8. Waves
It took forever for the splash.
In case you’re wondering, water is not soft. The sea smacked me in the head as I landed. My breath whooshed out of me and I gasped, instantly swallowing a lungful or two of water.
I tried to move my hands, but they were tangled in something, and the pressure of the water made them feel heavy. Clumsy. There was something very loud nearby. The propeller? I kicked and felt my shoes fly off. When I tried to open my eyes, they burned and blurred.
I saw blue, then the shiny white boat, bathed in sunlight. Tiny colors clustered at the prow. Then blue again, as another wave hit.
I heard a scream. Not mine, of course. To scream, you must be able to breathe.
Thank God for the life jacket, I remember thinking. Right before I noticed I was no longer wearing one.
And then I did feel a scream rising in my throat. I kicked and kicked, and once again, the blue gave way to sunlight and boat. The same colors clustered on the deck, only now there were more of them, and they were pointing at me, and then I saw something black fly out. And then everything went blue once more.
Why couldn’t I move my hands? Where were my shoes?
In the next second, there was something squeezing my chest, dragging me backward. I stiffened and then breathed air. Or something approximating air. My hair hung in my face like a wet blanket, wrapped tight around my neck. I choked and coughed, trying to get my arms free.
“Hold still, Amy,” said a voice at my back. “The straps.”
And then the water got a lot less heavy and I clawed at my face, scratching my skin with my nails as I scraped my hair out of the way. Yes! Air—cold, salty, but air nonetheless. I gulped it into my burning lungs, and started coughing again, jostling against whatever constrained my torso.
“Amy.” The voice was as calm as before. “Stop struggling.”
I went limp, and found that I wasn’t sinking. Someone was holding me above the water. I turned my face toward the voice.
“Ah,” Poe said. “She does know how to listen.” There was a smear of watery red beneath his nose. Was he bleeding?
Something smacked against the water. A Styrofoam circle. Poe grabbed for it with his free hand and shoved it toward me. “Hold on to this.” I reached for the lifesaver with shaking hands, and as soon as I took hold of it, he flipped the tube over my head and pushed me through. “Got it?” he asked, breathing heavily. I nodded, and another coughing fit overtook me.
Poe began pushing me and my Styrofoam tube toward the boat, asking me questions the whole time.
“Can you breathe?”
I nodded.
“Anything broken?”
I shook my head.
“Anything hurt?”
Another shake. Though that wasn’t true. My head was pounding, my lungs burned, my throat felt raw.
“Can you speak?”
“What happened to your face?” I croaked.
“You kicked it.”
“Sorry.”
We’d reached the boat by then, and Poe pulled me beneath a fiberglass ladder built into the side of the hull. Hands were already reaching out over the edge, but I couldn’t tell who they belonged to. Somehow, I pulled myself up onto the rungs. Somehow, I got over the side and onto the deck, trailing water, coughing and spluttering the whole time. Clarissa wrapped me in a towel. I could see vomit drying on the front of her shirt.
“Amy, I’m so sorry,” she said. “I didn’t realize you were standing so close to me. I feel awful—”
“It’s not your fault,” George said, placing a hand on her shoulder. “It was an accident.”
“Where’s Darren?” I asked. “Is he all right?”
“Fine. Seasick.” Clarissa pulled her shirt away from her chest. “I’m going to go change.”
Jenny took her place at my side. “You caught your life vest on that chain and it ripped right off,” she reported. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Harun stood above us. “When you went down again, we figured you’d hit your head or something. You just…sank.”
Yeah, dude. That happens when one doesn’t swim. But I didn’t say that. I just hugged the towel more tightly around myself and prayed that this boat ride would be over soon. But how was I supposed to get off the island once I was on it? Another boat? Was there any chance I could be airlifted off?
My Capri pants and T-shirt stuck to my body, my hair hung on my face in clammy tangles. The right side of my head throbbed where it had smacked against the water, and I could feel bruises forming on my right shoulder and the top of my foot where (I suppose) I’d hit it against Poe’s face.
Poe. Where had he gone? I looked around the deck for him, but he hadn’t joined the others in seeing I was okay.
“When will we get to the island?” I rasped.
“Soon, Amy,” Jenny said. She leaned in and dropped her voice to a whisper. “You don’t swim, do you?”
I put my head down on my knees.
I heard her voice overhead. “Come on, guys, let’s give her some space.”
That’s the last thing I noticed until the boat engines ground to a halt.
“We’re here.” Demetria’s voice was gentler than I’d ever heard it. She touched my shoulder. “Wake up, Amy.”
My clothes had dried somewhat, but were still damp and clingy in the back, under my arms, and, of course, near my crotch. Lovely. I pushed my tangled hair out of my face. “Thank God. Dry land.”
“Well, come on, Kevin Costner, and enjoy it.”
I looked up. Ugh. This was a mistake. I needed to get off the island, go someplace where there was no water for miles. I wondered if there were any interesting Spring Break trips through Death Valley.
“There’s supposed to be some sort of tour for the neophytes,” Clarissa said, crouching down to join us. I’d been huddling on a bench near the control panel, too afraid to go into the cabin but not wanting to get anywhere near the edge of the deck. Demetria and Jenny also stooped over me.
“So we’re neophytes again?” Demetria asked.
“Well, it is our first time here.” Clarissa looked at me. “But I bet we can take you straight to your room instead. I’m sure the last thing you want to do is spend time walking around, until you’ve gotten a chance to—”
“Change,” Demetria cut in.
“Rest, I was going to say.”
Hide out would probably be better.
Jenny appeared at the door. “Seems this is going to be more complicated than we thought.”
“What do you mean?” Clarissa asked.
“There’s some sort of issue with the sleeping arrangements.”
“What?” Demetria said. “What issue?”
“Well, the island caretaker is what some would term a tad old-school. He says that he won’t put us girls in the same building as the other knights. We have to sleep elsewhere.”
“What?” Clarissa asked.
At this, I seriously considered staying on the boat.
Demetria frowned. “Are you sure it’s Victorian sensibilities? Maybe there’s something else going on here.”
“What?” Clarissa asked. “Are you taking up the mantle of Amy’s conspiracy theories?”
“Well, she’s hardly in any shape to do so!” Demetria replied. She turned to Jenny. “Go back and tell this guy that Eli dorms went co-ed ages ago. We have gender-free bathrooms and everything.”
“You do it,” Jenny said. “Or am I the only one expected to get treated like a second-class citizen around here?”
“If the shoe fits,” Demetria muttered. She’d never really forgiven Jenny for the whole website fiasco last semester.
“Guys,” I said through my sore throat, “what’s the problem here? Where exactly do they propose to put us?”
“Just another cabin. But it’s kind of on the far side of the island. A bit out of the way.”
“So what?” Clarissa said. “It’s not like the island is that big to start with.”
“It’s the principle of the thing,” Demetria said. “Why do we have to be the ones to go away? Put the boys there if he insists on separating us.”