Soft footsteps brush against the wooden deck. Alexa.
“They say the sharks come out at night,” she says, taking a seat in the middle of everything. If she decides to stretch out and sleep there, Hope and I will both have to step over her when it’s time to adjust the sails. “They’re thirsty for blood, and they have an endless supply of teeth that are sharp as razors.”
Her words slither and coil. We are still and quiet, as if we can keep them from biting us if we pretend they’re not there.
“We’re more likely to drown than get eaten by sharks.” Finnley’s words. The waves shush them almost as soon as they’re spoken.
Hope shifts. “What do you think it will be like?” Her voice is quiet.
“The drowning?” Alexa says, in too light a tone. “Or the sharks?”
“The island. Sanctuary.”
Will the temple’s stones be gritty and gray, crisp and pristine, or will it be covered in moss and crumbling from age? What will the monks be like? I imagine them in red, draping robes, with shaved heads that gleam in sunlight, chanting in monotones loud enough to summon whales and fend off ghosts.
“If it even exists, which I doubt, I think it will be a jungle,” Alexa says. “With boa constrictors that will strangle us while we’re sleeping, and a thousand different kinds of bugs just waiting to chew their way to our hearts.”
I force the image of boa constrictors from my mind—sharks I can handle, but not snakes. Snakes filled my earliest nightmares long before so many other painful atrocities crept in to join them.
The boat creaks and sways, waves licking its sides. One deep dip and we could be swallowed whole.
It’s not until Hope speaks that I realize we’ve been silent for several minutes. “I think we’ll eat a lot of fish,” she says. “And I think it will be peaceful. Sand and water and seagulls and shells. Sunsets where the sky is so pink-orange you can’t even remember what it’s like when it’s blue.”
For so long, I’ve thought I was the only one who romanticized sunsets anymore. Most people don’t go out of their way to watch them: it’s too depressing, they say, the reminder of things we lost that we’ll never get back. Things that were stolen from us.
Maybe it’s common in Hope’s corner of New Port Isabel for people to be so—well—hopeful. But then Finnley says, “I’ve been thinking about this. You guys have seen the footage, right? How the Wolfpack’s been razing port towns for the past few months, even as far as Hong Kong? Seems like they’re being pretty hostile in their takeover. Guards and guns, that’s what I think we’ll find.”
And then I have my answer. Finnley is the pragmatism to Hope’s idealism.
The footage is something I try to forget about. Every night, after dinner and before bed, it is inescapable: massive screens where billboards for beach rentals used to be, war propaganda projected on walls around every turn in our barracks, audio-only announcements that echo from cracked, overgrown parking lots. This nightly news is meant for the Wolves, not for us. Even so, it’s everywhere.
Some people live for it, people who should be disgusted by it like I am. It is their escape, this sick form of reality TV. Never mind that we were allowed to roam New Port Isabel when we weren’t on duty at our stations—we were every bit as imprisoned as the people we heard reports about. It’s just that we’re still alive to hear about their towns being burned, the gassings, the counterattacks. People forget we’re still alive only because they simply haven’t killed us yet.
The fact that people would choose to watch the footage rather than a sunset—and consider a sunset more depressing—is, perhaps, the most tragic thing to come out of this war.
Alexa’s sitting up now. “What do you think? You’re too quiet over there.”
It’s never quiet in my head, so I don’t always realize I don’t speak much. “I . . .” What do I think? “I think it will be beautiful.” That much, I believe. “And there are a lot of islands in the world. I still believe it’s possible that one of them is a refuge.” If it isn’t, Dad gave everything for nothing.
For once, Alexa doesn’t say anything. Her eyes are full of starlight, flickering with every dip of the boat. She watches me.
It is an unsettling way to fall asleep.
SIX
I WAKE UP choking on my own vomit, lose everything I’ve ever eaten over the edge of our boat. The waves mince it away, sharp as knives and just as gray.
“I’m sorry!” The wind blasts Hope’s apology toward me, then dumps it out to sea. “I’m trying—I—”
Our sail is as choppy as the waves, loud as a helicopter. Hope struggles against the boom while Finnley expels bucketfuls of ocean from the deck. Even Alexa is doing her part.
“Why didn’t you wake me?” I tie my hair in a knot and take over for Hope at the boom.
“We figured you needed to rest up for the next shift,” she says.
A wave jumps in over the starboard lip, undoing all of Finnley’s work.
“There may not be a next shift,” I snap.
The boom is stubborn. I push all my weight against it, digging in with my heels, until it submits to me. The sail calms from a boil to a simmer. With one more push, it stops hyperventilating and takes a deep breath of salty air. Though the waves are still rough, they’re no longer bucking-bull wild.
Alexa slumps against the mast and slides down to sit, as if all the work I’ve done has really taken it out of her. For the first time, I see an aberration in her prickly demeanor, a softness that wasn’t there before. Or, at least, was hidden. It’s like she’s only just discovered she’s not invincible, that this life could be over in one too-deep dip of a boat.
How could anyone live through the war and not be intimately familiar with this truth?
I let out a long breath. “How long were we out of control?”
Hope’s cheeks are flushed red from effort, and probably a good dose of embarrassment. “Not long. You woke up on the first dip.”
“Were we still on course before that?”
She glances over at Finnley, who nods. “It was pretty smooth all night until one strong gust caught us off guard.”
I study Hope, try to read her eyes for honesty. “You swear we are still on course? For Sanctuary—not Matamoros?”
“Unless I read the compass wrong,” Hope stammers, surprise lighting her face. “I’m not a good enough navigator to find Matamoros from all the way out here, even if I wanted to.”
It isn’t as reassuring as it should be, since the boat’s been in her control all night, but I am mostly certain she’s not lying. From the looks of it, it never even crossed her mind to change course.
“Matamoros was a stupid idea,” Finnley says, from up near the bow of the boat. “We’re over it.”