female but a male.

Abigail shrugged. “Who are we to judge?”

“I CAN'T BELIEVE
you're making me do this,” I said to Abigail. We were sitting in the front bleacher seats watching an Avondale girls' varsity soccer game, and I was filming
Sienna Martin run up and down the field, kicking everyone's ass.

“Sienna's the best soccer player out there,” Abigail murmured.

“She plays dirty,” I said. “Tripping and punching and elbowing people. She's a maniac.”

“Whatever. She's finally good for something. I'm gonna learn from studying the tapes.”

“Well, study them alone,” I said. “I get enough of her in English class.”

One night in November, when the LA air had cooled and we were slogging out of the stadium, we were suddenly confronted by Sienna, still sweaty from her brutal victory, hair wet but her mascara still holding up fine. Her best friend, Hayley, who did not play soccer and was immaculately dressed, was by her side.

“What are you doing?” Sienna asked Abigail.

Abigail fixed her with a steady gaze. “Nothing.”

“You're a liar!” Hayley chimed in, her lavender cologne smelling considerably better than her friend's alpha sweat. “You're stalking Sienna and it's super creepy because we see how you sit real close and watch her and your weird friend is taping her, not anyone else, just her, and there are stalking laws in this country and you're just
creeping her out, know what I mean?”

“Free country,” Abigail said.

“Yeah,” I said. “Free country.”

I didn't like the look in Sienna's eyes. She was all pumped up from the game like a skinny, possessed jackal.

“Give me that camera,” she told me.

“You leave my friend alone,” Abigail said.

Sienna lunged for my camera, but Abigail stepped in front of me, and the two of them grappled and fell to the ground. I dropped my camera and dove in and so did Hayley, and we were soon a clawing, punching, screaming mass of indecorous loss of self-respect. I smelled jackal sweat and lavender and grass. Someone's fist hit me, and I tasted blood. I heard people around us, cheering and calling.

Finally an angry male voice broke through, that of our teaching assistant, Mr. Moore, who let us call him Rob.

“What do you girls think you're doing?” Rob demanded as he separated us and we crawled away into our separate factions.

I grabbed my camera and made sure it was okay.

“What's the problem here?” Rob asked.

We picked ourselves up. “Little misunderstanding,” Abigail said.

“Right,” said Sienna. The varsity soccer team had really strict rules, and fighting could get Sienna suspended
for the next several games. She shot Abigail a look that said,
“Let's just forget this.”

“My nose is bleeding,” Hayley announced, showing us a single red dot on the end of her finger, “and it's my best feature, everyone tells me I have a perfect nose and who knows now, maybe it's broken and that would affect my future singing career and modeling contracts. . . .”

“I ought to turn you in for fighting,” Rob said.

“No, please don't turn us in!” Sienna cried. “We're sorry!”

The look on Rob's face told us he was fighting a great battle: whether to be a dutiful teaching assistant or whether to preserve his title as the coolest teaching assistant at Avondale.

Title won. “Shake hands,” he ordered us.

Sienna gave Abigail a look of death and held out her hand. Abigail took it. I could see that each one had a tiger's death grip. Each one was hurting the other, but neither let go until Rob physically separated them. I shook hands with Hayley and she started to say something again, but Sienna shot her a dirty look and she piped down.