The Living

7 Towel Boy

Shy felt like he’d been asleep for about three seconds when his alarm started blaring in his ear.

He sat up quick and shut it off.

Six-thirty in the morning.

His first thought as he held his throbbing head: no way he’d make it through work today. He was too exhausted. Too hungover.

Then a second thought: Carmen.

His stomach dropped.

Last night when he said he was sorry, she had ducked back into her room without a word. He had to talk to her as soon as possible. Clear the air. Go back to being just friends or whatever they were supposed to be.

Rodney turned over on his cot, eyes still crusted closed, drool pooling on his pillow. Massive sock-covered feet hanging off the end of his cot. Seemed like the guy didn’t have a care in the world. Why couldn’t it be like that for everyone?

Shy forced himself out of bed to pop some aspirin. Then he dragged his Paradise polo and shorts into the tiny bathroom for a cold shower.

The sun was just starting to rise into the cloudy sky when Shy reopened his towel stand on the empty Lido Deck. Early mornings at sea were breathtaking, and they usually made him feel brand-new. But today all Shy felt was used up and stressed out.

As he placed a folded towel at the foot of all two hundred deck chairs he replayed his night with Carmen. He felt sick about it. Damn liquid courage. All that space shit he’d talked. The hand holding. Hooking up with Carmen was both everything he wanted and the worst thing that could’ve happened.

He mopped the deck and removed the Jacuzzi cover and turned on the heat and the jets, and then he fished a few more bugs out of the pool with the skimmer and treated the water. The whole time he kept his eyes peeled for Carmen. Usually she’d cut through the pool area at some point with her morning coffee. On her way to the Normandie Theater. And they’d kick it for a few minutes.

But he was over an hour into his shift now.

And still no sign of Carmen.

Shy forced himself to think of other things instead. Like the suit guy Kevin warned him about. He’d go talk to Paolo between his shift here and his afternoon shift at the gym. Then there was the Skype he was supposed to do with his mom. If something bad had really happened back home, he didn’t know what he’d do. He was stuck way out here on a ship. Middle of the ocean. No help to anyone.

Soon scattered passengers began trickling out onto the deck. A few shivering kids lining up for the water slide, their moms and dads standing around sipping coffee, introducing themselves to one another. An old couple under a Paradise umbrella rocking old-people sunglasses and reading electronic books.

Across the deck, the Island Café had opened and the smell of bacon and sausage and waffles filled the air. The clinking sound of silverware on plates and early-morning chatter. The aspirin was finally working on Shy’s headache. He scored a coffee from the café and took it back to his stand, where he sipped at it and studied the dark clouds in the distance and watched people.

By ten the pool area was half full.

Shy handed out fresh towels, miniature golf equipment, Ping-Pong paddles, swimmies, scuba masks. Cocktail waitresses moved through the rows of lounge chairs, taking orders for espressos, Bloody Marys, mimosas. The ship emcee announced the day’s activities and reminded passengers that the duty-free shops had just opened in the main promenade.

Still no sign of Carmen.

And nobody in a black suit—though Shy doubted anyone would wear a suit out by the pool when it was like ninety degrees. The guy would probably have changed into shorts or something. Which meant Shy didn’t even know what he was looking for.

By noon the deck was humming and the sun beat down in front of clustered rain clouds. Almost every lounge chair had been claimed. Elegant women in wide-brimmed hats and bikinis, reading magazines, eating the fruit out of their tropical drinks. Men sleeping in sunglasses or watching the pool, bulging stomachs already bright red from the sun.

Just like on Shy’s first voyage, the women were all better-looking than the men. And younger. But this group was a little quicker to tip. He already had a small wad of cash in his pocket as he made another pass through the crowd, replacing used towels with freshly laundered ones.

Whenever the used bin filled up he’d cart it across the deck to housekeeping and hurry back with fresh warm stacks.

He was so busy now he hardly had time to think.

And not thinking was clutch—like somebody should bottle the shit and sell it ten bucks a pop.

On his third trip back from housekeeping, though, he stopped cold.

Carmen.

8 The Glare Off a Diamond

She was on the other side of the pool, maybe twenty yards away, wheeling an amp and a microphone stand toward the far staircase, which would lead her down to the theater.

Shy parked his towel cart by his stand and started toward her, brainstorming how to best present his apology. But just as he rounded the Jacuzzi a passenger in a cowboy hat flagged him down.

“Hey there, bud,” the man said. “Wanna check out the ring I’m about to give my soon-to-be-better-half?”

Shy tried to muster a Paradise-worthy smile even though the question had caught him totally off guard, and he was in a hurry. “Uh, okay, sir.” He glanced in Carmen’s direction, saw that she had stopped at the outdoor bar to talk to one of the cocktail waitresses. Katrina.

The man unzipped the leather fanny pack resting underneath his stiff-looking beer gut and reached inside. He had a little gray mixed into his mustache and sideburns. Legs so spindly and white Shy wondered if it was the first time he’d ever stepped into a pair of shorts.

He pulled out a small blue box. “Springing this on her tonight at dinner,” he said, looking all proud of himself. “She doesn’t have a clue.” He flipped open the box, and the knuckle-sized diamond caught the sun, nearly blinding Shy.

“Wow, sir. It’s really big.”

“Impressive, right?”

“Very.” Shy glanced at Carmen again—still talking to Katrina. He needed to wrap up the big show-and-tell session and go catch her before she left.

“Over seven carats,” the man said. “I’m guessing you’ve never seen a seven-carat diamond before.”

“Not even on TV,” Shy told him, leaving out the part about him not giving a shit.

“Well, I’m in oil, boy. Big oil, just like my daddy. We’re oilmen. And you know what all the top oilmen have in common?”

“What’s that, sir?”

“When we decide to do something, we do it big.”

Shy snuck another glance at Carmen and Katrina, then looked back at the ring. He tried to think up something else to add as the man kept talking, something flattering—’cause maybe that was where he’d gone wrong with the passenger who’d jumped—but he was drawing a blank.

The oilman stopped himself, mid-sentence, and followed Shy’s eyes to Carmen. “Young lady,” he called to her suddenly.

Carmen pointed at herself, mouthed: Me?

He nodded. “Come on over here a second, will you?”

Shy kept his smile going, but inside he was in a bit of a panic. Last thing he needed was for his and Carmen’s first interaction since the hookup to be chaperoned by Roy Rogers.

Carmen said something to Katrina, then wheeled her amp toward them wearing a Paradise smile of her own.

“You gotta check out this ring,” Shy told her, trying to play like everything was normal between them. But the fact that she didn’t even look at him seemed problematic.

“Oh, this isn’t just any ol’ ring,” the man said, tapping the Tiffany’s box closed. “But first things first, sugar. What’s your name?”

“Carmen.”

“Gorgeous name for a gorgeous gal. And where you from, Ms. Carmen?”

She glanced at Shy for a fraction of a second, then told the man: “I’m from San Diego, sir.”

“Originally, I mean,” the man said. “What race are you?”

Carmen was as good as anyone at laying down the fake cheerful vibe. But Shy could tell by her eyes, she wanted to boot dude in the huevos.

“Guess,” Carmen said.

“All right.” He got a big grin and looked her up and down, spending a few extra beats on her cleavage. “I gotta warn you, though. I’ve been all over the map on business. And I know my women.”

When the guy took Carmen by the arm, and actually spun her around so he could peep her backside, Shy started getting pissed, too. If they were anywhere besides a cruise ship he’d have already swiped the ring and Carmen’s hand and been halfway to Ensenada.

“Brazilian?” the man guessed.

“Close,” Carmen said, rolling her eyes at Shy.

“Portuguese?”

“I’m Mexican American.”

“Mexican? Really? What kind of Mexican?”

Carmen actually laughed out loud. “Just plain old Mexican, sir. Same as this guy.” She pointed at Shy. “We’re both half.”

Shy was staring the oilman down now, waiting for the next bit of racist shit to come flying out of his mouth.

“Wow,” the man said. “You all look different from the Mexicans we got in Texas.”

“Believe it or not,” Shy told him through a fake-ass grin, “not all Mexicans look the same, sir.”

Carmen stepped on Shy’s foot and shot him a dirty look. But it wasn’t like the guy heard a word anyway. He was too busy pulling another woman into the mix, a slender twenty-something brunette in a black one-piece.

Shy took Carmen’s elbow, asked her in a quiet voice: “Could I talk to you for a minute?”

She brushed away his hand without even looking at him. “Nah, I wanna see this culo’s ring.”

Shy stared at the side of her face.

So he was definitely the one taking the rap for last night. Like he’d executed some premeditated master plan, and Carmen was just an innocent bystander.

Okay.

“Where are you dining tonight?” Shy heard the oilman ask the woman in the one-piece.

She looked at him, confused. “Destiny?”

“And what time’s your seating?”

“Eight-thirty.”

“Well, how about that?” the oilman said, turning back to Carmen and Shy. “She’ll be there for the big show.”

“What show?” the woman said, curious now.

“I’m asking my lady friend to marry me tonight at dinner. In front of everyone. They’re even giving me a microphone.” He held out the Tiffany’s box again, popped it open.

“Jesus!” Carmen said, staring at the massive ring.

The other woman held a hand against her chest.

Shy studied the two of them. Eyes all bugged. Mouths hanging open. He wondered if pretty girls looked at expensive rings the way guys looked at pretty girls. And where’d that leave a no-money-having high school kid like him?

There were now a few other female passengers huddled around the oilman’s ring. A cocktail waitress Shy had never met. An older gray-haired man and two pretty girls around Shy’s own age. The older man turned to look at Shy, and Shy turned away from the girls. One of them was probably his daughter.

He leaned toward Carmen and tried again. “Seriously, though, I really need to talk to you.”

She glanced at her watch. “No can do, Mr. Space Sancho. I’m already running late.” She patted him on the shoulder and added: “I did write out some new rules for us, though. If you’re lucky I’ll even tell you what they are. You’re on break during the late dinner, right?”

Shy nodded. Things were even worse than he thought.

“Meet me at the Destiny hostess stand and we’ll watch Romeo propose. Then, if I’m feeling charitable, we can talk.”

She spun around her amp and microphone without a goodbye, started wheeling her way toward the staircase.

Shy didn’t have a good feeling about these new rules.

He watched Carmen’s ponytail sway back and forth across her back like a lazy pendulum, telling himself: Don’t look at her legs, don’t look at her legs, don’t look at her legs.

He looked at her legs.

9 A Dinner Invitation

When Shy returned to his towel stand, he apologized to the small group of people that had gathered there. He ducked under the counter, handed out a few fresh towels, a dart set, a pack of cards, a Game Boy. He had everyone sign the checkout sheet on his clipboard with their cabin number.

He looked up as the last person in line stepped forward—one of the girls he’d just seen checking out the oilman’s ring. “We need stuff for Ping-Pong,” she said, pointing over her shoulder. Standing a few yards behind her was the other high-school-aged girl and the man with gray hair.

“Let’s get you guys set up,” Shy said, reaching into one of the drawers in front of him. He grabbed three paddles and a pack of Ping-Pong balls, handed them to her over his stand. “Best paddles we got right here. Just took them out of the package yesterday.”

She didn’t even look at them, just gave a bored expression and said: “Do I have to, like, sign my name or something?”

Shy pointed at the sign-in sheet, watched her pick up the pen and write her name. Addison Miller.

She was even prettier up close. Straight blond hair down past her shoulders. Light-green eyes. A few scattered sun freckles on the bridge of her nose and along her cheeks. Strange how a pretty girl’s face could instantly put Shy in a better mood.

“So, you any good?” he asked, motioning toward the paddles.

She frowned like his question was the lamest thing she’d ever heard. “We’re only playing because my dad’s making us.”

Before Shy had a chance to respond, a floppy-haired kid stormed up to the stand, saying: “Hey, asshole!”

Shy looked down at him. “Excuse me?”

“What, are you deaf?” he said in his squeaky little voice. “I called you an asshole. I just came over to get stuff and you weren’t here.”

The kid was maybe ten years old and rail thin. Hair hanging over his eyes. He looked like a damn Muppet.

Shy forced a smile even though he wanted to toss the kid into the pool. “Sorry ’bout that, little man. But I’m here now. So, what can I do for—?”

“Don’t call me ‘little man’ either,” the kid snapped. “Just because I’m young doesn’t mean you can disrespect me.”

Shy was speechless.

The gray-haired man suddenly appeared, saying: “Whoa, whoa, whoa. What seems to be the trouble over here?”

The kid pointed a finger at Shy and barked: “This asshole’s not doing his job.”

Shy no longer wanted to toss the kid in the pool, he wanted to pin his little Muppet head against the towel stand.

The gray-haired man smiled at Shy. “This one’s got a mouth on him, doesn’t he? What do you think”—he glanced at Shy’s name tag—“Shy. Do we push him overboard?”

The blond girl rolled her eyes at her dad.

“Maybe we do, sir,” Shy said, trying to play along.

The kid cursed under his breath again, then said: “Just give me a stupid golf club and a ball.”

The other girl was there now, too, looking entertained as she ran her fingers through her long black hair.

Shy turned to open the closet behind him, saying: “Let’s see what we can do for you, money. Ah, here we go.” He handed over a slightly bent club and the most nicked-up golf ball he could find. “This should be perfect for you.”

The kid inspected the ball with a disgusted look on his face, but he didn’t say anything. Just turned and started up the stairs behind him, toward the Recreation Deck, where the miniature golf course was.

Soon as the kid was out of sight, the gray-haired man held out his hand to Shy, said: “Jim Miller.”

Shy shook hands with him. “Shy Espinoza. Thanks for stepping in with that kid.”

“Somebody had to,” he said. “You’ve already met my daughter Addison. And this is her friend Cassandra.”

“Nice to meet you guys,” Shy said, giving them a proper Paradise smile.

Cassandra flipped her hair from one shoulder to the other and popped her gum. Addison rolled her eyes again. Shy could tell neither of them wanted any part of this conversation.

“So?” Addison said, tilting her head at her dad. “Are we going?”

But her dad was still grinning and staring at Shy.

Addison grabbed her dad’s arm and started pulling him away, saying: “You’re the one who wanted to play this stupid game in the first place.”

“Wait, I have an idea,” the man said, turning to the girls. “You guys keep complaining that there’s no one your age on the ship, right? Well, Shy is.”

The girls looked at each other with exaggerated frowns. “Uh, he works here,” Cassandra said, like the thought of hanging out with anyone on the crew was absurd.

“What does that matter?” the man said. “Tell you what, I think we should invite the young man to dinner with us.”

“Ew, Dad,” Addison said. “You’re being really creepy.”

“It’s okay, sir,” Shy interjected—because he didn’t want any part of this either. “I actually don’t think we’re allowed to—”

“I insist,” the man said. “You’ll join the three of us for dinner. A couple nights from tonight, soon as I get back from the island. If you’re scheduled to work I’ll speak to the captain myself, get everything squared away.”

Shy just stood there, grinning. What island? he wondered. Hawaii? Weren’t they all going there together?

The girls were now shooting dirty looks at the man. They didn’t want to eat with Shy, and Shy didn’t want to eat with them. The math seemed simple enough. But this guy was strangely persistent.

“I’ll have someone notify you where to be,” the man said.

“God, Dad,” the blonde said, “you’re totally embarrassing yourself.” She finally managed to pull him away from Shy’s towel stand, and the three of them started toward the Ping-Pong room on the other side of the pool.

Shy watched them go, trying to figure out what had just happened. There was no way he was going to dinner with passengers. Didn’t matter how good-looking the girls were, it would be torture. Plus, it wasn’t even allowed. And where was this guy going in the middle of a cruise? Then again, Shy reminded himself, passengers could pretty much do anything they wanted if they had enough money. And the gray-haired guy made it sound like he was all buddy-buddy with the captain.

Shy glanced down at his sign-in sheet, studied the girl’s information. Addison Miller. Even her name sounded stuck-up. That’s one of the things he liked best about Carmen. Hottest female on the ship, crew or otherwise, and she acted like she didn’t have a clue.

Shy looked up at the sky where dark gray clouds were rolling in. If they eventually blocked out the sun, it would mean more people working out during his gym shift, which would mean more work for him. He scanned the pool crowd again, readying himself to do one final towel pass before he went on break. He was surprised to find Rodney lumbering down the length of the Lido Deck.

“Shy!” he called out as he rounded the Jacuzzi.

A few passengers turned to look at him.

When the guy finally made it to Shy’s towel stand he stuck a meaty forearm up on the counter and leaned over to catch his breath.

“What the hell, Rod?” Shy said.

Rodney pulled in a couple deep breaths, then stood up straight and looked Shy right in the eyes. “You need to come with me. Right now, bro.”

“Why? What happened?”

“We’ve been robbed!”

10 News from Back Home

Rodney unlocked their cabin door, held it open for Shy to go in first. Their stuff was scattered all over the floor. Empty drawers hanging open and clothes strewn everywhere. Both their cots stripped and flipped. Pillows pulled from their cases. All the family photos Shy had stashed in his backpack now scattered across the desk next to Rodney’s open laptop.

“I didn’t touch anything,” Rodney said, moving across their small cabin. “Wanted you to see exactly how they left it.”

Shy scooted his pics together first, staring at the one on top—his grandma manning the griddle, patting down one of her famous tortillas. Why would anyone go through his personal shit? It didn’t make sense.

“Came back from the kitchen,” Rodney said, “and I saw our door wasn’t all the way closed. Figured you were in here sleeping or something. But then I walked inside…” Rodney waved a hand toward the mess. “Who would do this to us? Nobody’s allowed down here except crew.”

Shy spotted his passport lying under his cot. Spotted his wallet on a pair of wadded-up jeans. He reached down for them, found his C-note still tucked safely inside the billfold of his wallet. Same with his bank card and ID. He turned to Rodney. “None of my stuff’s missing.”

“Mine either,” Rodney said.

If it wasn’t a robbery, maybe it was the guy in the black suit. But why break into the cabin and go through their stuff? Why not just ask about the suicide directly, like ship security already had? Like the cops who were waiting for Shy on land when they disembarked from his first voyage?

Rodney straightened out his mattress and sat down, leaned his elbows on his knees. “I feel violated, bro.”

“Tell me about it,” Shy said, shoving his wallet and passport into his safe and locking up. Maybe he was in more trouble than he realized. What if they were looking for someone to blame for the guy jumping? What if they tried to frame him?

“It’s not like a regular job,” Rodney said. “We don’t get to go home at the end of our shift. We live here.”

Shy felt bad Rodney had to suffer, too. Just because they were roommates. He wasn’t the one who let a passenger fall, who wasn’t strong enough to hold on just a few minutes longer. Shy felt like he should back up, explain everything he knew about the suit guy to Rodney. But there wasn’t time. And he wasn’t even sure the suit guy was really to blame.

“Look,” Shy said. “After my shift at the gym, I’ll go talk to Paolo. See what I can find out.”

Rodney nodded. “I’d go myself, but I have to head back to the kitchen in twenty minutes.”

Shy glanced at his alarm clock.

Two-thirty.

Damn.

“Hey, Rod?” he said. “I know this isn’t the best timing, but is it cool if I use your computer real quick? I promised I’d Skype with my mom.”

“No problem,” Rodney said, standing up. “Need me to vacate?”

“Nah, it’s okay,” Shy told him. “I appreciate it.”

He sat at the desk and turned on Rodney’s computer and waited for it to boot up—Rodney already straightening up behind him. Shy was starting to feel like a prisoner on the ship. People were spying on him. Breaking into his cabin. And there was nowhere to hide. He wiped a few beads of perspiration off his forehead and swallowed. His throat felt like it was closing up.

The screen lit up and Shy logged on to Skype and dialed his mom. As it rang, he glanced around their trashed cabin again, shaking his head. Soon as his gym shift was over he was definitely tracking down Paolo. He needed some answers.

In a few seconds his mom’s face popped onto the screen. He could tell she’d been crying.

Shy sat up and leaned toward the computer. “What is it, Ma? What happened?”

She wiped a hand down her face and took a deep breath. His mom was tough. He’d only seen her cry a couple other times in his life. It had to be bad.

“You okay?” Shy asked.

She shook her head.

“What is it? What happened?”

“It’s Miguel, honey.”

The name alone knocked the wind out of Shy. He’d never even thought of that. “What, he’s sick?”

She didn’t say anything.

“Don’t tell me it’s Romero, Ma. I can’t even hear that right now.”

His mom started crying again.

Shy pounded a fist on the desk. First his grandma. Now his little nephew? “You already took him in? You talked to a doctor?”

His mom wiped her face with a wad of tissues and breathed for a few long seconds. “We went first thing this morning,” she said in a shaky voice. “They have medicine now. The doctor told us as long as the patient starts on the meds within twenty-four hours, his chances are good.”

“They keeping him overnight?” Shy asked, thinking about expenses.

His mom nodded.

“And the medicine probably costs a lot, too, right?”

“Money’s the last thing on our minds, Shy.”

“I know.” But Shy also knew his sister didn’t have insurance. No way she could afford this on her own. Neither could his mom. “I want you to do something for me, Ma. I want you to cash that bond I won at the game. Give the money to Teresa.”

His mom was shaking her head. “We have money. Teresa’s friends have been very generous—”

“Cash the bond, Ma. I’m serious.”

“I didn’t message you for money, Shy. I wanted you to know what’s going on back home.”

“I understand that,” Shy said. “But you gotta do this for me. I love that little kid.” He felt a lump going in his throat. He’d shared a room with Miguel since the day Teresa brought him home from the hospital. They were more like brothers than anything else. “It’s the only thing I can do from way out here.”

“You do so much for this family,” his mom said. “You have since the day your dad left.”

Shy wiped more perspiration off his forehead. “Working on this ship was a mistake.”

“Shy, you listen to me. You remember Teresa’s bunnies?”

He didn’t say anything.

“You remember, don’t you?”

He did.

His sister had two bunnies when they were little. She got them for a birthday present. She loved those bunnies more than anything, used to take them to neighbors’ houses in a cage and let her friends pet them. But one day, while she and her friend Marisol were eating lunch in the alley behind their building, a neighborhood dog got into the cage and killed both bunnies, then sat there guarding their remains. Teresa came racing into the apartment, screaming her head off. Shy and his mom followed her back to the alley, and Shy saw.

His mom blew her nose, said: “Me and your sister were a wreck, Shy. We had to leave the room. And what’d you do?”

“Cleaned up,” he said in a quiet voice.

“You shooed the dog away and scooped those bunnies into a box. Took your dad’s old shovel and dug a hole in the empty lot next door. And you buried them. You were seven years old, Shy. Barely older than Miguel is now. I kept thinking, Where did my son learn to do this?”

Shy shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “They honestly think the medicine can work?”

“That’s what the doctor told us,” his mom said. “My point is, I don’t want you beating yourself up about being away. You’re working, Shy. You’re helping out your mom.”

“Email me updates, okay? Many as you can. I wanna know everything.”

“I promise,” his mom said. “Can we do this again tomorrow? I need to see my son’s face.”

Shy nodded. He kept picturing his little nephew lying in a hospital bed, the whites of his eyes having already turned red. It broke his fucking heart.

His mom wiped her face with tissues again, her eyes shifting off of Shy. “What happened to your room?”

Shy looked over his shoulder, saw Rodney cleaning up. “We’re rearranging,” he said, turning back to his mom. “Tomorrow between two-thirty and three, all right? And email me.”

“I will.”

“And I’m serious, Ma. Make sure you cash that bond.”

“Be safe, Shy. I love you.”

“Love you, too.”

Shy closed out of the call and turned off the computer. Then he just sat there for a few seconds, thinking about what he’d just heard. All his problems on the ship seemed laughable now that he knew his nephew had Romero Disease. He pushed down the urge to punch the wall in front of him.

“You all right?” Rodney asked.

Shy took a deep breath and turned around, saw that Rodney was now cleaning up his stuff, too. “I been better, man.”

“Sorry to hear about your nephew,” Rodney said. “What exactly is Romero Disease, anyway?”

“You never heard of it?” Shy asked. Back home it was all anyone ever talked about.

“I’ve heard the name. And I’m pretty sure people have died from it, right?”

Shy shook his head, remembering all the shit he saw his grandma go through. “It’s this awful disease going around back home,” he told Rodney. “People’s eyes turn red and their vision goes blurry. Then their skin gets so dry and brittle it starts flaking off. They die from fluid loss in like forty-eight hours.”

“Jesus, dude.” Rodney looked horrified.

Shy got up and grabbed his uniform shirt for the gym. He wouldn’t allow himself to even consider Miguel not pulling through. “He’ll be all right,” he told Rodney. “They got medicine now.”

Rodney stood there, hands on hips, nodding.

Shy looked at his clock. Two-forty-nine. “Anyways, I gotta get to the gym. Don’t worry about the rest of my stuff. I’ll pick it up later.”

“I don’t mind,” Rodney said.

“Soon as I’m off, I’ll go to Paolo’s office.” Shy pulled open the door, but just as he was leaving he heard Rodney call his name.

He turned back around.

Rodney cleared his throat. “You think whoever was in here will come back? Like while we’re sleeping?”

Maybe it was because Shy’s mind was so tweaked after hearing about Miguel, or maybe it was pure exhaustion, but Rodney’s words made him feel choked up. Like if he breathed the wrong way or something he might start crying. And Shy hadn’t cried since he was a little kid. He took after his mom that way.

“Nobody’s coming in here anymore,” he told Rodney. “I’ll make sure of it.” Then he turned and went out the door.

11 Names Have No Meaning Here

According to a few of the passengers crowding into the gym, the sun had completely disappeared behind thick gray clouds out by the pool, and sunbathers were migrating to other parts of the ship. This made the gym so busy during Shy’s four-hour shift, he hardly had time to stress about Miguel. He handed out towels, Windexed the floor-to-ceiling mirrors, wiped down machines when they weren’t in use, demonstrated how to adjust the sauna controls, spotted for a few guys in the free-weights section, and handed out complimentary bottles of Gatorade and water.

Shy had no idea it was the end of his shift until Frederick from Denmark came walking in to relieve him. “Everything is good?” he asked Shy, stashing his backpack behind the gym’s reception desk.

“Just crowded.” Shy motioned toward the floor where a couple dozen passengers were sweating on treadmills and stationary bikes and elliptical machines—all of them glued to the little personal TVs in front of their faces. “We’re running low on towels, but I already called down to Claudia. They should be on their way.”

“Very nice.”

Shy grabbed his stuff from the employee cubby, saluted Frederick and headed for the exit. As he pushed through the door, he ran right into Addison and Cassandra, the girls he’d met at his pool stand earlier.

They both looked at each other and started laughing.

“What’s so funny?” Shy asked, glancing down at their tight workout gear. Girls this irritating shouldn’t be allowed to have such smoking bodies. And guys with sick nephews shouldn’t be noticing shit like that.

“Oh, nothing,” Addison said.

“You work in the gym, too?” Cassandra asked.

“I do everything on this ship,” Shy said, trying to keep a playful attitude. “Couple more voyages and I’ll probably be captain.”

They looked at each other again. “Ah, he made a little joke,” Cassandra said.

“How adorable,” Addison said, and then they both burst out laughing again.

Shy felt like a complete idiot. It was definitely time to get out of this convo and talk to Paolo. “Look, I gotta go handle a few things,” he told the girls, giving them a sarcastic thumbs-up. “It was great talking to you.”

He started past them, but Addison latched on to his elbow, saying: “Just so you know, Cassie decided dinner should just be you and her.”

Cassandra shot her an exaggerated look of shock and said: “You lying little bitch.”

“What?” Addison said. “I doubt my dad will be back by the weekend anyway. It’ll be perfect. I’ll post a bunch of pictures online—‘Cassie and her pool boy.’ Can you imagine everyone back home?”

They laughed at him some more, and Shy slipped her grip, still smiling, and told them: “Have an excellent workout.”

“Ah, don’t be all sensitive,” one of them called after him—he couldn’t tell which one. “We’re just joking around.”

Shy waved over his shoulder and started down a flight of stairs, hoping they both ate shit on the treadmills.

Paolo wasn’t in his office.

Vlad and Kyle, the two security guys Shy found in the break room, said Paolo was meeting with the captain about the weather. They had no idea when he was coming back. Shy left the security wing and stood in the crew hall for a few minutes, trying to work out his next move.

He had an hour and a half before he was supposed to meet Carmen at the Destiny Dining Room. He could keep searching for Paolo, or he could try and get some sleep. He wished he could go talk to Carmen now, explain the news about his nephew, but she’d want no part of him rolling up on her cabin after what happened.

He decided to go talk to his boss, Supervisor Franco. Technically he was supposed to run all concerns by him first anyway.

Romero Disease

On the long walk to the other side of the ship, Shy thought about when his grandma started getting sick.

Her first symptoms had matched exactly with some new illness people were talking about on the news. The whites of her eyes were turning red. Her vision was blurring. She was so dehydrated her skin had become extremely dry and itchy and she was having trouble using the bathroom. Still, she refused to see a doctor.

“I’ve lived through sixty-seven years’ worth of flus,” she told Shy’s mom. “I don’t see what’s so special about this one.”

“That’s the point,” his mom pleaded. “I’m worried it’s more than just the flu.”

His grandma shook her head and went to lie down in her room.

Back then most people didn’t know about Romero Disease. Shy only knew what his mom had mentioned after reading an article in the paper. A few dozen people had died in America, all of them from border towns in California like Tecate, San Ysidro, Otay Mesa and National City. What he didn’t know yet was that thousands had already died on the other side of the border, in Tijuana, including a popular young governor named Victor Romero—which was how the disease got its name in the media.

The next morning, Shy’s grandma collapsed in the kitchen while kneading dough for her sweet bread.

She didn’t wake up until she’d been checked into the hospital for several hours, and she didn’t recognize Shy or his mom or sister. She asked if they knew where she could find Jesus. She asked if the world had ended and they’d forgotten to take her on their spaceship. The whites of her eyes were now blood-red and her tan skin had turned yellow and papery and she couldn’t stop scratching at her arms and legs.

They diagnosed her with Romero Disease and placed her in the special quarantine unit. After Shy, his mom and his sister tested negative for the disease, they were allowed to sit outside her room and watch over her through a thick wall of glass.

In the middle of that night, Shy heard an alarm go off and he lifted his head, saw his grandma scratching off chunks of her own skin. Blood all over the white sheets. His mom raced down the hall shouting for help. A group of nurses in full hazmat suits came and held down his grandma’s flailing limbs. A doctor rushed in, stuck a long needle into her thigh.

Shy’s mom and sister were crying hysterically as the three of them were pushed out into the general waiting area. Shy paced the room, unable to comprehend what was happening. Just a couple days ago, his grandma was fine. She was working on a scrapbook and watching Telemundo. Now she looked like something out of a horror film.

Thirty minutes later the doctor emerged shaking his head and looking at the ground.

He said he was sorry.

Shy went to knock on Supervisor Franco’s open door but froze when he saw someone was already in there—the older black dude with the funky gray hair who was always writing in his leather notebook.

Franco looked up at Shy, said: “May I help you?”

“It’s okay,” Shy said. “I’ll just come back later.”

“Please. You can wait outside. We will be done here momentarily.”

Shy stepped away from the door, leaned against the wall and let his warm eyelids slowly drop. As he listened to Franco’s heavy accent, he tried to imagine his nephew stuck inside the same quarantine room as his grandma. But he couldn’t. Miguel was too tough. Never even caught a cold. He remembered throwing around a football with the kid just a few hours before he left for his first voyage. In the alley behind their building. One of Shy’s longer tosses slipped right through Miguel’s little-kid hands, and the football smacked him in the face, split his lip. But Miguel didn’t go down. Just looked up at Shy as blood trickled down his chin, got all over his T-shirt. He forced himself to smile at Shy, laugh even—though his eyes were filling with tears, too.

Shy felt a hand on his shoulder and opened his eyes.

The man he’d just seen in Franco’s office was staring at him, holding his shoeshine kit. “How do you sleep standing up like that, young fella?”

“I was just closing my eyes,” Shy said, wiping a tiny bit of drool from the corner of his mouth.

The man grinned. “Franco’s on the phone now. Says he’ll have to check back with you later.”

Shy nodded.

Still no answers about the suit guy or their trashed room. Nothing to tell Rodney.

The man looked toward the window down the hall. “They’re worried about this storm rolling in. Supposed to hit sometime tonight.”

“It’s an actual storm now?” Shy had yet to experience even a drop of rain in the time he’d spent out with the cruise ship. But he’d learned in training how badly storms affected the way passengers spent money. Which meant fewer tips. Less money to bring back home to his mom and sis.

The man set down his shoeshine kit and wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. “If it’s as bad as they say, this boat’s gonna get to rocking pretty good.” He reached down into his kit, moved his notebook and some other books to the side and pulled out a gray wristband-looking thing, held it out to Shy. “Wear this when it picks up.”

“What is it?” Shy said, turning the thing over in his hand.

“Something I made for seasickness. Be sure the white button in the middle is against your inner wrist. Same idea as acupuncture.”

“Thanks,” Shy said, shoving it into his pocket. He was pretty sure the nasty-looking band would never make it onto his wrist, but he didn’t want to offend the guy.

“You’re the one who saw the man take a dive, that right?”

Shy nodded. He glanced in Franco’s office, saw him pacing back and forth, phone pinned to his ear. “Guess everyone knows about that now.”

“And there’s a man on board who’s been watching you.”

Shy stared back at him, shocked. “How’d you know that?”

“Always keep my eyes open.” The man pointed at his kit. “The job puts me in a certain position of observation.”

It baffled Shy that a shoeshine guy, someone he’d never given a second thought to, knew what was going on in his life. “You know who he is?” Shy asked. “Is he FBI or something?”

The man shrugged. “Don’t know. But let me ask you something, young fella. Would it make sense for an FBI man to focus on just you?” He pointed at his own temple. “Think it through some.”

Shy studied the man in front of him. Tired-looking eyes that never blinked. Wild hair. For some reason, Shy felt like he could trust him. He held out his hand and said: “I’m Shy, by the way.”

The man grinned and gripped Shy’s hand. “Shoeshine.”

They let go and Shy pointed at the kit on the ground. “I know that’s what you do on the ship. But what’s your name?”

“Names have no meaning out here, young fella. I’m just an old man passing through.” Shoeshine picked up his kit, gave a nod to Shy and started down the hall. He stopped in front of the small window and looked outside. “Oh yeah. Looks to be the real thing, all right.”

Shy went to the window, too. Saw a dense ceiling of nasty-looking storm clouds rolling in. Blocking out the setting sun. The ocean was choppy and raw. A crooked pulse of lightning stabbed into the horizon in the distance.

“Best prepare yourself, young fella. The sea is fittin’ to make itself known tonight.” Shoeshine continued down the hall, his wooden kit dangling from his right hand.

Shy watched him for a few seconds, playing with the crazy wristband in his pocket. Then he turned back to the window and what was coming.

12 Storm in the Forecast

An hour later Shy was standing against the wall near the entrance of the Destiny Dining Room, waiting for Carmen—the ship now swaying underneath his feet. Most of the formally dressed passengers had already been seated for dinner, and the half-dozen hostesses moved from table to table, greeting everyone.

Shy scanned the restaurant, looking for familiar faces. He spotted the Muppet boy from the pool, dressed in a tux. He tried to imagine his nephew dressed like that, but all he could picture was Miguel in one of those hospital gowns, lying in his quarantine bed, alone. He spotted Addison and Cassandra, all done up, sitting with a few men in tuxedos. The gray-haired dude wasn’t one of them. Shy then spotted the oilman sitting next to an empty chair, downing a glass of red wine.

Just when Shy started thinking Carmen was a no-show he heard the ding of the elevator and looked up. The doors slid open and Carmen came walking out in a long black dress and heels and his stomach instantly filled with butterflies.

“Don’t tell me I missed the proposal,” she said.

Shy shook his head. He couldn’t stop staring. She looked more beautiful than ever.

“What?” Carmen asked.

“Nothing.” Shy rubbed the stubble on his chin. “You just look real nice is all.”

Her dress was cut low in front, showing an unfair amount of cleavage. It hugged in tight on her waist, then stretched out over her curvy hips. Carmen had to dress up whenever she emceed karaoke nights, but tonight she’d taken it to a whole other level.

“You’re not allowed to say that,” she told him. “It’s rule number one of our new rules.”

“Seriously? I can’t say you look nice?” Shy pushed off the wall, feeling frustrated. “You know what, then? Maybe rule number two should be you’re not allowed to dress like that around me.”

“Like what?”

“Come on, Carm.” He pointed up and down her sexy dress.

She rolled her eyes with a slight grin. “How you think I pull in all them tips at karaoke? It’s more than how I announce some fool’s song he’s about to do.”

Shy shook his head and looked away. If he didn’t change the subject they were gonna end up in some kind of argument. And he didn’t want to argue with Carmen. Not tonight, when he needed to talk to her about his nephew. “Anyways,” he said, motioning toward the oilman’s table. “Kind of weird his girl isn’t here yet. Seems like they’d have shown up together, right?”

“I bet she’s still in the mirror, trying to do her makeup extra-perfect. Women can sense when something big’s about to happen.”

Shy nodded, wondering if Carmen had sensed anything last night, before they hooked up. And what would it mean if she had and then leaned in on him anyway? Weren’t actions supposed to speak louder than words?

He was startled out of his head when the ship emcee came on over the loudspeaker—which never happened at night: “Attention, ladies and gentlemen. As many of you already know, there’s a major storm in the forecast. As a precaution, all outside decks will be closed for the evening.”

A collective groan passed through the dining room. Shy wondered if this meant he wouldn’t have to work. Maybe he’d be free to keep checking Rodney’s computer for an email from his mom.

“Tomorrow morning they will be reopened, weather permitting, at their regularly scheduled times. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause, but we’d like to assure you that all indoor programming will be running as usual, including the big poker tournament in the Grand Casino. We’ll be issuing free bar tickets to the first fifty passengers who sign up.”

Soon as the emcee’s voice was gone, the hum of conversation picked back up. A hostess named Toni walked toward Shy and Carmen, looking beyond stressed. “You guys,” she said, “I’m kind of freaking out right now. I’ve never been in a storm.”

“Same here,” Shy said.

“You just can’t overthink it,” Carmen said. “Trust me, your mind can build shit up way worse than it really is.”

“I think it’s already happening,” Toni said.

“What I don’t understand,” Shy said, “is how these people can eat with the ship swaying like it is.”

The girls nodded and then Toni held out her arms for Carmen and they hugged. “Love that dress on you,” she said as they separated.

“She hates people telling her that,” Shy said.

Carmen shot Shy a dirty look and turned back to Toni. “Thanks, girl. I borrowed it from your roommate.”

“I know. Meagan stopped by earlier. She also told me the big news. I didn’t know you were getting married.”

“Brand-new.” Carmen gave Shy a little sideways glance. “Still feels weird to say I have an actual fiancé.”

Shy took a baby step back, tried to act like he wasn’t listening. Maybe he should feel more guilty about hooking up with someone who was engaged. ’Cause he didn’t feel guilty at all. Not about that part. Maybe it meant he wasn’t a good person.

“Tell me about it,” Toni said. “I just got engaged, too.”

“Are you serious?” Carmen said. “Congratulations!”

Shy watched as they grabbed each other’s elbows and jumped up and down. When the mini-celebration ended, Carmen said: “Where’d he do it?”

“A steakhouse in Newport Beach. With my parents.”

“Ah, that’s so respectful.”

“You?”

“Brett took me to the boardwalk in Venice. We were walking together, holding hands, watching all the weirdos, and out of nowhere he drops to one knee and takes my hand. I was so shocked I didn’t even give him time to ask. I swiped the ring right out of his hand, shoved it on my finger.”

Shy felt like gagging. He wondered if he should throw on Shoeshine’s homemade wristband-thing to keep from getting sick. He took another baby step back.

Toni laughed. “That’s so like you, Carm.”

“I grabbed Brett’s cell,” Carmen said, “and called Mami. She was like, ‘Oh, mija, it’s so wonderful. My baby’s marrying a lawyer!’ ”

“There’s a mother who’s got her priorities.”

“Believe me,” Carmen said. “She was ten times more excited than me. Like it was her lifelong dream coming true.”

Shy cleared his throat, said: “Is this trip, like, sponsored by Kay Jewelers or some shit? All anybody can talk about is getting married.”

“Don’t be a hater,” Carmen said, trying to act mad.

Shy looked into her big brown eyes. Seemed like ten years ago that he’d held her face in his hands, stared into those eyes from only a couple inches away. He wished he could do it again. Right now. In front of everyone.

Toni was patting Shy on the back, saying: “I’m sure it’s lots of fun hanging out with all your little high school girlfriends. But one day—trust me. You’ll fall in love, too. And you’ll wanna spend the rest of your life with that person.”

“From what I heard, he might’ve already met her.” Carmen winked at Shy. “Frederick from Denmark told me all about you and some skinny blond chick flirting outside the gym.”

“Wait, what?” Toni said. “Shy’s moving in on a passenger?”

Shy was shocked Frederick even knew about that stupid little exchange. “Sounds like you got some bad intel,” he told Carmen. “More like those chicks were capping on me about working at the pool.”

“That’s how the blanquitas like to flirt, dummy.” Carmen grinned a little and gave Shy a quick shot in the ribs. “You should go for it, dude. Isn’t that every Otay Mesa guy’s wet dream? To land an anorexic blonde?”

The girls started laughing.

“Whatever,” Shy said. He was getting a little tired of people laughing at him. Before he could think up some kind of comeback about Carmen and rich law school dudes, the ship emcee came back on over the loudspeaker:

“Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve just learned some unfortunate news. The storm is advancing toward our location more rapidly than we’d originally anticipated. As a precaution, the captain is asking that we evacuate all large dining areas at this time.”

Everyone in the dining room fell completely silent, staring at each other.

Shy was suddenly having a hard time getting a deep breath.

“The smaller cafés and shops will remain open. And staff members will be available for full cabin service. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may cause, ladies and gentlemen. But I repeat: we must close all large dining areas, effective immediately. Thank you for your cooperation.”

Shy turned back to Toni and Carmen, whose grins had vanished.

“I’ve never heard of them clearing the dining rooms before,” Carmen said. “Do you think something could actually happen to the ship?”

“There’s no way,” Shy assured her. Secretly, though, he was worried about the exact same thing.

“What am I supposed to do?” Toni said. “Just tell them to leave? This is so scary.” She hurried after another hostess, who was walking out onto the dining room floor.

Shy watched the buzzing passengers get up from their tables and start moving toward the exits. He spotted the oilman, still sitting in his seat, gripping an empty glass of wine. Now all the seats around him were empty.

Someone grabbed ahold of Shy’s arm.

He was surprised to turn and find Supervisor Franco standing there. “Come with me,” his boss said. “There is much to do before we pass through the eye of this storm.”

“But they said Lido’s closed, sir.”

Franco shook his head. “Not for us, it isn’t.”

Shy turned and found Carmen staring at him.

It was the first time he’d ever seen fear in her eyes.

13 LasoTech

They moved quickly through the atrium, past packs of well-dressed passengers hurrying back to their cabins, past one of the live orchestras breaking down their instruments, Franco listing all the things that had to be done before the actual storm hit: “…and every deck chair must be put into supply room. Every umbrella. The towel stand and busser stations. All tables and chairs of the café.”

Shy nodded, trying to concentrate on what he was hearing. But seeing worry on his supervisor’s face made him worry, too. What if the ship was in actual danger?

“Heavy covers on the pool and Jacuzzi. The main stage must be locked completely. Everything just like in training, you understand. Ariana is in charge.”

“Yes, sir,” Shy said, trying to remember what they’d gone over during training. He should have listened better. But it never crossed his mind that something might actually happen.

They moved past Shoeshine, his head down as he worked a man’s shoe with his rag. Shy glanced at the guy sitting in the chair, reading the ship’s daily bulletin, sipping a cocktail. He didn’t seem scared at all. Neither did Shoeshine. Shy tried to decide how scared he was. The ship was huge, seemingly indestructible. But maybe it wasn’t. Maybe his grandma had been right to worry.

Franco stopped a few feet from the Lido Deck door and turned to Shy. “When you are finished here, please, Shy, you must do special task for me. Take down all umbrellas on Honeymoon Deck. Baby trees, too. There can be nothing left outside.”

“Yes, sir,” Shy answered, remembering this part of training. They’d only practiced clearing the Honeymoon Deck during the emergency phase. Which meant the storm was an emergency. And Shy should be scared.

Franco keyed open the supply closet near the automatic glass doors, reached in for a yellow slicker. He handed it to Shy, saying: “I’m trusting the Honeymoon Deck only for you because it may be dangerous winds up there. And I know you will be extremely careful.”

“I’ll be careful,” Shy said, slipping into the slicker.

Supervisor Franco took Shy by the shoulders and looked into his eyes. “This storm is making you afraid?”

“A little, sir.” Shy glanced over his supervisor’s shoulder, saw a couple dozen staff members already rushing around the Lido Deck in the rain. Carrying chairs and tables. He spotted Ariana, Franco’s second in command.

“Believe me,” Franco said. “I have been in worse storms and everything is okay. Okay?”

Shy nodded, trying to decide if this was something his supervisor was supposed to say or if he genuinely believed it.

Franco patted Shy on the back, said: “Everything we do is for precaution, you understand. The weather report says it will be sunny again by morning. So only this problem is for tonight.” He forced a smile.

Shy knew it wasn’t the best timing, but he had to at least bring up what happened to his cabin. “Sir, can I ask you something?”

“Yes, of course.”

“The reason I stopped by your office earlier—”

Franco raised a hand to cut Shy off. “Yes, yes, I understand about this, Shy. A man from LasoTech entered your room this afternoon. I’m sorry I did not explain, but we were not expecting weather. Don’t worry, he found nothing.”

“What’s LasoTech?” Shy asked. “And what were they looking for?”

“It is a main sponsor for Paradise Cruise Lines. Tomorrow we will talk more, okay? For now we must hurry.”

Shy stepped up to the glass doors, watched them slide open, then he stepped out into the growing wind and rain. He was surprised Franco knew what had happened in his cabin. Why hadn’t he said anything earlier, when Shy was outside his office? And why would a company go through his and Rodney’s stuff?

The sky was dark gray. The wind pressed Shy’s slicker against his body. He squinted and made his way to the two closest chairs. He folded up the head and feet, tucked one under each arm, and started for the large storage room. He had to put Franco’s words out of his head. He could worry about it once he got back inside. For now he needed to concentrate on securing the deck.

14 Hidden Islands

Franco was right about the wind near the top of the ship. It was far more powerful. Shy had to lean into it in order to move out onto the Honeymoon Deck. The rain was now falling at an odd angle, pelting him in the face under his slicker hood. He cupped a hand over his eyes and went right up to the railing and peered over the side.

In the morning the sea had been perfectly calm and beautiful, like a postcard. Now it was a thousand hostile waves crested in white foam and crashing into one another. The massive ship moaned as it pitched and surged under Shy’s shell tops—the bow bucking slowly into the air and then falling, bucking and then falling. Thick black clouds hung so low in the sky it felt like the ship was traveling through a rain tunnel.

Shy watched it all in awe for several minutes, the world lining up exactly with his insides. He’d never been a true believer like his grandma, but he closed his eyes now and asked whoever might be listening for Miguel to be okay. And his mom and sis. And himself.

Please, just let me get back to them.

I have to get back to them.

Then Shy pushed away from the railing and set about his work.

Conditions improved slightly as he moved the last of the baby palms back into the supply room. But his stomach was a mess. His legs felt flimsy and unfamiliar. He broke down the first two umbrella poles slowly, feeling so queasy he thought he’d be sick at any second. He dragged them, one in each hand, into the supply room, placed them on the storage racks, then leaned over, hands on knees, and pulled in deep, even breaths.

In the morning it had been wine.

Now it was the relentless motion of the sea.

Shy remembered the wristband Shoeshine had given him and pulled it out of his pocket. He still didn’t think the raggedy-looking thing would do him any good, but he slipped it onto his wrist anyway. Just in case. Forced himself upright again, warm saliva pooling in his mouth.

As he moved out of the supply room this time, he spotted two people standing near the railing. Long pink and black raincoats provided by the ship. One of the women staring out over the ocean through binoculars.

“Excuse me,” he called out to them. “The Honeymoon Deck’s closed.”

The two figures spun around.

Shy couldn’t see much of their faces under their oversized hoods, but he saw the wet blond hair of one. The green eyes. And he knew it was Addison. Which meant the other one was her friend. He moved toward them, wondering why they’d come out into a storm like this when they didn’t have to.

“We’re not hurting anyone,” Cassandra said.

Addison’s eyes looked glassy, like she’d been crying.

Shy motioned toward the binoculars in her hands, told her: “I’m sorry, but nobody’s supposed to be outside right now. Captain’s orders.”

“Just back off,” Cassandra snapped at him.

Addison glared at him, fresh tears streaming down her cheeks.

Shy stared back, pissed off now on top of being queasy. Soon as he got off this stupid ship he was done dealing with rich girls.

Cassandra rubbed Addison’s arm as they both turned back to the frenzied ocean, ignoring Shy. What was he supposed to do, drag them away? And why the tears? He looked around, saw that they were only a few feet from where he’d tried to keep his grip on the comb-over man. And what would he do if the wind blew one of them over the side? Would he try and play the hero again? Didn’t work out too well the last time.

Shy swallowed, deciding he had to play it another way. “What are you looking for, anyway?” he asked.

They ignored him.

“Maybe I could help.”

Cassandra turned to him, her face softer now. “Her dad’s out there somewhere,” she said. “He works on one of the Hidden Islands.”

The Hidden Islands?

Other than Hawaii, Shy had never heard of any islands out here, in the middle of the Pacific. And Hawaii was still a couple days away.

The rain picked up again, all three of them pulling their hoods farther over their eyes. Densely packed drops battered their slickers and the deck around their shoes. A sudden gust of wind made the girls hold on to the railing.

“For real,” Shy said. “You guys gotta go inside. It’s dangerous.”

Addison spun around and faced Shy. “Why does my dad have a picture of you?” she shouted over the pounding rain.

“Of me?” Shy said, confused. “What are you talking about?”

Addison lowered her binoculars and cried harder.

“She found your picture in her dad’s cabin,” Cassandra said, holding Addison. “You’re in a cemetery.”

Shy just stared back at them in shock.

It had to be a mistake.

Thunder pounded so violently overhead all three of them flinched.

“Come on, Addie,” Cassandra said, leading her away from the railing.

“Who are you?” Addison barked at Shy as they moved past him. “Tell me who you are!”

“I’m nobody!” he shouted back. He’d probably get in trouble for snapping at a passenger, but he didn’t even care anymore. The girl was talking crazy.

“I’m nobody!” he shouted again. “All right?”

Soon as the girls ducked back inside the ship, out of sight, Shy spun around and leaned over the railing and got sick.

He heaved several times before spitting and wiping his mouth. Then he just stood there, staring out at the frantic ocean, trying to make sense of what the girls were talking about. A picture of him? In a cemetery? How could Addison’s dad have a picture of him?

When Shy finally turned back around, he found a man standing out on the deck in the rain, dressed in a yellow Paradise slicker, watching him.

Shy knew right away he wasn’t part of the crew.

15 A Few Questions

“You can’t be out here!” Shy shouted over the storm.

The man didn’t move or say a word, just kept watching Shy.

Rain flooded the deck as Shy started breaking down the two remaining umbrellas. He pretended to be so occupied with his task he didn’t have time to worry about the man. Secretly, though, his heart was beating in his throat. He wanted to get this over and be done with it, but not now. Not during a storm, after he’d just gotten sick.

A streak of lightning stabbed into the sea not far from the ship. Thunder roared.

Shy hurried the poles across the deck, addressing the man again: “You have to go inside, sir!”

The man nodded.

Inside the supply room, Shy stacked the umbrella poles on the storage racks, then fumbled for his keys and started back toward the door, thinking only about getting inside the ship, everything would be fine once he got inside the ship.

When the man stepped into the doorway of the supply room, Shy stopped cold, said: “Sir, nobody’s supposed to be out here. I need to lock up.”

The man stepped aside, and Shy hurried out of the supply room, pulled the door closed and locked it. The man followed Shy into the vacant Luxury Lounge, where he started unzipping his wet slicker and said: “It’s Shy, am I right?”

Shy tried to hide the fact that he was so nervous he was having trouble catching his breath. “Who are you?”

“I’m Bill,” the man said, pulling off his slicker. Sure enough, he was wearing a black suit.

They both stumbled a little as the ship pitched more dramatically, Shy holding his hand out against the wall for balance.

“I want you to understand right up front,” the man said, “there’s no trouble here. At least there doesn’t have to be. I just need to ask you a few questions.” He had curly black hair. A mole on the right side of his nose. He smiled like this was an everyday kind of conversation for him.

All Shy could think about was how this was the man Kevin had warned him about. The man who’d been watching him. But this wasn’t the time for questions. Didn’t the man understand the ship was getting pummeled by a storm?

Shy watched him calmly pull a small pad of paper and a pen from his pocket. “Now, it’s my understanding that on the previous voyage, you witnessed a man jump overboard. Right out there, in fact.” He pointed through the glass doors, toward the Honeymoon Deck. “Is this correct, Shy?”

“Yeah…,” Shy said, hesitating. He didn’t understand why the man wanted to have this conversation now. Couldn’t he wait until morning? Shy glanced over his shoulder, saw that the hall door was open.

“Tell me about it,” the man said.

“Like I explained to everyone else,” Shy answered, pulling off his wet hood. “I gave him a bottle of water, then I helped these two older ladies. A few minutes later I saw him climbing over the railing and ran over and grabbed his arm, tried to pull him back up. But he was too heavy. That’s it, I swear.”

The man looked up from his pad. “We have no doubt this was a suicide. I’m not here to ask questions that have already been answered.”

Shy wondered what “we” the guy was referring to. Had to be the company Franco had mentioned, LasoTech.

“All I need to know,” the man went on, “is what was said in those last few minutes. Because we have, in fact, spoken to the two women you referenced in your official police statement. They both claim that when they walked outside, you and Mr. Williamson were engaged in a conversation.”

Fear shot through Shy’s body.

Throughout the many hours of questioning that followed the suicide, Shy had never mentioned speaking to Mr. Williamson. It had never occurred to him that the two old ladies might have said something about it. So, what now? Did he add new information to his story? Wouldn’t that make people even more suspicious?

“What were you and Mr. Williamson discussing, Shy? What was he sharing with you?”

Shy stared at the floor in front of him, the ship moving as erratically as his thoughts. Why was he so worried, though? It’s not like he had anything to hide. “He wasn’t making any sense,” Shy finally answered. “That’s why I never brought it up.”

The man nodded. “Maybe it will make sense to me. Try to remember his words.”

“He called himself a coward,” Shy said. “I remember that. And he asked me where I was from.”

The man wrote all this down. “And where did you tell him you were from, Shy?”

Shy shrugged. “I don’t get why any of this matters, sir.”

“Please,” the man said. “Call me Bill. And it matters because my client needs to know everything that was said, no matter how irrelevant it may seem to you. Now, where did you tell him you were from?”

“Otay Mesa. In San Diego.”

The man nodded and wrote this down. “And how did Mr. Williamson respond to this?”

“He said he knew it was by the border.”

“And after that?”

Shy knew he was explaining things out of order, but his conversation with the comb-over man didn’t make any sense no matter how he told it. “He said he had a bunch of vacation homes. And when I congratulated him, he got mad. I’m pretty sure he’d had a lot to drink.”

The man nodded, still writing.

“And that’s it,” Shy said. “Then those two ladies came outside.”

The man looked up from his pad of paper. “There’s nothing else, Shy? You’re sure?”

“There’s nothing else,” Shy lied. He glanced over his shoulder again, at the open door to the hall.

The man put away his pad of paper and his pen and walked over to the window. It was raining so hard you could barely even see the water now. “Rough storm,” he said. “I understand it will be over by morning, though. And we’ll be on our way to Hawaii.” He turned back around, said: “You ever been to Hawaii, Shy?”

Shy shook his head, feeling overwhelmed by everything. The storm. The questioning. The memory of the comb-over man falling. Addison crying and asking who he was. He looked over his shoulder at the door again.

“One of my favorite places on earth,” the man continued. “My wife and I go every year. We like to walk the beach early in the morning.” Bill turned to Shy. “You’d like to enjoy Hawaii, too, wouldn’t you?”

Shy stared at the guy, trying to figure out if he was being threatened.

“I still have a few more interviews to conduct,” Bill continued. “And if your story doesn’t check out, I’ll be forced to find you. Do you understand what I’m saying, Shy?”

“I gotta go,” Shy said, backing away. “I gotta get back to work.”

The man’s face grew cold and he pointed at Shy. “Don’t walk away from me, Shy.”

Shy shrugged, then spun around and hurried out the door, into the hall. Before ducking down a flight of stairs he looked over his shoulder, saw that the man was still pointing at him.

16 International News

First thing Shy did when he got back to his cabin was lock the door and log on to Rodney’s computer.

Still no email from his mom about Miguel.

He wondered if the lack of communication was a good thing or a bad thing as he pulled off his wet shoes and socks, his shirt. He collapsed onto his cot and closed his eyes, the backs of his lids stinging hot with exhaustion, the storm shifting everything around in his room.

If he could just fall asleep.

Then everything would be okay.

He’d wake up rested and the storm would be over and his thoughts would be clear again. He’d Skype with his mom, and she’d tell him the good news about Miguel. The medicine was already working. He was going to make a complete recovery. And then Shy would go meet with Franco about the man in the black suit. Bill. And he’d find out who exactly he was and what he wanted.

Everything would be okay if he could just fall asleep.

But Shy couldn’t shut off his stupid mind.

There was too much to worry about: the surging storm and the questions about the comb-over man and Miguel lying in the quarantine unit and even the look on Addison’s face when she asked who he was. He tossed and turned for almost an hour before finally sitting up and deciding he needed to go find Carmen.

He slipped his feet into fresh socks and a backup pair of shell tops, pulled on a new shirt. He left the cabin hoping Carmen would forgive him, at least for tonight. She could go right back to being mad in the morning if she wanted, but right now he seriously needed her.

The ship was lurching so violently now it was impossible to walk straight. Shy found himself stumbling up the stairs like a drunk, holding on to the railing and the walls. As he staggered down the hall, though, he realized he was no longer nauseous. He cracked up a little in his head, amazed that Shoeshine’s wristband was actually keeping him from feeling sick. It was the one positive in the entire night.

Shy popped his head into the Normandie Theater. An older-looking comedian was telling bad Titanic jokes to a small, scattered crowd. The Grand Casino was nearly empty, too. The colorful strobe lights still flashed and dealers manned their tables. Cocktail waitresses were huddled near the bar. But only a dozen or so passengers were playing in the poker tournament.

Shy kept looking over his shoulder as he moved through the ship. He was sure he’d spot the suit guy following him at some point, but there was never anyone there.

He ducked his head into a few of the clubs. House music or hip-hop still blaring, but the dance floors all deserted. He found Kevin in Blue Water Disco pouring drinks for two women sitting at the bar. Kevin looked up and they waved to each other; then Shy continued toward the front of the ship.

It was eerie seeing all the hot spots empty this early in the night. Usually passengers were everywhere, drinking and gambling and eating, dancing in the clubs, soaking in the Lido Deck Jacuzzi. But tonight even the main promenade was quiet. Everyone apparently waiting out the storm in the comfort of their own cabins.

Eventually Shy made his way to the Karaoke Room, where Carmen, still wearing her fancy dress and heels, was standing on the stage, watching a news report on TV.

She was the only person in the room.

“What, nobody showed up?” Shy called to her from the door.

Carmen shut off the TV and spun around. “Hey,” she said. Even though she was smiling she seemed upset—because of the storm, he assumed.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Of course I’m okay.” She kneeled down, started packing up her things. Over her shoulder she told him: “A few people wandered in earlier, looked around, then wandered back out.”

Shy leaned against the wall for balance. “What were you just watching?”

Carmen ignored his question.

She stood up, locked her equipment in a trunk on the right side of the stage, picked up her bag and moved cautiously down the stage stairs, toward Shy. “This storm’s tossing us all over the place. Doesn’t exactly make people feel like singing.”

“Doesn’t make ’em feel like doing anything,” Shy said. “You seen it out there? There’s nobody.”

The ship jerked violently as if on cue, and Carmen grabbed Shy’s arm to keep her balance. “I’m not gonna lie,” she said, “it’s messing with me a little, too. And I never get seasick.”

“Try this,” Shy told her, pulling off his wristband. “That guy Shoeshine made it.”

Carmen stared at it, frowning. “Shoeshine? Nah, I think I’m good.”

He smiled. “It really works, I promise. You just line the button up with the inside of your wrist.”

She looked at Shy, her glassy eyes creating a tiny ache in his chest. She’d definitely been crying.

“Fine,” she said, taking the wristband and slipping it on. “But if I get scabies or some shit…”

Shy watched her position the button.

She looked at him again, but all squinty-eyed this time, like she was trying to figure something out. “What’s going on with you, Shy?”

He shook his head. “Just this storm, man.”

“Nah, it’s more than that,” she said. “I maybe haven’t known you that long, but I can tell when something’s up.”

Shy shook his head. But the fact that she could read his mind made the chest ache grow heavier. It felt like things were normal between them again, like before they messed around.

“Spill it,” Carmen said.

Shy could feel everything bubbling up inside him, like a shook-up soda. He knew the second he opened his mouth it would all come spewing out. He stared at her heels for a few seconds, concentrating on the movement of the floorboards and trying to think how to put it. He looked back at Carmen, said: “Me and my mom finally did that Skype call. The one I told you about.”

Her face grew serious. “And?”

He shook his head.

“Shy? Is she okay?”

Seeing Carmen look so worried about him made Shy feel overwhelmed with emotion, to the point that he couldn’t speak.

“Oh my God,” Carmen said. “She’s sick, isn’t she?”

He shook his head. “My nephew.”

Carmen dropped her bag and covered her mouth. “What’s happening, Shy? For real.”

“I don’t even know.” Shy’s throat felt so tight his words came out flimsy.

“When you came in I was watching an international news channel,” she said. “The guy said this Romero shit has spread all the way up to Oakland now. They even did a profile on some Beverly Hills CEO’s wife who got sick.”

So this was why she was upset. It was more than just the storm.

“But here’s what pisses me off,” Carmen said. “Why isn’t it international news when it hits where we live? Why isn’t there a profile about my dad? Or your grandma?”

Shy shook his head. “They got Miguel on that new medicine, at least. But I swear, Carm. It’s messing with my head.”

They were both quiet for a few seconds, looking at different parts of the floor. Then Carmen picked up her bag and grabbed Shy by his forearm. “Come on,” she said. “We’re going to my room.”

Shy looked at her, surprised. “Your room?”

She nodded. “You heard me. This is an emergency.”

They left the Karaoke Room together, Carmen walking slowly and cautiously in her heels, Shy trying not to overthink where they were going, or what it meant.

17 A Sliver of Carmen

Carmen bought them each a slice of pizza at the crew cafeteria; then she led him back to her cabin, where she cued up more Brazilian music on her laptop and kicked off her heels. “First off,” she said, “you remember how I made up rules for us, right?”

He did.

She pulled out the desk chair and pointed for Shy to sit. “Well, the second one is this: no more of your cheesy hand-holding tests.” She sat on the side of her cot, as far away from Shy’s chair as possible. “Especially in my room. The only reason you’re in here right now is so we can talk about your nephew. Got it?”

“Got it,” Shy said, taking a bite of his slice. He felt guilty, though, like she might think he was using Miguel’s condition to get close to her. But that’s not how it was.

He pointed at her laptop, said: “Mind if I check my email real quick?”

“Go ’head.”

Shy logged on. His in-box was still empty, though, so he logged right back off.

“Nothing?” Carmen said.

Shy shook his head and sat back in the chair, picked up what was left of his slice. As they ate, Shy noticed that the ship was a little calmer now. “You think we’re past the bad part of the storm?”

Carmen shrugged. “It’s definitely not thrashing around as much.” She wadded up her paper plate, adding: “You were right about this wristband, by the way. I can’t believe I was able to eat something.”

“Maybe Shoeshine’s a genius,” Shy said.

Carmen laughed a little. “I don’t know about that. But he’s definitely mysterious. One time I saw him shooting a damn bow and arrow off the back of the ship. Middle of the night.”

Shy decided “mysterious” was the right word. “I saw a bunch of books in his bag earlier. I think one of them had to do with science or something. Where’s he even from, anyway?”

Carmen shrugged. “Vlad from security said he spent half his life in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. This girl Jessica who works in the spa said he was never in jail, he worked on a cattle ranch. Someone else told me he used to be homeless.” Carmen shook her head. “Who knows, right? You can’t trust none of these fools.”

She got up and lowered the music some. “Anyways, I want you to back up and tell me everything about your nephew.”

Shy threw away his plate, too, and sat back down.

He told her how his mom and sis had taken Miguel in as soon as the whites of his eyes turned pink, and how the doctors diagnosed him with Romero Disease on the spot and got him on meds. He told her how expensive everything was going to be because his sister didn’t have insurance, how he told his mom to cash the bond he won at a halftime shooting contest and how there was a selfish part of him that was actually stressed about losing the money, and he hated that part of himself.

Carmen shook her head and said how sorry she was, and then she told him more about the news program she’d been watching when he walked in. “I guess they’re doing all this research now and coming up with treatments. Did you know they found out it can spread through water? Or how about that you have to get on those meds within twenty-four hours or you’re done.”

“That’s what my mom told me.”

“When it was just in our neighborhoods they didn’t research shit.”

Shy shook his head. He was starting to understand that some people’s lives mattered more than others. Back home, that thought never would’ve crossed his mind. But working on a cruise ship made him notice things.

“When I win the lottery,” Carmen said, “I’m gonna build state-of-the-art hospitals, all along the border. So future kids like us won’t have to know what it feels like to lose family for stupid reasons.”

“You could name ’em after your dad,” Shy told her.

“And your grandma,” Carmen said. “But not your nephew. ’Cause that medicine’s gonna make him better.”

“Man, I hope you’re right,” Shy said.

It went quiet between them for a few seconds, and Shy thought of something. He’d give back every single second of him hooking up with Carmen last night, as long as he knew they’d keep being friends after the voyage ended. She was way more than just some girl you messed around with.

“Anyways,” Carmen said, standing up. “I’m gonna change into sweats. You can stay if you wanna keep checking your email or whatever.”

“If it’s cool,” Shy said. “Just kick me out whenever you’re ready to crash.”

Carmen went to her dresser, pulled a pair of sweats and a sweatshirt and her toiletry bag. On her way to the bathroom she stopped and patted Shy on the shoulder. “Sorry you have to deal with this disease again,” she said. “It’s bad enough when it’s an adult. But a little kid?”

He locked eyes with her and nodded.

She took her clothes into the bathroom, and Shy just sat there staring at the door as she pulled it closed behind her. He felt nervous being in her room this long. He honestly wanted to respect her whole fiancé situation. But at the same time, he didn’t want to rush off either. Talking to Carmen was making him feel way better.

He got up and went back to her laptop. Checked his email. Nothing.

His thoughts drifted back to the man in the suit as he browsed through Carmen’s music on iTunes. Maybe he should have stayed longer, heard everything the guy had to say. But then he’d started tossing out threats—Shy hadn’t even done anything wrong. That’s when he’d had enough. Hopefully Franco would be able to explain everything in the morning.

Carmen had a ton of world mixes. Some angry chick stuff. Finally he stumbled into some hip-hop he dug and put it on and the beat filled the tiny cabin.

Carmen cracked open the bathroom door and mumbled over her buzzing toothbrush: “I know you didn’t just mess with my music, Sancho.”

“Just switching it up for a sec,” Shy said.

Through the crack in the door, he saw her rinse out her mouth, then tap her electric toothbrush against the miniature sink. “Why do you settle for generic American hip-hop?” she called out over her shoulder as she took out her contacts.

“It’s your music,” he said.

“Brazilian beats are way more raw,” she said.

“I don’t even know what they’re saying, though.” He went back to scanning through her library.

“It’s not about the words, Shy. It’s about the feel.”

When he looked toward the bathroom again, he saw her slipping out of her long black dress, and he froze.

His mouth fell open.

He knew he shouldn’t be seeing what he was seeing, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away. Her skin was perfectly brown and soft-looking and she was spilling out of her bra, and she had on a black thong that was barely any material, and all over she was thick except her slim waist and stomach, and she had a tattoo just beneath her belly button, words written in script, too small to make out, and for the first time in Shy’s life a girl was making his heart pound so hard inside his chest he wondered if he was having a heart attack and he wondered if this was how love felt.

Their eyes met in the mirror for a fraction of a second. He quickly cut away and stared back at her computer. He heard the door click shut.

Shy didn’t move for a while.

He just stared at her computer screen and concentrated on the feel of his breaths going in and out of his lungs.

It definitely wasn’t the time to be checking out Carmen. Not when she was being so nice to him. And so supportive about his nephew. If she wanted to be just friends, then he did, too.

But damn.

That perfect sliver he’d just seen of her body.

He couldn’t get it out of his head. Couldn’t stop imagining himself getting up and going to the bathroom door and knocking, her letting him in.

He had to leave.

Now.

Shy stood up and started toward the cabin door, but just then Carmen came out of the bathroom.

She had on a Chargers shirt and a pair of Adidas sweatpants, and they both started talking at the same time:

“Listen—”

“Here’s the deal, Shy—”

They looked at each other.

“I just wanna say—”

“Last night—”

Carmen put a finger to her lips, said: “Let me get this out first, then I’ll listen to whatever you have to say, okay?”

“Okay.” Shy’s heart wouldn’t stop pounding.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about last night,” Carmen started. “About why I did what I did. And I’m gonna be honest with you, Shy. There’s maybe a few little feelings on my side.” She took a deep breath and shook her head, went and sat on the edge of her cot.

Shy stayed by the door.

“I mean, you’re definitely a little corny. And you go to the dumb high school back home. But still. You’re from the neighborhood, you know? We get each other without any words. And it’s not like you’re hard to look at.” She paused for a few seconds. “What I’m trying to say is, you got a little something, all right? But I made a commitment to Brett. I’m getting married in a few months. Jesus, I’m getting married.”

“I wanna respect that, Carm.”

“I know you do. But maybe it’s not just you I’m worried about. I don’t even know what I’m doing.”

Shy didn’t know how to respond to that so he just stood there, waiting for her to talk again.

“Sometimes…I don’t even know, Shy. I got all this doubt going through my head. Like, am I messing up here? Am I doing this for the right reasons?”

Shy shoved his hands into his pockets, said: “Everyone probably has those thoughts.”

Carmen looked up at him. “That’s what my mom says. But I don’t know.”

It was super awkward now, and Shy decided he should break the tension somehow. He forced a little grin and told her: “Man, it’s just too bad your guy doesn’t have a cooler name. ‘Brett’ sounds kind of soft, don’t you think?”

“Oh, ’cause ‘Shy’ is so gangster,” Carmen fired back.

They both smiled and Carmen said: “Come give me a friendship hug, all right? Then I’m kicking your ass out of here so I can go to sleep.”

Shy was just starting to move toward Carmen’s open arms when the ship jerked violently.

They stared at each other, neither saying a word.

Heavy footfalls shook the ceiling above them.

Doors opened and closed in the halls.

“Shy?” Carmen said.

He opened his mouth to answer, but before he could get any words out there was an explosion of deafening sound. They both covered their ears and stared at each other, Carmen’s face filling with worry.

The ship alarm.

Shy threw open the cabin door and looked down the hall. Other doors were opening, people gathering in groups, looking at one another, confused. Shy spotted the man in the black suit, Bill, hurrying away from Carmen’s cabin. Like he’d been listening to their conversation through the door. But why? That seemed as bad as breaking into his cabin.

Shy refocused his attention on the alarm and the panic rising in the hall. Maybe the ship had reached the eye of the storm. Or maybe it hit something or there was a fire in the engine room or pirates had stormed the captain’s quarters.

He saw Carmen rush over to her tiny porthole and look outside. “I can’t see anything!” she shouted, turning back to him. “Can you see anything?”

Shy hurried to her side, but all he saw was a thick blur of rain and choppy waves crashing into each other.

No fire.

No smoke.

No other ships.

The alarm continued as they hurried back to the door, ducked out into the hall. More crew members now gathered there, everyone looking around and shouting over the earsplitting sound. Shy’s throat tightening, his eyes darting every which way.

Then the alarm cut off.

Just as abruptly as it had started.

The ship emcee’s voice came over the loudspeaker:

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is an emergency. All passengers and crew members should secure a life jacket from the closet of your cabin and proceed directly to the appropriate muster station. I repeat, all passengers and crew members must secure a life jacket and proceed directly to their muster station.”

Shy and Carmen turned to each other.

He saw in her terrified eyes that this was something serious, and he knew immediately his life would be forever changed.

18 Order in the Normandie Theater

The alarm was blaring again as they raced up the stairs toward the Normandie Theater. Shy’s heart pounding inside his chest and throat, his thoughts all half formed. They were in trouble. He knew that. And he had to get to his and Kevin’s assigned muster station, the balcony area of the theater.

Just yesterday, he’d met with his group of passengers and led them through all the emergency procedures and marched them out to the lifeboats—but never once had he considered that there might be an actual emergency.

He glanced at Carmen, her anxious stare fixed directly ahead as they hurried through the hall. Life-vested passengers all around them now, wide-eyed and clinging to one another, shouting over the alarm.

Carmen broke off from Shy, hurried toward the stage level of the theater, her own muster station.

Shy continued across the corridor, toward the far staircase. He had to get to the third floor. Check on his group. Then he could think. And Kevin would be there, too. But he was slowed by a mob near the elevators. They turned on him with their questions, yelling over one another, the blaring alarm drowning out almost every word.

During training week they’d spent three full days on emergency procedures. Drilled every possible scenario, again and again. But now that it was happening for real, Shy felt totally unprepared.

“I’m sorry,” he told them.

“I don’t know anything,” he told them. “We have to wait for another announcement.”

It wasn’t good enough.

The mob kept shouting at Shy and pressing in on him until he couldn’t take it anymore. He shoved past everyone and broke for the far stairs, climbed two at a time.

Kevin was on the next floor up, barking directions at passengers: “All guests must go to their muster stations! Let’s move it, people! This is an emergency!”

Shy ran up a final flight of stairs, stepped into the hall just outside the theater and repeated Kevin’s exact words to all passengers who were lost. It helped Shy as much as it helped them. Gave him something to focus on. A job. No time to think about the storm or what the ship alarm meant or the supposed eighteen feet of steel keeping them afloat.

Each passenger carried a ship card, which was like a credit card they used for everything on board. Shy flipped over the cards of lost passengers, directed them to the right muster station based on the color code on back. Some of the things he’d learned in training were actually returning to him.

All around were panicked faces, the ship pitching aggressively again, and sometimes a man or woman getting sick right there, in the middle of the hall, and the other passengers stepping around him, over him, through him, and it was all so chaotic and overwhelming, but Shy no longer had time to think about his own fear because he had a job.

Take a card.

Flip it over.

Shout the muster station name and point a direction. “Go!”

He spotted the foul-mouthed Muppet boy sitting against the far wall, rocking back and forth, alone. The kid wasn’t cursing now, he was crying and calling for his mom. Shy grabbed him by the shirt, lifted him up. “What’s your mom’s name?”

“Barbara!” the boy shouted.

“Barbara what?”

“Barbara Pierce!”

Shy dragged the kid into the theater and called this name, over and over, “Barbara Pierce! Mrs. Barbara Pierce!” above the crowd noise and the alarm and the kid’s continual sobbing, until a woman downstairs, in Carmen’s section, started waving her arms frantically and screaming the boy’s name: “Lawrence!”

Shy led the boy to the stairs, made the handoff, watched the mom wrap her son in a tight bear hug, her face wet with tears and relieved, and right then Shy decided something: This was what he had to do. Help people. Because when he helped people, he didn’t try to guess what was happening and he didn’t worry. He just acted.

He turned back to his muster station and shouted for everyone to line up, recalling many of the faces from yesterday’s departure, when he’d led them through the safety rules and marched them to the lifeboats off the Lido Deck—back when the lifeboats seemed like nothing more than decoration and all the faces he saw were full of excitement. The faces he looked at now were frantic and bloodless and lost.

“What’s happening?” they shouted at Shy.

“Where’s the captain?”

“We need to speak to the captain!”

“Why aren’t they telling us anything?”

“Please!” Shy shouted back, feeling more in charge now. “Right now we gotta line up! Like yesterday! Come on, guys, let’s go!”

The alarm cut out again.

Every passenger stopped in their tracks.

The entire theater went perfectly silent for a few long seconds, everyone looking around at each other, looking at Shy, but soon the quiet was broken, and the hum of conversation picked back up, the ship still bucking underneath them.

Shy moved to the balcony to see what was happening. The theater curtain opened and the movie screen lit up, but all it showed was static.

He spotted Carmen, standing off to the side of the stage with Vlad, one of the security guards.

Just the two of them.

Vlad talking and Carmen listening.

Her face suddenly fell and she grabbed at Vlad’s uniform shirt and let out a piercing scream that filled the entire theater.

Everyone turned to her.

Shy leaned over the railing and shouted Carmen’s name.

She didn’t look up, but covered her face and dropped to her knees, sobbing.

19 The Big One

The ship emcee came on over the intercom again, his normally enthusiastic voice now slow and measured: “Ladies and gentlemen. There has been a major earthquake east of Los Angeles.”

Shy looked around at the gasping crowd.

“A catastrophic earthquake. We’re still gathering information at this time, but we’ve been informed that its size is beyond anything previously recorded on the Richter scale. The epicenter appears to be near Palm Springs, but the effects are much more widespread, reaching all the way into Mexico.”

Shy gripped the railing.

If the earthquake affected Mexico, it affected San Diego, too. Which meant Otay Mesa.

His body went cold as he thought of his family.

“We have been advised to discontinue the voyage until we regain satellite connection. Again, ladies and gentlemen. Approximately thirty-five minutes ago, a catastrophic earthquake hit California and we have been advised…”

Shy only caught bits and pieces of the rest of the announcement. Something about connecting to a news feed. About passengers remaining in their muster stations and the threat of rough seas. Mostly, though, Shy tried to make sense of his own jumbled thoughts.

An earthquake in California.

Off the Richter scale.

It was the “Big One” everyone had always talked about.

And how bad was “catastrophic”? Did that mean everyone was dead? Was his family dead? Had all the buildings been leveled? He tried to imagine his street back home. His high school and apartment complex. The hospital where his mom and sister sat waiting for the medicine to fix Miguel.

Shy’s breathing started going way too fast, like he was hyperventilating. Because his thoughts now turned to the ship. All the way out here with no protection. The storm tossing them around and the waves growing and what did the emcee mean by a threat of rough seas? Wasn’t it rough already?

Shy kneeled down and tried to calm his breathing but he couldn’t. They had to hurry and get to Hawaii. Or turn around and go back home. They couldn’t just sit out here in the middle of the ocean; they had to do something.

Soon as the announcement ended, the hysterical voices of passengers were all around Shy and people were crying and anxiously punching numbers into useless cell phones and holding each other and shouting demands at Shy and Kevin, and all Shy could do was stand up and ask everyone to remain calm and line up, like they did when he’d led them through the safety exercise, but how could anyone be calm after what they’d just been told?

Shy imagined his mom.

His sister and Miguel.

His grandma.

But he no longer needed to worry about his grandma, because his grandma was dead.

And would he be dead, too, if he was back home? Had the cruise ship saved his life? Maybe the captain was right to have them sit out here and wait. Maybe there was nowhere else to go.

Shy helped herd all the passengers into theater seats, and then he hurried back to the balcony. Carmen was still there, now huddling against the wall and crying into her hands. He leaned over the railing to call down to her, but just as he opened his mouth, the giant movie screen flickered into a grainy picture above the crowded stage.

Everyone turned to it.

Carmen pulled her hands away from her face, looked up.

A mess of war-zone-like footage came into focus. Shot from a helicopter. It was hard to tell what they were seeing at first, but gradually it became clear.

The words “San Francisco” appeared at the bottom of the screen, but it didn’t look like San Francisco. It looked like a foreign city that had just been bombed. Or CGI in a movie. Leveled buildings reduced to hills of concrete and protruding metal stakes. Thick clouds of dust rose off the wreckage and smoke billowed from fires that burned over the caved-in streets. And everywhere the camera went it showed overturned cars, motionless bodies pinned underneath or hanging out of busted windshields. And in the background the Golden Gate Bridge was no longer a bridge but a mess of hanging cables and two crumbled sections that ran straight down into the bay.

The audio kept cutting in and out, but Shy was able to make out some of the information as they cut to footage of other devastated sections of San Francisco.

It hadn’t been just one earthquake but several, leveling the entire coast of California and Washington and Oregon and Vancouver, and they were already estimating over a million deaths.

There had been four major quakes, the two most devastating centered just outside Palm Springs and along the Cascadia Subduction Zone off the coast of Washington State. The most powerful offshore quake had struck just west of Morro Bay, which Shy knew was in California. What he didn’t know was how far out into the ocean “offshore” was.

Shy was so stunned by what he was seeing and hearing his whole body started shaking.

The picture cut out for several seconds, and when it came back they were showing aerial footage of Riverside, where a huge chasm had opened up along the 91 Freeway, massive fires burning on both sides, but there were no fire trucks on the scene, the red-eyed reporter explained, because all the firehouses within a hundred-mile radius had been taken out by the earthquake. And then a shot of downtown Los Angeles, where only a few buildings still stood and everywhere small fires burned and the Santa Monica Pier had collapsed into the ocean and the famous Ferris wheel had snapped in half and lay crushed on its side, people trapped underneath, and the beach stretched out incredibly far now, the tide so low it didn’t even look real. Shy remembered seeing footage of a beach in Thailand that had looked like that just before it was hit by a tsunami. Did that mean they should expect a tsunami?

Shy’s legs grew so weak he had to squat down and hold on to the railing.

The Hollywood sign had missing letters and those that remained were in flames, and the 405 Freeway was full of gaping holes, people stranded on concrete islands, waving for help from the tops of cars, and hundreds of yachts from the marina were beached and lying useless on their sides.

It was definitely the “Big One.”

What Shy had been hearing about ever since he was a little kid. The crowd inside the theater, realizing the same thing maybe, grew so hysterical it was no longer possible for Shy to make out any of the audio, but he could still see.

The picture cut out for a few seconds, and when it came back it was an aerial shot of a huge black smoke cloud smothering all of Orange County, and in the gaps of the smoke you couldn’t see houses or buildings but flames. A shot labeled “Seattle” showed the Space Needle in pieces in front of leveled downtown buildings, fires raging up and down every street, and the famous marketplace had been ripped from its foundation and heaved into Elliott Bay.

Shy’s throat closed up completely when the Mexican border flashed onto the screen, a stretch just east of the ocean that he didn’t recognize right away because there was no longer a physical border, there was only fire and rubble and a few tiny dots that were people wandering aimlessly, and border patrol trucks abandoned with their doors still open. And then they cut to a part of San Diego just north of Otay Mesa engulfed in flames, Shy’s heart pounding and his body shaking, and then the picture cut out again and this time it didn’t come back.

The entire theater was in a frenzy.

People shouting and crying and holding each other.

Shy glanced down at the stage, searching for Carmen, but she wasn’t there anymore.

He looked all around, finally spotting the back of her head as she hurried toward the theater exit. He motioned to Kevin that he’d be back and then he took off after her.

20 Caught in the Ship Spotlight

Shy raced down the stairs and into the hallway, his mind flooded with all the awful things he’d just seen. Fallen buildings and fires and dead bodies. He had no idea how to process any of it.

He stopped in the hall, spun around searching for Carmen. It was all that seemed to matter now. Just find Carmen. Make sure she’s okay.

He shouted her name.

Nothing in return but the sound of the storm and the movement of the ship.

Then he spotted the glass doors sliding closed on the other end of the hall. Doors that were supposed to be locked because of the storm. And only crew members knew the code that opened them.

He took off in that direction, punched in the code and hurried through the doors himself, back out into the storm.

“Carmen!” he shouted over crackling thunder.

The rain was lighter now, but the wind was the strongest it had been all night. He had to lean into it to get all the way out onto the deck. He moved cautiously around the covered pool and Jacuzzi, eyes darting every which way, the destruction he’d just seen still stuck in his brain. And Otay Mesa. His family.

He climbed up onto the stage, moved through the empty outdoor café, searched behind every bar and busser station, every doorway, sprinted up and down every stairwell.

But there was no sign of Carmen anywhere.

He needed to get back to his group of passengers in the theater. It wasn’t right to leave Kevin in charge of everyone.

An awful thought crept into Shy’s head, and he hurried to the ship railing and peered over at the ocean below. It was even rougher now. Choppy whitecaps and aimless head-high swells that crashed into the side of the ship from every angle. Streaks of lightning flashing from above.

Carmen wouldn’t jump, though, he promised himself. Even if she knew her entire family was gone. She wouldn’t do that.

As Shy pushed away from the railing, a different voice came over the PA system:

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. I need every passenger and crew member to remain in their muster station, sitting down, with their life jacket securely fastened. We will be encountering extremely rough seas ahead. I repeat, this is your captain speaking. All passengers and crew members must be seated with their life jackets securely fastened. We are working to regain satellite contact and get more information, but our immediate concern is for your safety.”

Shy continued around the deck, looking for Carmen and trying to decide what the captain meant by “rough seas.”

On the other side of the deck Shy found Paolo and several emergency crew members prepping the lifeboats. Paolo turned to Shy, shouted: “Why are you out here? You need to be inside with your group of passengers! Get back to the theater!”

“How come you’re doing the lifeboats?” Shy asked.

“Standard emergency procedures! Now go!”

Shy backed away, watching the emergency crew climbing in and out of the boats. Near the glass doors he bumped into someone and spun around.

Vlad. “You shouldn’t be out here!” he yelled.

“Just tell me why they’re doing the lifeboats,” Shy said.

Vlad looked toward Paolo and his crew, then turned back to Shy. “The problem is our location!” he shouted over the storm. “We’re too close to the Hidden Islands! The water is very shallow!”

“What does that mean?” Shy asked.

“And this wind!” Vlad shouted. “They’re worried how the ocean will react!”

Vlad looked back at Paolo again, then pulled Shy down the ship a ways, just outside the sight line of the emergency crew. He clicked on a high-powered spotlight and shined the beam on the raging ocean surface. “Watch the sea life!”

At first Shy only saw furious whitecaps and waves, but then a heavy swell rolled past and in the light he spotted a pod of dolphins racing past the ship, in the direction of the wind.

“They’re trying to get away from something!” Vlad shouted. “Don’t you get it? It’s likely we’ll encounter a tsunami!”

The word was a punch in Shy’s stomach.

But the scared look in Vlad’s eyes was even worse. It told Shy the ship was in serious danger.

Just then they heard the deep revving of the massive engines, and the ship slowly started moving again—not away from whatever the dolphins were fleeing, but toward it.

Vlad’s eyes grew even bigger as he stared into the wind. “Oh my God.”

“What?” Shy shouted.

He looked again, but didn’t see anything.

“They’re trying to make it over!” Vlad shut off the spotlight, spun around and started toward the glass doors.

“Everyone inside!” Shy heard Paolo shouting. “Now! Let’s go!”

Shy followed Vlad, looking over his shoulder at all the emergency crew members leaping down from the lifeboats, racing across the deck toward the doors.

Shy’s last thought before ducking back into the ship with everyone else was of Carmen and how he still hadn’t found her.

21 A Wall of Water

When Shy made it back to the Normandie Theater and his group of passengers, he found everybody seated except for Kevin, who was standing in front of a window. Shy made a beeline to the railing and scanned the lower theater for Carmen, but she wasn’t there either, so he hurried up to Kevin, saying: “There’s gonna be a tsunami.” He looked over his shoulder, making sure none of the passengers had heard him.

Kevin stared back at him wide-eyed and pointed out the window.

Shy saw it now.

The slight rise in the distance.

It was subtle and far away, but the ship was moving directly toward it.

“What if we don’t make it?” Kevin said. He looked terrified.

Shy turned to the crowded theater seats, thinking for the first time that he might die out here, in the middle of the ocean. His heart climbed into his throat, and he felt like he was about to gag or faint. Dying had never crossed his mind in a real way before. Not like this.

A pack of passengers were now gathered at the balcony railing, and Kevin was moving toward them and shouting: “Sit down, please! Everyone needs to be sitting down!”

Shy hurried to his group, making sure they were all secured in their life jackets, and he double-checked his own jacket; then he sat himself in one of the theater chairs and gripped the armrests and closed his eyes and told himself they’d be okay, they’d be okay, they’d be okay, the ship was huge, the bottom indestructible like he’d told his grandma. All they had to do was sit in their muster stations like the captain said, because the captain had probably seen it all and knew what he was doing.

Shy clasped his hands together as if to pray, but he didn’t know how to pray because he never went to his grandma’s church, and he was making shit up when he told her the bottom was eighteen feet thick and made of pure steel, he had no idea how thick it was, or what it was made of, and what if this was his punishment for lying or for not going to church?

Shy was up again, moving through the balcony seats to check the rise on the ocean through one of the windows.

It reached higher now.

And it was closer to the ship.

And they were charging right at it.

He heard voices over his shoulder and turned around. Scattered passengers were now gathered at the window behind him. They were at every window. All of them pointing at the rise and holding each other and panicking. Kevin was shouting for them to get back to their seats, but nobody was listening.

Shy tried shouting, too, but all the screaming drowned him out, so he went to the railing to look for Carmen again, his heart slamming inside his chest, his breaths too fast, because they were only seconds away from living or dying. He understood this. And what if Carmen was outside somewhere? What if she didn’t know what was coming?

He circled his group of passengers again, pleading for everyone to sit down.

Some did, but most of them still crowded the windows trying to get one last look, and Shy shoved his way to the window where Kevin stood and peered outside.

He froze.

A massive wall of water, almost twice the height of the ship and climbing still, and coming directly at them. It was clear they had no chance of making it over, but the ship continued plunging forward.

Everyone at the windows was screaming, even men, and Shy realized he was screaming, too, and a heavyset middle-aged man slumped to the ground holding his chest, and Shy’s entire body started to tingle and he lost all strength in his arms and legs and had to hold on to the window to stay standing as he stared at the cresting wave—this beyond all his understanding except it was the end of everything, and no person could change this fact, and no God, and the wave was directly in front of them now, and all Shy could see through the window was the roaring wall of ocean water.

He turned to run just as it slammed into the ship and all the small windows exploded with glass and water, and the floor shot straight up, and he found himself in the air—and in his slow-motion flight Shy saw bodies thrown from chairs, bodies crashing into other bodies, into walls, bodies toppling over the theater railing, falling onto the stage, onto chairs, onto the backs of other passengers, the ship alarm once again blaring in Shy’s ears, and the spray of cold ocean salt water in his nose and mouth and eyes, blinding him, and then he was somehow slammed headfirst into a chandelier and was lost….

22 Gaps in Consciousness

Shy came to in front of the open balcony door as the ship was slowly starting to right itself. Fallen passengers lay all around him, battered and twisted, faces frozen in shock or facedown, ocean water raining down on all of them from a gaping hole in the theater ceiling, and everything smelled of brine and seaweed.

He looked down at himself, saw that he was covered in blood and searched in a panic for where he was hurt—then he saw the woman lying next to him, her throat pierced by a thick shard of glass. She was choking on her own blood, coughing, her wild eyes staring directly at him as she vomited more blood into his lap.

Then her eyes slowly emptied out and her head slumped to the side, and when Shy went to reach for her, he was lost.

He came to in fits and starts after that.

At first everything he saw was frozen, like a photograph. Not a person moved and rain hovered in the air above him in sparkling droplets, and there was no sound other than the deafening roar of his own heart.

He saw a limp pile of bodies facedown in a pool of pink ocean water, and he saw a man holding a woman’s bloodied face in his hands and crying, and he saw Kevin’s body in front of the railing, an arc of thick blood spewing rhythmically from his forehead, and he saw a small girl standing against the far wall in her dinner dress and life jacket, eyes squeezed shut, hands reaching for some imagined person.

He turned back to Kevin, telling himself he had to do something to stop the blood, and he crawled over to Kevin’s still body, shouting his name, but he couldn’t hear his own voice. Shy ripped off his life jacket and his overshirt, tore it in half and tied it around Kevin’s head like a tourniquet. He pulled tight and then refastened his life jacket and shook Kevin’s shoulders, shouting: “Wake up! Kevin!”

But he still couldn’t hear his own voice.

Couldn’t hear anything.

And Kevin wasn’t waking up.

Shy kept shaking Kevin and yelling so hard that all the blood rushed to his head and he was lost.

He came to with ocean water pouring down onto his face, and him gulping for air, swallowing salt water and sand and gagging, until he rolled away coughing and vomited.

He was on the theater stage somehow with no recollection of getting there. And no Kevin. All around Shy were lifeless bodies submerged in a foot of water, drowning if they weren’t already drowned, theater seats ripped from their foundation, floating, the roof half caved in and the air thick with smoke and salt and mist, and the man in front of him was looking down at his bare thigh where a thick ragged bone had pierced through the skin.

Shy watched this man try to straighten the shattered bone in his shock, and it occurred to Shy that the man would soon bleed to death and that the man was Supervisor Franco.

Shy came to on his knees, at the front of the stage. He was crawling over his dead supervisor, over a drowned woman, and then tumbling down the stairs onto his back, where he stared up at the sky from which rain no longer fell, only hovering smoke and dew and odd salty droplets that traveled in slow motion toward him, dotting his forehead, his nose, his lips, his eyes, and he could see the faint outline of the moon through the thinning storm clouds in the sky, oblivious to all that was happening and people dying, and he breathed and tried to understand, but his mind grew so overwhelmed he was lost.

Shy was on his knees again, trying to get to another window. He could no longer feel the hum of the engine and he couldn’t hear anything and the air now smelled like burning plastic.

He rose to his feet, staggered through the silence, over drowned and broken bodies, looking back once more at his dead supervisor, and then he climbed the stairs to the balcony and carried himself to the first blown-out window, where he saw a second great rise of water in the distance, speeding toward them, this one so high above the ship it left no room for sky or moon or stars, and Shy opened his mouth to scream but no sound came out, and then there was another tremendous collision, this one soundless and so vicious he felt ship steel ripping and the walls caving and everything turning over, and he was hurled into the air again, only this time he was lost before he landed.

23 The Dead

Shy opened his eyes to darkness.

His vision slowly adjusted, and when it did he saw that he was outside the balcony door, a wall inches from his nose. When he turned his head he realized that the ceiling had collapsed and he was trapped underneath. No, not trapped underneath, more sheltered within. The ceiling and wall had formed a sort of teepee over him, saving his life.

He felt all around his body: head, arms, legs, feet. Everything still there and uninjured. The only pain was in his chest when he took a deep breath.

He breathed shallow as he pushed out from under the wreckage, then stood looking at the collapsed ceiling—a little to the left or right and he’d have been crushed. He was lucky to be alive.

Moving back into his muster station, Shy wondered how long he’d been knocked out, because it all looked so different now. Ocean water flooded everything and the entire theater seemed off—the ceiling now more of a wall and the stage at an odd angle. He could hear again, too, and what he heard was the groaning of the ship’s foundation and a few passengers crying or calling out names.

Something deep inside the bowels of the ship snapped, and the front end of the theater dropped several feet. Shy held on to the balcony railing in shock, knowing only that the cruise ship was ruined and that something impossible would be expected of him.

He struggled through cold, knee-high water, one of his shoes missing and his chest burning with every breath. Something was wrong with his ribs. He glanced down at his life jacket. Ripped straight through. Blood dribbling out the bottom. He reached up to unfasten it, but then thought better of it and kept moving.

At first Shy turned over each body he passed, but none of them could be helped because none of them were alive.

There was no sign of Carmen or Kevin or Rodney or Marcus. For a while he wasn’t sure if he was alive either. But he had to be alive because he was walking and breathing. Painfully. And he was seeing these bodies facedown in the water, bodies missing limbs and gashed open and covered in bright red blood.

The only dead person he’d seen back home was his grandma. And even after how sick she got, she looked almost peaceful inside her wooden casket—the makeup they’d used made her look nearly like herself again. But this death was different. It was fresh and ugly and vicious.

He stopped turning over so many bodies.

Shy spotted the back of Carmen’s head near the stage, sticking out from under the fallen curtain. He rushed down the angled steps toward her, turned her over, but it wasn’t Carmen. It was a middle-aged woman he’d never seen before, and the woman was dead. He lowered her head back into the water and moved on.

More fallen passengers to climb over.

Shy found himself pounding the heel of his hand against his own forehead, trying to think, trying to wake himself up, but he couldn’t think or wake up.

They’d been hit by two giant waves. He knew that.

And all around him people were dead.

And the ship was sinking.

But his brain refused to process anything beyond these facts, like all of it was happening to someone else, his space self or a complete stranger.

He shoved debris out of his way: splintered paintings, fallen statues, potted plants, jagged shards of shattered mirrors, chunks of the ceiling and the walls and the stairs. Empty life jackets. Motionless bodies.

“Carmen!” he began shouting through the theater.

“Kevin!”

“Rodney! Marcus!”

Over and over he shouted their names, but there was never an answer. Only a handful of people still seemed even conscious, some just sitting in the water, dumbfounded, others searching for loved ones or stumbling toward the exit like Shy.

Outside lightning flashed, and in that second of illumination, Shy saw how badly the ship had been damaged. The back half already sinking into the ocean and the front twisted on its side and raised slightly above the water. All the windows blown out and no trace of the glass atrium ceiling. The control room flattened and battered and the bridge ripped right down the middle. Seaweed and ocean water pooled in every corner of the Lido Deck.

Thunder pounded, followed by more lightning.

There were hundreds of passengers already lined up near the lifeboat launch site in the dark. A few emergency team members loading them aboard. Many of the boats were missing, either already launched or ripped away by the waves.

Shy tried to take deep breaths to calm himself down, but each deep breath felt like a knife in his chest.

And he didn’t know where he was supposed to go.

Or what he was supposed to do.

He spotted Marcus with a group of crew members on the Lookout Deck, near the life raft pods. Shy knew the rafts were a last resort, because they were so much smaller and less equipped for survival. It meant some of the lifeboats had been lost.

He headed for the rafts in almost a crawl to keep from slipping on the angled deck. The passengers near the lifeboats were in a disagreement about whether the vessels should be lowered into the storming ocean now.

“You can’t expect us to survive these conditions!” one passenger was shouting. “Look at it out there!”

The ocean was still raging below them. Whitecaps everywhere and sometimes a twenty-foot wave that would crash into the broken ship.

“This thing’s going to sink!” another passenger shouted. “And there are fires, too! Don’t you get it? The lifeboats are our only chance!”

“They’re designed for rough seas,” a crew member tried to explain.

“But we still have time! We should stay on the ship as long as possible. Radio for help!”

“There is no help!” a woman shouted. “Didn’t you see what happened to California? All the help will go to them!”

Shy didn’t know who was right or wrong, just knew he had to do something. He joined in with the emergency crew, trying to calm everyone down as others continued prepping the lifeboats for launch.

“The captain said it himself!” a man shouted. “There’s no radio communication! They won’t even know we’re out here!”

A tall passenger fought his way up to the front of the line with his wife and kid. He grabbed the shoulder of a crew member, said: “You need to get premier class off this ship first! We paid for that right!”

This sparked a new debate, about who should be loaded onto the lifeboats first: women and children or premier class.

Shy listened to them go back and forth, and he watched the passengers already loaded up in the lifeboat stare over the side at the choppy ocean, most of them holding on to each other or gripping the sides of the boat. One woman slipped trying to get in, and Shy watched her fall violently back onto the angled ship deck, headfirst, and roll against a closed door where she didn’t move.

A group of people hurried to her. Everyone else stared. A man lowering himself from the boat, her husband maybe, started screaming. He ran to her, kneeled down and picked up her head, then looked up into the sky, shouting: “No!”

Shy pushed away from this group of passengers and continued toward the emergency rafts, slipping several times along the way. As he climbed the angled stairs, he heard a rise in commotion behind his back. A fight had broken out. Two passengers shoving each other while emergency crew members tried to separate them.

At the top of the stairs, Shy looked over the ship again. From this new vantage point he saw how much the back half was already sagging into the ocean. It didn’t look real or even possible. Several lifeboats on that end had been forced underwater, empty. The front half of the ship reached up into the sky and leaned slightly to the side. Smoke billowed out from inside the ship, and Shy realized that fire was as much of a threat as sinking.

Lightning pierced the ocean right next to the ship. Thunder so loud he ducked for cover. He was overwhelmed and scared beyond understanding, but he forced himself to focus on crawling forward, on getting somewhere, to the rafts and Marcus, that was all he had to think about.

24 Sweep of the Destiny Dining Room

A group of Paradise crew members were huddled together, working to open the hard-shelled canisters that held inflatable life rafts. The first of them to look up was Kevin, Shy’s bloody shirt still wrapped around his head.

“You’re here!” Kevin shouted over the storm. “I looked all over the theater! What happened?”

“I don’t know,” Shy said. He pointed at Kevin’s head. “You were knocked out.”

Kevin touched the shirt on his head. “This is yours, isn’t it?”

Shy nodded. He looked at Marcus, too. And Vlad. “How long since the second wave hit us?” he asked.

“Half hour,” Kevin said.

It seemed impossible that he’d been out that long. Thirty minutes was a big chunk of time to be unaccounted for. But he understood how lucky he was—he’d eventually come to, while others hadn’t.

Paolo called out to the entire group: “We get these rafts prepped first, men! Then we double back through each station in teams, helping only those who can be helped! There isn’t much time!”

Shy kneeled beside everyone in the dark, his eyes fixed on what was framed by the two flashlights, his mind stuck on the last of Paolo’s words: “There isn’t much time.”

They got the first pod open and Marcus held it as the raft filled automatically with carbon dioxide. It grew big enough to fit a dozen people. Paolo had already explained that all the lifeboats on the other side of the ship were trapped underwater and useless. And Shy had done the math in his head. Seven lifeboats and five rafts. It wouldn’t fit even a quarter of the passengers and crew members. But then, how many of them were still alive?

Paolo capped the raft, pulled out the handles and made sure the emergency compartment was fully stocked. Shy studied the contents, knowing that he would likely need this stuff in order to survive: water, dry food, fishing kit, hand and smoke flares, radio signaling device, tarps, blankets, small basic tool kit and water dye.

Paolo tapped Marcus and another guy, shouted: “Drop the raft at the launching site and do a sweep of the theater! You’ve got fifteen minutes!”

They each took a side and carried the raft above their heads, half crawling down the angled stairs.

Before they cracked open the second pod, Shy heard a loud creaking sound coming from the back of the ship. An explosion followed, and they all spun around to look. Bright flames shot up into the dark sky, illuminating clouds of black smoke. Screams came from the line of passengers waiting to board the lifeboats. Shy looked down at the raging sea, then back up at the burning and sinking ship.

They were all going to die.

He repeated this fact in his head, again and again. Calmly, though, in his shock.

The second raft filled with carbon dioxide. Paolo did his safety checks and tapped Kevin and Shy this time, told them to drop off the raft and do a sweep of the Destiny Dining Room.

They both took a handle, lifted the raft over their heads and started cautiously across the Lookout Deck. When they got near the bottom of the stairs Shy scanned the line of passengers and spotted Carmen climbing into one of the lifeboats.

“Carmen!” he called out to her. When she didn’t hear him, he turned to Kevin, told him excitedly: “Carmen just got on one of the boats! She’s alive!”

Kevin nodded and they dropped the raft off at the launching point, secured it just behind the one Marcus had carried down. They moved back inside the ship, into the Destiny Dining Room, passing the empty hostess stand where they split up. Shy took the rear of the huge restaurant, Kevin stayed up front.

The place looked like it had been hit by a tornado. Fallen ceiling slabs, tables and chairs scattered and on their sides, thick smoke hovering above the flooded floor where motionless bodies lay. It was strange how numb to death Shy had already become. It hardly slowed him down. As he sloshed through the water, he recalled the jealousy he’d felt in this dining room earlier. Carmen and Toni talking about their engagements. Carmen’s man kneeling on the boardwalk. It all seemed so ridiculous now.

He headed straight for the kitchen, the source of the smoke, looked through the swinging-door windows. Three kitchen workers were inside, aiming extinguishers at a roaring fire—the white foam hardly containing it at all.

Shy pushed through the doors, shielding his nose and mouth with his shoulder. “Paolo wants everyone up top!” he shouted in a muffled voice. “Now!”

The three of them turned around.

Shy was overwhelmingly relieved to see that one of them was Rodney.

“Shy!” Rodney shouted, tears streaming down his face.

“Rod! You need to go get on one of the lifeboats, man! There aren’t many left!”

“Everyone’s dead, Shy!”

“Go get on a lifeboat!” Shy shouted back at him. “Hurry!”

Rodney dropped his extinguisher, grabbed the others by their shirts and all four of them hurried out of the burning kitchen. Shy told Rodney he’d meet him on the Lido Deck as soon as he found Kevin. Rodney hugged him, then pushed away and sloshed through the water toward the exit.

Shy scoured the back half of the dining room for survivors with a new determination. Carmen and Rodney were still alive. But soon the air grew thick with smoke, which was now spewing out from underneath the kitchen doors. Shy had trouble breathing, and whenever he coughed it felt like a knife digging into his ribs.

Kevin shouted his name from across the dining room, but just as Shy started toward him, stepping over bodies along the way, he heard a second voice. “Help me.”

Shy stopped in his tracks, looked all around, saw nothing.

“Help me. Please.”

“Where are you?” Shy shouted.

“Here.”

The heat from the fire in the kitchen grew more intense. A thick layer of smoke had gathered near the ceiling. Shy saw a man and woman, completely submerged in water, holding hands. He saw a motionless woman slumped against the wall holding her stomach, covered in blood.

“Shy, let’s go!” Kevin yelled again.

Just then there was a massive explosion in the kitchen. A burst of flames shot through the doors, started eating at the restaurant walls and ceiling. When Shy turned to run he saw a hand reaching up from behind a fallen chandelier.

It was the man who’d been following him all around the ship. The man in the black suit, Bill. “Help me,” he pleaded. “Please.”

Shy froze.

The fire raged across the entire back half of the dining room now, smoke burrowing into his lungs. Shy flashed through Kevin’s warning, his and Rodney’s trashed cabin, the man’s threats in the Luxury Lounge. But Shy couldn’t just leave someone.

He reached down and grabbed the man’s hand and pulled, but the man’s leg was trapped under the chandelier. He couldn’t move. And Shy couldn’t lift him. The water now up to the man’s chin.

“Please,” he begged.

Shy slipped his hand out of the man’s grip and tried lifting the chandelier, but it was too heavy. Kevin was beside him now, gripping the chandelier, too. Together they strained, Shy’s chest killing him as he coughed, and Kevin shouting for the man to push.

Finally the three of them moved it enough for him to slip his leg free. The man got to his knees quickly, but when he tried to put weight on his leg he toppled back into the water.

Shy and Kevin lifted him, threw his arms over their shoulders and started dragging him through the restaurant. Flames crackling at their backs, running across the ceiling and walls in front of them now, the intense heat blistering Shy’s skin, singeing his hair.

The front exit was on fire, the doors closed and covered in flames. Shy looked back at the rear exit, but it was even worse.

“Carry him!” Kevin shouted. “I’ll do the doors!”

Shy coughed as he watched Kevin hurry awkwardly through the knee-high water. He struggled to stay standing with the man weighing him down.

Kevin led with his shoulder and crashed through the double doors, collapsing into the water on the other side. Shy followed, half carrying, half dragging the man, both of them diving through the flames, everything going silent for Shy underwater.

He quickly raised his head up and sucked in a smoky breath and started coughing uncontrollably as he and Kevin pulled the man toward the warped stairs.

25 Launch of the Lifeboats

Through the darkness outside, Shy saw the outline of several lifeboats already on the ocean, whitecapped waves thrashing them around. A line of passengers and crew jockeyed to get on the two remaining lifeboats, as both ends of the sinking ship were now on fire.

Shy and Kevin helped the man up the uneven stairs to the closest lifeboat, pushed him through the line of shouting passengers. “Vlad!” Kevin yelled. “Make sure he gets on the boat! His leg is hurt!”

“We just reached capacity!” Vlad shouted back. “We’re lowering it now! Get him on the next one!”

Shy and Kevin turned toward the other boat, a crowd already pushing and shoving in front of it. Shy knew he should be fighting, too. The lifeboats were ten times safer than the open rafts. Especially in these conditions. But there was no room left. And he was crew.

“I’ll get off!” someone shouted from inside the lifeboat in front of them.

Shy watched the guy climb over the other seated passengers and jump down onto the deck. It was the guy Shy and Kevin kicked out of the Jacuzzi on the first night of the voyage, Christian. He was actually giving up his seat.

Christian asked about the man’s leg, explaining he was a doctor, then he helped boost him onto the boat. Shy scanned the rest of the faces on board, looking for Carmen or Rodney, but they weren’t there. He was sure he’d seen Carmen climbing into one of the lifeboats, though. Maybe hers had already launched.

Kevin and Shy started cautiously down the slanted deck toward the raft-launching site, Christian following closely behind them. But when they arrived they found Marcus and Paolo shouting for them to hold on and pointing toward the ocean.

Shy spun back around, saw another huge wave. This one only half the size of the previous two but big enough to lift one of the lifeboats and slam it against the side of the ship. Pieces of shattered boat flew into the air and flailing passengers spilled out into the stormy sea.

The cruise ship creaked and shifted under the power of the wave, the water just failing to reach as high as the Lido Deck.

Shy stared down at the battered lifeboat, scared to death that Rodney or Carmen might have been aboard. The top half ripped completely away. Paolo now explaining that they had to be close to the islands. Otherwise the waves wouldn’t be breaking the way they were.

“I don’t see any land!” Kevin shouted.

“We will by morning!” Paolo answered. “We just have to make it through the night!”

“If a boat can’t make it,” Marcus said to Shy, “how will a raft?”

Shy had no answer as he scanned the water, looking for Carmen’s head. But it was too dark to see anything more than shapes.

The final two lifeboats were being lowered toward the ocean, several passengers staring out of the opening, looking down at the people floating on the water or back up at the burning ship.

Paolo loaded the few remaining passengers and crew onto rafts, one after the other. Shy looked around as he moved with the line. The sinking ship. The lifeboats getting tossed around on the ocean’s surface. A group of passengers trapped up near the burning bow of the ship, leaping off, one by one, screaming as they fell past the raft launch site, into the raging water.

Shy was shoved onto one of the rafts by the crew member behind him, bodies quickly filling in around him, and then the raft slowly lowering down the side of the ship. When it reached the end of its launch rope, the raft plunged toward the sea, Shy gripping the handle beside him, yelling like everyone else, weightlessness like a knot in his stomach, his gaze fixed on the life-vested bodies below, on the stripped ship parts and swirls of ship fuel, and then he shut his eyes as tight as he could and braced for impact.

26 Power of the Sea

The raft slammed headfirst against the surface of the water, Shy’s grip ripped away from the handle and he was thrown into the freezing black ocean. He kicked and reached frantically with his hands, choking on salt water, coughing out the last of his air as he was completely submerged.

Soon as his head poked back through the surface, he gulped in a desperate breath and coughed and looked all around in a panic. Heavy swells rolling past like moving mountains, lifting him, then dropping him, then lifting him again. Thunder pounded in the distance. A small wave broke over his head and he swallowed more salt water and gagged.

He wiped his stinging eyes with the back of his wrist and spotted the raft floating upside down, half a football field away, a handful of life-jacketed people already swimming for it. He’d turned to look back at the sinking ship when someone grabbed on to the back of his jacket and started pulling him toward the raft.

Shy spun his head back around, found Christian.

He couldn’t process anything except that he was in the massive ocean now, freezing-cold, whitecapped waves cresting all around him.

Lightning lit up the night sky and for a fraction of a second he saw all the survivors thrashing around in the water near the ship.

Shy shook free of Christian’s grip, turned onto his stomach and started swimming for the raft himself, fast as he could, thrusting hand after hand into the furious water in front of his face, ignoring the pain in his ribs.

Kevin was the first one to the raft.

Then Paolo and Marcus.

Shy saw them right the raft and begin pulling themselves up by the handles, heaving their waterlogged bodies over the sides. Kevin reached out a hand, pulled in Christian, then he reached for Shy, and Shy fell into the raft on his back and lay there, staring up at the smoke-filled sky and sucking in breaths and listening to the voices all around him.

“Which way are the islands?”

“We have to move away from the ship! There’s fuel all around us!”

“Look! That woman’s alive!”

“Grab the oars!”

Shy told himself what was happening. They were lost at sea, and nobody was coming to their rescue. Carmen flashed through his thoughts, and he pulled himself up to a sitting position and scanned the water, but it was too dark to make out faces.

Kevin was in the raft with him. Paolo. Marcus and Christian. Several passengers he vaguely recognized. The bodies floating near the raft were mostly on their stomachs, facedown, but a few held up their heads and beat the water with flailing arms and shouted for help.

Two jagged fingers of lightning lit up the sky.

Marcus and Christian were on opposite sides of the raft, digging oars into the choppy sea, propelling the boat toward a screaming woman. Paolo grabbed her by the arm, pulled her into the raft. Shy watched her curl into a fetal position in the water sloshing around at their feet. She looked up at him in shock.

Shy turned back to the rolling ocean, looking for someone else to help, looking for Carmen, Rodney. He saw mostly lifeless bodies and ship debris. Three lifeboats in the distance. He saw pieces of the shattered lifeboat, the bottom half still floating near the ship, which was now mostly underwater, the front end lit up in flames.

A passenger suddenly stood in the middle of the raft and shouted: “Row faster, goddamn it!”

Shy spun around, saw another huge wave roaring toward them, at least as big as the one that slammed the lifeboat against the ship. And all they had to withstand it was a wide-open twelve-man raft.

He started hyperventilating again.

“The other way!” Paolo shouted. “Turn it around! We have to make it over!”

Kevin and Christian spun the raft around, started rowing directly toward the rising wave, fast as they could, Shy gripping the raft handle, unable to take his eyes off the towering wall as it rose higher and higher before them, Paolo now shouting it down: “Come on, you son of a bitch!”

Kevin and Christian rowed and rowed until the colossal wave was directly in front of them, carrying their tiny raft up its steep, roaring face, Shy leaning forward with everyone else, clutching the raft handle, clenching every muscle in his body.

At the last minute, Kevin and Christian pulled in their oars and leaned forward, too, everyone yelling and Shy losing control of his bladder as the raft went nearly vertical with the cresting wave, spray battering his face.

They were suspended like that for what seemed like forever, all gravity vanishing and sounds disappearing, Shy holding his breath and trembling—then the raft slipped over the thick lip and rocketed down the other side, dropping into what seemed like a hole in the ocean and at such speed Shy’s whole body vibrated and he ducked his head down inside the raft to avoid being blown back into the growling giant.

When they made it to the bottom, they all turned and watched the wave explode into whitewash behind them, barreling over debris and life-jacketed bodies, colliding with the sinking ship, momentarily quieting the flames.

Shy’s eyes darted around the raft as he sucked in desperate breaths. Everyone still there. Looking at each other. White-knuckled on all the raft handles.

But then several of them were screaming again, and Shy turned and saw a second rise in the distance, this one building farther out and already more massive, and he knew immediately they wouldn’t make it over.

Kevin and Christian dug their oars back into the ocean and rowed as fast as they could, but it was pointless. Paolo yanked the oar from Christian’s grip, tossed it into the ocean, did the same with Kevin’s. He dug into the raft’s emergency pouch and pulled out everything he could and shoved it into a dry pack, shouting: “Everyone off the raft! Diving under is our only chance!”

But for Shy this was impossible.

He stared at the cresting wave, a few hundred feet away, and then he stared at the water underneath them pulling back.

Paolo strapped the dry pack on his back and dove overboard and started swimming directly at the wave.

Kevin dove in, too.

Christian.

But everyone else continued gripping the raft handles like Shy, unable to let go, their faces all frozen in terror.

Then the wave was in front of them.

At the last second, and against every instinct he had, Shy pried his hand from the handle and rolled over the side of the raft, into the ocean, the current sucking him toward the roaring wave. He watched it stand on its toes, a dozen stories high, the thick lip curling over, slicing down toward him.

Shy pulled in one last painful breath and closed his eyes and dove underneath, far as he could.

The violent undercurrent snatched him up immediately, sucking his now powerless body deep below, into blackness, thrashing him and his life jacket every which way like a washing machine, until he had no idea what was up and his lungs burned and still the ocean kept twisting his body until he lost consciousness.

27 Truth of the World

Shy’s eyes popped open.

He was bobbing on the surface of the black ocean in his life jacket, retching uncontrollably—warm salt water and bile flooding back over his tongue and teeth, fanning out in the water in front of his face, the awful taste of his own sick making him vomit again.

He heaved for several minutes, until there was nothing left to purge, and still his stomach convulsed and his eyes stung and the world was blurry.

He spit and looked all around the darkness, shivering.

He was alone.

No idea how long he’d been floating here or how long he’d been drowned. His life jacket must’ve brought him back up, saved his life.

He spun around looking for what was left of the wave that had pulled him under, but there was nothing. The ocean was calmer, in fact. The wind less severe. He spotted the cruise ship, surprisingly far off in the distance—only the front third still visible, pointing straight up into the sky and half covered in flames.

Nobody else around, dead or alive.

“Kevin!” he shouted.

“Marcus!”

Any name that came to mind, he shouted out, but nobody answered and he slapped at the water with both hands, feeling overwhelmed and hopeless and having no idea what swam below him.

He did nothing more than tread water in the dark for several minutes, battling his own thoughts. What if he was stranded for good? Nothing to eat or drink, no one there when he died? What if he never saw anything but water again? He felt like he’d been shown the truth of the world. The absolute power it held. People just meaningless specks that came and went as easily as flipping a switch.

He couldn’t stop shivering in the cold wind and water as he looked around again, his eyes finally adjusting to the dark. A few ship pieces. Drowned bodies. An empty life jacket. An oar from a raft, maybe theirs. A rain slicker kept afloat by an air bubble trapped underneath.

He spotted a portion of a wrecked lifeboat, probably the one he’d seen slammed against the ship by a wave. Most of the bottom half just sitting there, maybe a hundred yards away.

He leaned forward without thinking and swam for it, picking up the oar and slicker along the way. His ribs throbbed as he splashed through the cold ocean, one arm in the slicker, tossing the oar in front of him and catching up, tossing and catching up, small waves sometimes washing over his head. Several times he swallowed mouthfuls of water and had to spit or vomit, but he didn’t stop until he was able to reach out and touch what was left of the boat.

The top half was entirely ripped away, the sides jagged and sharp. Cracks and gashes running along the edges including one fist-sized hole that was half underwater. He floated around the boat twice looking for the least jagged side and then tossed in the slicker and the oar and pulled himself up to peer inside.

A handful of passengers. All lying in two feet of water at the bottom of the boat. None were Carmen or anyone he knew.

“Hello,” he said.

Then louder: “Hello!”

No one lifted their heads to acknowledge him.

Shy floated there a few more seconds, looking back over his shoulder at the enormous black ocean, and then he pulled himself up and over the side and fell onto one of the bodies in the boat. He quickly rolled off and sat up and looked at the woman. Blood caked in her short gray hair.

Shy went on to his hands and knees and sloshed through the pinkish water to inspect the other bodies, too. He lifted faces, tried shaking them awake, checked for pulses. Nothing. All dead.

He picked up the oar and held it in his lap and looked outside the boat again. “Anyone out there?”

He turned his head to listen for a response, a voice calling back, or splashing, anything, but there was nothing.

Where were all the people on his raft?

Where were Kevin and Marcus and Paolo?

What if he was the only one left?

Shy set the oar back down and carefully got to his feet. He sloshed around the dead bodies and tried to turn on the motor. Nothing. He saw that the entire control panel had been bashed in. Blood splattered across the dash. He turned and looked in the supply compartment underneath the control panel. A large package of fishing line and hooks. Water dye. A length of rope. A flare gun and six flares. A fiberglass patching kit and a tarp.

No food or water, though.

He left everything where it was and considered the salt water at the bottom of the boat. It was about knee-high, which was a problem because one of the jagged sides was splintered so it was only a few inches higher. He reached a hand down near the bottom of the side to feel around the biggest gash—water rushing in.

He knew the boat surface had to be dry to use the fiberglass patch kit, so he pulled the soaking wet sweatshirt off the closest body, balled one of the arms and wedged it into the toothy hole. Then he started bailing water with his two hands cupped together.

He spent over an hour doing this, tossing the ocean water over the side of the boat, handful after handful, the inside water level falling at a painfully slow pace, and he tried to keep himself from thinking too far ahead.

Twice he stopped when he saw a bright light streaking across the dark sky. Looked like shooting stars, but they had to be flares. This gave him hope. Someone else had to be out there. He stopped bailing and fired a flare of his own in response and crouched there watching the sky.

He waited several minutes hoping he’d see something else, but he didn’t, so he went back to work.

When he grew too tired to lift his arms he sat back to catch his breath and rest his aching ribs. But just sitting there was even worse. It allowed too much time to think about how dire his situation was. Stranded in the middle of an ocean without food or water or any sense of direction—in a boat full of dead people.

Panic rose in his throat and started to settle in his chest, making it hard to breathe. He pulled at his own hair for a few seconds, freaking out; then he closed his eyes and sucked in breath after breath until he calmed down and could resume bailing water.

It wasn’t long before Shy grew exhausted.

He put on the slicker to protect himself from the wind and sank down into the water in the boat, which was slightly warmer than the air. He shivered and stared at the bodies. Two older men, one with glasses and a cast on his right arm. A youngish blond woman who might have been pretty before her head injuries. Two older ladies, the one closest to him with a hideous gash across the side of her face.

He thought about dumping them into the ocean so he didn’t have to look at them, and because eventually they’d rot and start to smell, but he thought it might be bad luck. And a part of him still believed he might be rescued by morning. If the bodies were still on the boat they could be given a proper burial.

Outside the boat, the sky was slightly brighter. The sun would soon come up over the ocean. And before that it would come up over California.

How was this possible?

After everything he’d been through?

He tried to imagine his family back home, safe inside the strong hospital walls. But he couldn’t picture their faces. Something was wrong with him. He’d swallowed too much salt water or lost oxygen to his brain. Because no matter how hard he concentrated, he couldn’t picture the faces of his own mom and sister and nephew. He could only picture Carmen.

He looked back at the cruise ship, all but sunk now. Watched the last bit of the bow plunge beneath the ocean’s surface until all that was left was the flicker of a few bright flames coming off the tip. And then only flames. And then nothing.

In its place, the first tiny sliver of morning sun.

Shy held himself as he watched the slow rise of the bright blurry mass, unable to wrap his mind around it. His teeth chattering and every breath killing his chest and his mind stuck on what might’ve happened to Carmen.

He reached a hand up to rub his tired eyes and found himself wiping away tears.