Matt de la Peña - The Living

The three of them looked at Shoeshine all bug-eyed as Shoeshine nodded calmly.

“What the hell happened?” Carmen asked.

“I rigged their own explosives to the ship’s propeller,” Shoeshine said. “Soon as it got to five knots she was gonna blow.”

“So you knew they were gonna kill everyone here?” Marcus said.

Shoeshine shook his head. “Just knew it wasn’t a research ship.” He looked out over the water, at what was left of the ship. “Didn’t set the trigger, though, until I realized they were aiming to torch the island.”

“What if we had all gotten on the ship?” Carmen asked.

“I would have disarmed it.”

They all stared at Shoeshine in awe.

“Jesus, dude,” Marcus said. “Who are you?”

“A guy who shines shoes,” Shy interjected, recalling all the times he’d asked the exact same question.

Shoeshine grinned at him and added: “May have spent some time in the military, too. Special ops.”

Shy turned with everyone else to watch the flames continue to engulf the decimated ship, lighting up the sky. And they watched the shadow of the flames on the island, flickering against the water in front of their cave.

Shoeshine pointed to the sad-looking sailboat sitting a hundred yards to the right of the burning ship. “You all ready for another swim?” he asked, tossing the duffel back to Shy.

They all nodded and Shoeshine picked up the folded blanket and let himself drop from the cave back into the water.

Shy slung the bag over his shoulder and followed right behind him.

Shy awoke early the next morning on the ragged sailboat, trembling and in a mental haze. So much had happened the day before he could hardly formulate a coherent thought. And he couldn’t speak. Nobody could. He reached into the duffel and pulled out the comb-over man’s letter and read every word of it, over and over. It was so crushing, though, he had to eventually put it away and stop thinking about it. He looked around instead, taking in his surroundings.

They hadn’t gone very far over the course of the night. Only a few hundred yards away from the island. Shoeshine had stripped the tattered sail from the boat and was just starting to replace it with a different one. What Shy had thought was a blanket the night before was actually a sail the man must have been piecing together out of random scraps since landing on the island. He hadn’t finished until right before Shy awoke, like maybe he’d been up the entire night.

Marcus was at the front of the boat with the radio. He had it coming in a little more clearly now, and Shy was able to make out many of the words. The reporter was talking about a makeshift border that had been erected in America. The earthquakes had caused the disease to spread so rapidly among the western states, people were no longer allowed to travel east, in hopes of keeping the disease contained. The coasts of California and Oregon and Washington were essentially giant quarantine areas for now, until scientists could develop a vaccine and replenish the medication used to treat the disease, which they’d already exhausted. A number of pharmaceutical companies were working day and night, trying to develop a vaccine, but so far none of them had had any luck.

Shy clutched the duffel bag in his lap. He understood they’d have to get it to the right people as soon as possible. Thousands of lives probably depended on it.

He remembered the last time he was on the sea in a boat, gripping the duffel bag. He’d been with Addie. He thought about how they’d spent nights close to each other for warmth, and how they sometimes talked. He could still see her splitting that fish in half with her bare hands. Could still hear her whispering in his ear that last night.

Where was she now?

Did he even care?

He was convinced that when he last saw her, she already knew she was going to leave the island in the helicopter with her old man. It was the look in her eyes when they talked after the lunch meeting. And the things she had said. And that kiss on the cheek. She was telling him goodbye.

But the more Shy thought about it, the more he decided Addie hadn’t known anything when they were stranded together on the lifeboat. Back then she was just as confused as he was. He trusted what he’d seen in her eyes. Which meant her dad must have gotten to her on the island at some point.

Anyway, it didn’t matter anymore. He was with Carmen now. She was sitting against the side of the boat right beside him, staring out at the wreckage from the ship, which floated all along the surface of the ocean. And they were holding hands—though he still wasn’t sure who’d initiated that part.

Shy closed his eyes and breathed, feeling her hand in his. He understood it was a miracle they were even alive, but he wanted their families back home to be alive, too. He wanted everything to go back to the way it was.

In a few minutes Shoeshine muttered from atop the forward hatch: “Believe I finally got it.” And he slowly began raising his homemade sail until it was all the way up and secured. The wind immediately caught it and started the boat moving through the ocean at a decent speed, farther away from the island. Shoeshine hopped down from the hatch and hurried around to the tiller, where he began steering, occasionally looking down at a homemade-looking compass.

They all watched him and asked what they could do to help, but Shoeshine insisted that they just rest for now.

The tattered boat moved swiftly through the ocean as the sun crept into the perfect blue sky. Shy listened to more bits and pieces of the reporter on Marcus’s radio, and he felt Carmen’s heartbeat in her hand, and he stared at the devastated island, which was completely scorched and still smoldering in places. He wondered what they’d find when they returned home, and who would be there to greet them. And then he decided to stop thinking about things he couldn’t control. For now he should focus on how fortunate he was to be on this sailboat, with Shoeshine and Marcus and Carmen. He fingered the good-luck ring in his pocket and looked at each of their faces, feeling incredibly close to them. Marcus tinkering with the antennae. Shoeshine opening up his leather journal. Carmen staring at the sea and breathing steadily, clutching his hand. He had no idea how long it would take for a boat this size to sail all the way back to California, but he was convinced they’d make it there eventually. They had to.

Shy turned back to the massive ocean, which spoke to him more clearly now, trying to process everything that had happened over the past eight days. But it was impossible. All he could do was watch the island get smaller and smaller on the horizon, until it was just a tiny dot on the water, and then it was gone.

I’d like to thank the following folks for helping make this novel possible. Krista Marino: Your guidance through this story was truly remarkable. Thanks so much for all your hard work. Shy and I owe you a fancy dinner at the New York restaurant of your choice. Steve Malk: Thanks for always taking the long view and for coaching me through far more than just career decisions. Working with you is one of the best moves I’ve ever made. Matt Van Buren: Thanks for reading all fifty-eight thousand drafts of this novel. Your notes and conversations (often in a Park Slope bar) were vital to my figuring things out. Thanks also to all the great folks at Random House who work so hard to get good books into the hands of readers, especially Beverly Horowitz, Dominique Cimina, Lauren Donovan, Lisa Nadel, Adrienne Waintraub, Tracy Bloom Lerner and Lisa McClatchy. Thanks to my medical expert peeps (and friends): Quan Luong and Tanya DiFrancesco. Thanks to my supportive family: Caroline, Al, Roni, Amy, Emily, Spence, the Suns and Annie the cat.