Chapter 17
My feet slip and churn on the current. I look over to see Eleni’s wide-eyed face pressed into the buoy next to me. The shore is just too far away. My muscles are empty and cold. Too far to swim. Maybe if I rest a minute, just a minute and I’ll be stronger, I soothe myself. I know I’m lying, though.
It’s too far for anyone to see us in the dark, that’s for sure. They don’t know. I should have, I should have…why did I dive into the water without telling someone? Stupid. I just assumed once I was here we would go back, together. I don’t know why I thought that. My plans never go that smoothly. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Cassie is awake and wailing now. Well, at least she’s breathing and conscious enough to be properly terrified. Eleni has slipped a shaking elbow through Cassie’s, and reaches around my arm to hook me in, too. I pulled her around to my side a minute ago, so the rip is pushing her face-first into the buoy, but as long as she keeps behind it, I think it should keep her and us from being carried further out. I assume. And sweetest of the forefathers, aren’t my assumptions turning out splendid tonight.
Something splats at my back. I shiver as thoughts of sharks and creepy flying fish slip through my mind. Then I get ahold of myself and crane my neck.
It’s a bump of orange shade laying on the rolling black. A standard M.S.A. life preserver. I stretch out and flop a worthless hand on it to reel it in, and notice it’s tethered to a person a short distance away.
“Hey!” I call.
It’s one of the boys, splashing a lot but coming fast. With his brother beside him. I’m very glad to see them. They mash into us in no time at all.
“Everyone good?” Hale spits out. They reach around us three girls to the chain. One clamps his hand over mine. We’re a mess of heads and arms, but we all try to still our limbs, to move slower, except for Cassie. Hale peels her off me and the buoy, pinning her against himself like I’d done. Only it works out for him a whole lot better. She stops crying, even.
“We’re fine. It’s a rip tide, though,” my jaw shudders. I leave what logically follows unsaid.
Lium grabs his brother under the arm. Hale is suspended for a moment, and plunges the life preserver under Cassie. He slips away, but I reach for him underwater and catch his pants. Lium’s kept his grasp on him as well, and it churns us all into each other. Where my arm is folded around the chain, my flesh is pinched painfully but I ignore it.
“Are you going to try to get in?” I ask over the rush of my panting. And more shivering.
Hale doesn’t answer for a second, and wraps the preserver’s tether several times around one hand. Lium, meanwhile, lashes Cassie. He plunges in and out of the water, with huge gasps each time he surfaces.
“Yeah,” says Hale.
“Y-y-y-ou sh-should sss-wim diagonal t’ th’ shhh-ore.”
“I got it.” He glances between me and Eleni. Lium pulls himself back to us along Cassie and Hale’s taut tether.
“I can pull in one more. Who’s first?”
“’L-eni. Sh’s too cold. Eleni!” I nudge her with my elbow.
My cousin moans. Between Lium and Hale, and me prying her fingers from their death-grip, she’s secured to the float as well.
“Crusa,” she croaks.
“You’re going in, Len. I’ll see you in a minute.”
“You really think,” I wipe my nose on my shoulder, “you can drag two people?” I ask the boys. It’s more of a challenge than a question.
“I told you, it’s fine,” grunts Hale. I give him a look. He ignores me.
“He’s got it, Crus,” Lium says, out of breath, dripping on my cheek.
“He’s got it? You’re not going to help him?”
“I’m waiting with you.”
I panic, “How is he going to get them in!? They’ll all drown.” I feel dirty for saying it, using it for shock, but I can’t believe it.
“He’s got it,” Lium reassures me, pulling one of my frozen arms over him. I’m scathing mad at him, at both of them, but I realize my muscles don’t work. So there it goes.
I’ve been keeping Eleni’s fingers knotted in mine, so I feel Hale’s strength when he begins to go. It makes me feel a little better. I keep reminding myself of that as I watch him swim off with my two cousins.
He goes diagonally. And actually moves the girls, tug by short tug, just inches, but still. He moves them against the current. The relief comes from nowhere to hit me. Good at first, it soon morphs into a convulsion that rings with the surrounding cold. I wedge the chain inside my elbow, and bow my head.