Matt de la Peña - The Living

“He was definitely unbalanced when I talked to him on the Honeymoon Deck. He kept saying all this crazy shit about corruption and how he was hiding from people.” It occurred to Shy that this was the most he’d ever shared about that conversation to anyone. Including his own family.

“I wonder what happened to him,” Addie said.

“I wonder why your old man was so paranoid about it.” Shy looked up at the moon, amazed at how everything now seemed to connect. The suit guy stalking him and his room being trashed and Addie’s dad asking him to dinner—all of it went back to the suicide on his first voyage. And now him and this girl in the boat. “Hey, Addie,” he said, wiping a hand down his face, “I still need to ask you about—”

“The picture my dad had,” she said, finishing his sentence. “Right?”

“Uh, yeah, actually.”

Addie reached into her jeans pocket, pulled out a folded photo and held it out to Shy. “You mean this one?”

Shy took it from her and unfolded it, stunned. The picture was wet and creased, but he could clearly see himself sitting alone beside his grandma’s grave back in Otay Mesa.

“I took it from my dad’s room,” she said. “Never got a chance to put it back.”

“How’d you get it?” Shy said, looking up at her.

“He left a key to his cabin with us,” Addie said. “So we could have two showers. When they made us all leave the dining room early because of the storm, me and Cassie ditched my dad’s security people and snuck into his cabin to look around.” She pointed at the picture in his hand. “We found it just lying on top of his safe. You can understand why I was so weirded out when I saw you during the storm, right?”

Shy looked down at the picture again and the memory of that moment came flooding back. It was the night before this second voyage. He’d ridden his bike across town and through the cemetery gates to lean a sunflower against his grandma’s small headstone. Her favorite flower. Then he’d just sat there, thinking about the last few hours of her battle with Romero Disease, and about his family’s future. Not only had a great person been stolen from their lives, his grandma also paid half the bills. He had no idea how they were going to make it without her.

It made Shy sick knowing there was someone watching him that night, spying on his mourning.

He looked up at Addie, remembering what Supervisor Franco had said just before Shy went out into the storm to help clear the Lido Deck. “Does your dad by any chance work for a company called LasoTech?”

“Does my dad work for LasoTech?” she said, repeating the question. She scoffed a little. “More like my dad owns LasoTech.”

They talked a while longer—about the company and what they were hoping to find out about Shy’s conversation with the guy who jumped off the boat, David Williamson, and why everyone seemed so concerned about a guy who was already dead—and then Addie said if she didn’t sit down she was going to pass out standing up.

“Go rest,” he said. “We can talk more about it tomorrow.”

She nodded. “Time to go freeze my ass off,” she told him as she started over to her side of the boat. After she sat down she called to him: “Hey, Shy.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m really sorry you got mixed up in all this.”

She seemed like she genuinely meant it. “Same with you,” he told her.

Shy moved over to Mr. Henry, who was sound asleep. He put his hand under his nose to make sure he was still breathing, then went to his own spot against the side of the boat. He sat down in the ankle-high water, leaned his head back and thought some more about everything he and Addie had just talked about.

Shy was so cold and hungry he had trouble falling asleep. He stared up into the star-filled night, letting his mind go wherever it wanted.

He pictured the man in the black suit cornering him in the Luxury Lounge. Pointing as Shy made his escape down the stairs. He pictured the look on Addie’s dad’s face when he stepped up to Shy’s pool stand, offered to toss the foul-mouthed Muppet kid off the ship. Maybe that was some kind of vague reference to the comb-over man’s suicide. Maybe he thought Shy was to blame. He pictured his grandma opening her scrapbook in the hall, pointing to the article about sharks. Then Shy found himself picturing something else, the sliver of Carmen undressing he’d seen through her bathroom door.

Shy closed his eyes so he could focus on that last image. He liked thinking about all Carmen-related things, including stuff that had nothing to do with her beautiful naked body. But right now, as he sat shivering against the side of the boat, all he wanted to do was think about her curves and her skin and the tattooed words below her belly button. It probably said something deep, he decided. A quote from some philosopher or a saying that he’d understand on the exact same level.

He missed how it felt to be around her. How his stomach would get butterflies when she even walked into a room. He wondered if she was on another boat right now, in some other part of the ocean, slowly dying by herself, the same as he was. And what if she had her eyes closed, too, and she was thinking about him? Could they be together in their thoughts even when their bodies were apart? He held himself for warmth and drifted off wondering about that.

Carmen showed up in Shy’s dream, too.

She was walking up to his towel stand. Smiling. “Come with me,” she said.

“Now?” he asked. “I can’t just leave work.”

“What are you talking about, Shy? It’s your dream, isn’t it? People can do anything they want inside their own dreams.”

The sky suddenly shifted from morning to night. Supervisor Franco was there now, too. He was telling Shy his shift was over, to take a break, go get himself some dinner.

That was when Shy understood. He was somewhere between consciousness and sleep, where you can partly steer the story of your dreams.

He followed Carmen down the stairs, into the Southside Lounge. The butterflies in his stomach flapping like crazy. Because maybe she was bringing him here to confess her love. To explain how she was leaving her lawyer. The guy didn’t understand her. Not the way Shy did. She’d finally realized how empty it was being with someone who never asked how she felt about things, who would never understand how bad it hurt to lose someone to Romero Disease.

But as they sat down at a table, he knew the look on Carmen’s face wasn’t the love-professing kind.

“I’ve been doing some thinking,” she said. “About me and you, Shy.”

“Me too,” he said, though it was obvious their thinking wasn’t the same.

“I believe the reason it’s so complicated between us is ’cause I’m the only one in a relationship. If we were both committed to other people, we could be way closer as friends. Don’t you think?”

The butterflies in his stomach stopped flapping.

They keeled over and died.

“Look,” Carmen said, “you know I care about you, right?”

“I guess so.”

“Well,” she said, “over the past couple days I’ve gotten to know someone a little better. And I think she’d be perfect for you.”

“A girl?”

“Yes, Shy. A girl.” Carmen turned around and called out: “You can come join us now, Addie.”

Shy looked up, shocked to see Addie approaching their table. She sat down, smiling, and gave him a little wave.

“You don’t even like her,” Shy said to Carmen.

“That’s not true,” she said. “Once you get past that bitchy front she puts up, and you ignore all her snobby tendencies, you’ll discover that Addie’s a pretty decent girl.” Carmen then turned to Addie, said: “And I’m gonna be honest about Shy, too. He can be a little selfish and girl crazy. And he’s into corny shit like hand-holding tests. But he means well.”