Adrift Read online

  “You’re taking a year off to clean animal cages?”

  “After that Harvard says I have to matriculate or reapply. Unless Daddy buys them another building. I’m messing with you, Matthew. I got in on my own steam, I swear.”

  “I don’t doubt it.”

  “Most do, but thanks.” She hip-checked me. “One of the dudes back at the party was like, ‘You got into Harvard? Your dad’s name is on the physics building, right?’ ”

  “I’d never think that,” I said.

  “You’re an awesome liar. Anyway, it’s chemistry.” She tickled me, and I tried not to flinch when she dug into the left side of my rib cage. “Not a building, though,” she said. “An endowment. The Gonzaga Foundation for the Application of Scientific Solutions in Alleviating Poverty Throughout South America.”

  “Lot of words there.”

  “They do a lot,” she said. “Vaccines, clean water, stuff like that.”

  “So you’ll be president of that someday.”

  “I wanna be a vet.” She was the rarest of kids my age: comfortable in her own skin. At ease with her money but not afraid to make fun of herself for it. Being around that balance of confidence and humility lit me up. She was plain cool. She was perfect.

  “Where’s your dog then?” I said.

  Dri pouted. “She died. I’m rescuing another one when I get back in September.” She took my water and saluted the stars. “To Sadie.” She sipped and gave me the bottle. “I don’t have cooties, promise.”

  “I don’t care,” I said.

  “Then that worries me,” she said. Again she tickled my left side, harder, and this time I did flinch. I sipped from the bottle. I guess it was sort of a kiss by proxy. I wondered if she wanted me to go the more direct route. “Sorry,” I said. “About Sadie.”

  She wrinkled her nose and rubbed it on mine. “Let’s go back. We have to save John from Stef. Do I need to tell you we Gonzaga girls are impulsive?”

  “JoJo doesn’t get mad?”

  “Nothing bothers him. I know, he’s crazy. And Stef draws the line at a three-second kiss. After that she feels bad and runs home to JoJo. She needs people to need her. You’re too cute when you’re sad. Ha, now you don’t know what to do, do you?”

  “John would never go behind somebody’s back anyway.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Meaning?”

  “No, I mean I’m sure he’s cool,” she said.

  “How come you don’t have a boyfriend?”

  “Maybe I’ve been waiting for a nice boy to give me an ice cream. Hey, you have freckles. And yes, you should kiss me now, by the way.”

  I was about to when her phone roared like a lion. “Uh-oh,” she said. “Daddy?”

  The police cleared the house after a fight. John, JoJo, and I were in the kitchen with Dri. She was on the phone with her dad, who was in London for a business deal. “Nobody drank, Dad. Not here anyway.” She covered the phone. “Matthew, one more minute.”

  “Say good night, Matt,” John said.

  “It’s not even ten o’clock,” JoJo said.

  “We have to work tomorrow,” John said.

  “Come on now,” JoJo said. “I’m sick of all these Hamptons people. You guys are—I forget the word in English.”

  “Normal?” John said.

  JoJo put two massive hands on John’s shoulders. “You like cars, right? They just got the new Porsche.” He led us into the garage. It was a showroom. John asked if he could see the Porsche’s engine.

  “I only know how to drive it,” JoJo said. “How do you pop the hood?”

  John knew. He went on and on, explaining how beautiful the whole thing was. I couldn’t have cared less about it. “I’m gonna see how Dri’s doing,” I said.

  That snapped John out of his car craze. “Matt, we gotta go.”

  “Let’s say bye at least.”

  JoJo hit the intercom. “Driana, somebody misses you.”

  “Is Stef with you guys?”

  We met Dri on the terrace. “Her phone goes straight to voicemail,” she said. We split up to cover the property. At the top of the stairs that led to the beach Dri and I found Stef’s phone, along with her jeans. Dri called JoJo on the way down. “I think she wasn’t kidding this morning when she said she wanted to go night surfing. Yes, I’m serious. I’m totally going to murder her.” We ran a few hundred yards along the beach toward a mansion five or six houses down from Dri’s. “My neighbor lets us borrow his boards,” she said. “I swear, Matthew, I’m sending her back to Rio tomorrow morning.”

  A storage garage was built into the cliff. Dri ran her hand on top of the doorframe. “The key’s always right here,” she said. She checked the doormat; no luck.

  “Want me to run up to the house and ask your neighbor to open it for us?” I said.

  “He’s in the city, I’m sure. His wife is pregnant and about to deliver any day.” She hissed a string of words I didn’t understand.

  “Was that Portuguese?” I said.

  “French. My mom says it’s more polite for cursing.”

  By now JoJo and John were with us. “The key’s in the doorknob,” John said.

  Dri blushed, more mad than embarrassed, I think. She pushed in and counted the surfboards. “Okay, thank God,” she said. “They’re all here.”

  JoJo pointed to an empty rack on the other side of the garage. “But the Windsurfer isn’t,” he said.

  We followed Dri to the water’s edge. The moon was high and bright, but seeing past the waves was a trick.

  “She’ll be okay,” JoJo said. I don’t think he believed himself. “She wins competitions all the time.”

  After a minute, John pointed her out. She ripped the crest of a wave. The wind was blowing offshore, from the northwest. Stef rode it south out to sea. “Call the police,” John said.

  “After what happened at the party they’ll kill me,” Dri said. “My father will kill me. I’m gonna kill her. Stef, get back here!”

  Not that Stef would have listened, but she was out of hearing range.

  “Dri, keep her in your sights,” JoJo said. “Guys, can you give me a hand?”

  We followed him up the beach to the storage garage. He pulled a tarp off a fiberglass boat with a shallow hull, maybe twenty feet long. Two cabinets doubled as benches along its sides. The boat was on a trailer, but the tires were flat.

  “This is a really bad idea,” John said.

  “Please, guys, just help me get it down to the water?” JoJo said.

  We slid the boat off the trailer. JoJo dragged it by its towrope. John and I pushed from the back. John grabbed the tarp on the way out. “She’ll be cold,” he said.

  The garage doors spring-locked. They clapped shut behind us and sealed our fate. If they’d stayed open, maybe someone would have noticed a lot sooner that the boat was missing.

  We muscled the boat over the sand, down to Dri. John sized up the ocean and the boat. “It isn’t made for this kind of water,” he said.

  “Yes, it is,” Dri said. “It’s built to get out over the waves. It’s a ship-to-shore boat. You use it to ferry people to and from their yachts.”

  “It doesn’t even have a light on it,” John said. “No radio either. I’m telling you, call the cops.”

  “I just did, okay?” Dri said. “While you guys were getting the boat. They told me it’ll be twenty minutes before they can get a car out here.”

  “We need a helicopter,” I said.

  “They have to verify that it’s not a crank call before they send a helicopter, they said.” Dri climbed into the boat.

  JoJo followed. “Guys, one last favor. Can you push us out as far as you can? I want to be sure the propeller clears the sand.”

  John and I shouldered the boat into chest-high water. I pulled myself into it.

  “No way, Matt,” John said.

  “Matthew, really, stay here,” Dri said.

  “You might need help,” I said.

  “With
what?” John said. “This isn’t your problem. Matt, don’t do it.”

  JoJo started the engine. “Matt, please, get out. We’re losing her.”

  “Then let’s go,” I said.

  JoJo revved the throttle. John grabbed the side of the boat and climbed in. The boat punched into a wave, and we were airborne.

  Five of us went out on the water that night. None of us came back whole, and not all of us came back.

  I found out later the wind that night was forty miles an hour with gusts up to fifty. That’s strong enough to knock you over. It’s also a windsurfer’s dream.

  Stef was way out there where the surfing was fastest. The waves were just as big as the breakers closer to shore, but their peaks weren’t sharp. We drove up and down black mountains of water to chase her. She was flying, and JoJo had the boat going full out to keep pace with her. It wasn’t much of a boat. It didn’t even have a wheel. The tiller was mounted to an older-looking outboard motor.

  “It doesn’t sound right,” John said. “The engine. Was it tuned up this season?”

  “Have no idea,” Dri said.

  “Your neighbor’s a millionaire, and he’s not smart enough to keep his boat in shape?” John said.

  “Forgive me for not keeping track of his maintenance schedule,” Dri said.

  “JoJo, don’t push it so hard. It’s straining. Do we have a flashlight?” John nudged me off the bench seat and flipped it up. We found life vests, two short-arm paddles, a plastic milk crate filled with rope, binoculars, a bent screwdriver, a wrench kit and a rusty hammer, and a long-dead muskrat. Even in all that wind the funk was bad. I chucked it.

  Dri checked under the other bench. She held up a heavy-duty flashlight.

  “Spot her with it,” John said. “She’ll think the cops are after her and stop.”

  Dri yelled over the engine noise. “Knowing Stef, I bet she’ll try to get away.”

  “Don’t argue,” John said. “Do it.”

  Dri eyed John. She clicked the switch. The flashlight was dead.

  “JoJo,” John said, “easy on the engine.”

  “I heard you the first time, John. Relax.”

  But John was relaxed, the only one who was. His words were harsh, but his eyes were easy, like he’d woken up from a nothing-special dream to a nothing-special life. He was too calm, I thought, just like he was the night his dad was murdered.

  The boat’s nose smacked an upslope. The wind and spray were cold. Ten minutes later we closed in on Stef. She whooped to us as she ramped off the top of a wave. She dropped behind it and disappeared.

  We followed her over the wave. We’d been tracking her by the Windsurfer’s light blue sail but now it was gone. We rode over the next wave and the next. She’d vanished, like we’d been chasing a ghost who’d suddenly grown tired of us.

  “Go back,” John said. “She must’ve fallen.”

  JoJo turned the boat back. The land was a thin black bar. We were farther out than I’d thought. The wind tore at our skin. My cheeks and ears burned. The engine screeched as the boat fought the waves. John edged JoJo away from the tiller. He slowed the boat until the engine noise smoothed out.

  “There,” Dri said.

  “Where?” JoJo said.

  Dri pointed to a shadow against a backdrop of moonlit water, but by now I had found Stef too, by her screaming. Her sail was down. She was trying to lift it, but the wind kept knocking it over. She yelled to us in Portuguese. I didn’t need a translation to know she was saying hurry up. Another silhouette was in the water, but this one was circling the windsurf board. Then it stopped circling and charged Stef.

  JoJo grabbed the tiller from John. He rushed the boat at the fin, but the shark didn’t back off. It zeroed in on Stef until it was an arm’s length from her. The moon lit up her tear tracks, but more than crying she was laughing. “É um golfinho,” she said.

  JoJo and Dri cheered, and John and I looked at each other like, Are these people insane?

  JoJo hugged me so hard my ribs ached. “It’s a dolphin,” he said.

  I tapped my phone’s flashlight app. It wasn’t the spotlight we needed before, but it threw enough light to catch the reflection of the dolphin’s eye. On TV they’re gray and tame. This one was glossy black with silver- and honey-colored spots. It was bigger than I would have thought, and much more powerful looking.

  “It’s protecting her from the sharks,” JoJo said. He took a picture of Stef. Click, flash. The dolphin backed away but not for long. It eased toward the boat for a closer look.

  “How many years am I surfing, and never has a shark bothered me,” Stef said. “That’s why this golfinho girl here frightened me. Right, pretty girl?”

  “So not cool, Stef,” Dri said.

  “The wind called me out here, Dri. The sky—my God, the sky will never be like this again. Don’t you see it?” She spoke in Portuguese to JoJo and he laughed and nodded, and then Stef went back to English. “Guys, don’t let your anger blind you. Look up, just for a second, and then you can return to being as mad at me as you want. We’re in a temple. Let’s just be peaceful in the temple for a minute, okay?”

  I looked up. The sky was more stars than black. It sparkled pink, green, light blue. My anger drained into the wind—a little bit. My cheeks weren’t so hot anymore. Even John seemed mesmerized.

  “We are so lucky,” JoJo said. “To get to see this? God loves us. Truly we are loved.”

  Dri was looking up too, smiling, and then she frowned, as if remembering she was supposed to be furious. “Stef, if you’re not in the boat in ten seconds I swear I’m locking you in your room for the rest of the summer, and I’m totally telling your dad you put all our lives at risk.”

  “How about you, pretty one?” Stef said to John. “Are you happy you came along? He doesn’t answer. Yes, I’m talking to you. What is his name again? John, right? I’m kidding, John. I know you, and I love you, I think. You too, Matthew, even though you don’t know where Rio is. Thank you for being out here with us. We’re friends now. We’re of one blood, okay? Blessed together in the temple.”

  “Stef!” Dri said.

  “Hold your jets,” Stef said, treading toward the boat, dragging the Windsurfer.

  “Cool your jets,” Dri said. “Hold your horses.”

  “That’s what we should do tomorrow. Ride horses on the beach! John, do you like horses?”

  “I’d like to go home,” John said.

  “Only you, my angel,” she said to JoJo. “Only you understand. Sorry, I needed to fly a little.”

  “You need to stop being selfish,” Dri said. She knelt down and leaned out of the boat, extending her hand toward Stef.

  “Driana, she apologized,” JoJo said. “We had an adventure with no harm done. We have all that pizza left from the party. We’ll go home and tell stories about what happened and make it even more grand than it really was. Than it is. Yes, this is a one-time sky.”

  Dri, John, and I reached down to pull Stef into the boat.

  “Wait, let me say good-bye to my friend.” Stef tried to give the dolphin a one-armed hug. It bucked, and its tail kicked up into the Windsurfer. The board twirled out of the water. Stef had never let go of the board. She’d been gripping it by the toehold the whole time. Maybe I only imagined I heard the bones crack, but her arm from her elbow down was facing the wrong way, and a slick red bone tip pierced her skin. She groaned. Her eyes rolled back and her head slipped beneath the surface.

  Dri dove and broke the surface without a splash. An eerie sucking noise followed Dri into the water as the surface healed itself where she had ripped a hole into it. I dove after her, remembering to kick off my sandals but not to leave my phone. I lost it as I hit the water. The flashlight app was still on and the light was dropping away too fast, spinning into the darkness below me. The dolphin chased the fading blinks.

  I lifted Stef’s head from the water. Her eyes were open, but she was unconscious. “Her head’s bleeding,” I said. “I think m
aybe the surfboard fin clipped it.”

  Dri and I found the cut by feel. It was behind Stef’s hairline, at the base of her skull. At one end of the cut the skin flapped.

  “Stef, wake up,” Dri said. “C’mon now, don’t do this.”

  “Don’t shake her,” I said. I dragged Stef to the boat with the lifeguard crawl. JoJo and John grabbed her. “Easy,” I said. “She hit her head. Keep her neck straight.”

  JoJo didn’t listen. He yanked her into the boat. I pulled myself up and in. We laid Stef out on the slippery floor. She wasn’t breathing.

  I had done rescue breathing in my first responder course exactly once, and that was on a mannequin. The boat rocked as Dri pulled herself up and in. I tilted Stef’s head back to open her airway. If her spinal cord was damaged, I’d just made it worse, but what other choice did I have? I clamped her nose and put my mouth over hers and tried to breathe into her lungs.

  This was crazy, trying to breathe into a real live human being. Everything I’d learned over the summer in the CFR class was gone. My memory was shot. I couldn’t get any air into her lungs. She still had a pulse, though. I felt it in her neck.

  “Hurry, Matt, please,” JoJo said.

  I didn’t know what to do, except to try again. I repositioned her head to open her airway, and this time when I breathed into her mouth she coughed salt water into mine. She sucked at the air.

  “Oh my God, Matthew, thank you,” Dri said. JoJo slapped my shoulders, more like pounded them.

  “Matt,” John said. He pointed to the dark, shiny puddle spreading underneath Stef. Blood pulsed from the rip in her arm. I applied pressure to the artery with my fingertips, and then more pressure, and it still bled. It wasn’t spurting and spraying, but it wasn’t trickling either. Stef was somewhere between unconscious and slightly aware of the pain I was inflicting as I was clamping her artery. She moaned and tried to pull my fingers from her arm. JoJo held her down. “I saw a towel in the cabinet,” I said. “Somebody rip a strip for me?”

  JoJo jumped and went to the wrong cabinet and rocked the boat hard in the process. John moved at half speed to the right cabinet and ripped me a strip. I forced myself to slow down as I tied the strip around Stef’s arm just above the wound.