All the court documents were in there, along with the arrest report and his suspension papers from school. And — what was this?
Luke recognized his mother’s handwriting on the letter:
… Luke is a good boy, but lately he’s been running with a tough crowd, including a boy named Reese, who has had trouble with the law before. We want to believe him when he says that the gun wasn’t his, but we don’t want to be naive either — not where Luke’s future is concerned. We can’t take the chance that this Reese has gotten him involved with a gang. We think it might be a good idea to get him away from here for a while. Therefore, we’re accepting the court’s proposal to send him to you….
Luke put the letter down, blinking hard. “They said they believed me.”
By this time, all pumping work had stopped for the crew members to dig into their files. Lyssa emerged from the engine room and Charla abandoned her lookout post to join them. Even J.J. interrupted his tanning to flip quickly through his folder.
He was unimpressed. “Big deal. So I’m a flake. What else is new?” He peered over Ian’s shoulder. “Couch potato. No friends. What a surprise.”
“Lay off,” Luke warned.
But J.J. had already moved on to Will and Lyssa. “Whoa, what are you guys, hit men? There isn’t this much violence in the James Bond movies!”
Will flushed. “I don’t know how it happens. One minute we’re just arguing — ”
Lyssa cut him off. “Shut up, Will! We don’t have to explain anything. Mind your own business, rich boy.”
J.J. shrugged. “I don’t see any of you guys in the poorhouse. CNC doesn’t come cheap, you know.”
“You find the money,” Luke put in grimly, “when your two choices are either here or jail.”
“Or you borrow it,” Charla added bitterly. “Not all of us live in Beverly Hills.”
“Yeah, what’s your story?” asked J.J., snatching the folder from her hands.
She reacted like a wildcat. “Give that back!”
J.J. held the file up out of her reach and kept on reading over his head.
Charla leaped like a basketball player, grabbed the papers from his hand, and fixed him with a withering glare. “Moron,” she muttered.
He looked bewildered. “What’d I do?”
“That’s private!” she raged.
“You know what it says? That you’re world-class at, like, fifteen sports. What a deep, dark secret! My own father sends me halfway around the world just so he won’t have to look at me, but you don’t want anyone to find out you’re a star!”
“You didn’t get to the part where it says what a head case I am,” she mumbled.
“We’re all head cases,” J.J. told her. “This is a trip for head cases. That’s why we’re here.”
Lyssa pushed her snorkel mask back down over her face. “Well, this was fun — ” She stepped into the engine hatch.
J.J. regarded the pile of folders. “What are we going to do with these?”
Luke glared at him. “You really want to hear my suggestion?”
J.J. picked up the files and walked to the gunwale. With the exaggerated windup of a major league pitcher, he flung them into the sea.
“How’s the environment now?” he asked Charla.
“It’ll live,” she replied, tight-lipped.
“Well, let’s get back to work,” said J.J.
Luke raised an eyebrow. “Look who’s admitting that we might be in trouble.”
“I’m bored, that’s all,” J.J. insisted. “Gotta have something to do till the cavalry arrives. Which pump is mine?”
As the day wore on, Luke watched the bow of the Phoenix sink lower and lower into the sea. At least a dozen times he was tempted to send the pumpers forward to try to even out the schooner’s balance.
No. If they had a chance, it was with the motor. They had to pump out the engine room first.
It was an agonizing decision. If they took a nosedive to the bottom, it would be all his fault.
Even in a glassy calm, sleepy waves broke over the gunwale. The water puddled for only a moment before rolling down a deck that was sloped like a parking ramp. If another storm blew through, the Phoenix wouldn’t last five minutes.
In the crew cabins, even the upper bunks were swamped now. Where the crew members were supposed to sleep was anybody’s guess. Probably they just wouldn’t sleep anymore. Luke thought back to the night before, crammed next to J.J. in the narrow berth. That misery might go down as his final night of sleep ever. The thought coaxed a nervous chuckle from him, but beneath the surface lingered a feeling so awful he didn’t dare dwell on it.
By five o’clock the entire engine was spread across two beach towels in the stern.
Will surveyed the scene with a frown. “I hope you can look at this stuff and see a motor, because all I see is a huge pile of junk.”
Lyssa looked preoccupied. “I’ve got it straight in my mind. Don’t bug me.”
It took another hour to get the last few inches of thick murky slime off the floor of the engine room. Then Lyssa eased herself down the hatch to start the long task of reassembly. The pumpers rushed forward to work on the crew cabins and the fo’c’sle — the area belowdecks directly under the bow. They were exhausted, but there was no time for a break. As Luke put it, their next break could be spent on the ocean floor.
The sun was setting when Will stepped into the cockpit and joined Luke at the wheel. He checked their direction — still west-southwest. “How do we know that’s right?” he asked uneasily. “Maybe the compass is broken like everything else on this tub.”
Luke shrugged. “You can’t be off-course when you don’t know where you’re going in the first place.” He regarded the foresail. “Wind’s picking up. We should probably let out the sheet a little.”
Will groaned. “If you’re turning into a real sailor, I’m going to have to start treating you like Radford.”
Luke shot Will a look. “Don’t mention that name, not even as a joke.”
Will shook his head. “How could anybody do what he did? I mean, we’re talking about dying here! Are we so worthless to him?”
Luke looked at him sharply. “We’re not worthless; Rat-face is worthless. If there’s any justice in this world, he’ll get his.”
“Unless — ” Will frowned. “You don’t think J.J. could be right? That all this is part of the CNC thing?”
“It’s pretty crazy,” said Luke. “They’d have to trash their own boat, wash the captain into the sea on purpose. Anything’s possible, I guess. I’d love to believe that the captain’s okay.”
“Me too,” Will agreed fervently. “That’s probably what’s in J.J.’s head. He feels responsible.”
“He is responsible,” Luke said flatly. “He was born with a dream life. He gets whatever he wants whenever he wants it. And he’s still the biggest screwup I’ve ever met.”
Lyssa heaved herself through the engine room hatch, dusting ineffectually at the caked muck on her knees.
Will looked at his sister anxiously but couldn’t read her expression. “Tell me it’s good news.”
“It’s back together,” she replied. “That’s all I know for sure.”
“The captain said never to start the engine without the blower,” Luke reminded her.
“The blower’s electric,” Lyssa explained. “If we run it before the engine’s on, we could drain the battery charge — ”
“English, Lyss,” Will interrupted impatiently.
“We’ll have to improvise.” She picked up the grease-spattered beach towels that had been used to dry off the engine parts and tossed one to Luke and one to Will. “When I give the word, you guys stand over the hatch and fan like crazy.”
Luke was amazed. “And that’s safe?”
“She knows this stuff,” Will said fervently. “She got an A on that science project.”
Lyssa replaced Luke at the wheel and waited for the two boys to establish themselves above the hatch.
“Okay — now!”
Like palace guards fanning the sultan, Luke and Will began waving their towels up and down, ventilating the engine room. Lyssa hit the starter button. The motor turned over, choked once, and died.
Will cursed and threw his towel to the deck.
“Don’t stop!” she ordered briskly.
They resumed fanning and she tried again. This time the engine put-putted itself to life.
“All right, Lyss!” shouted Will.
His sister looked at him sharply but found no sarcasm in his praise.
Cheering and applause came from the pumpers above the crew cabins. Charla flashed them thumbs-up from her spot atop the foremast.
“Okay,” exclaimed Luke, “put ‘er in gear!”
Lyssa pushed forward on the throttle. The motor coughed and sputtered out.
“Aw, man!” moaned Will.
So the whole process began again. Luke and Will fanned while Lyssa tried to nurse the starter along.
“It’s not easy, you know!” Will protested as the motor roared to life only to die with a wheeze and a hiccup of machinery. “It’s murder on your shoulders!”
“You’re such a crab,” Lyssa sneered.
Luke rolled his eyes. What was with these two? They were on a sinking boat; this could be their last conversation. Why did it have to be fighting words?
As they continued to work and bicker, Luke noticed in alarm that the roar of the motor was becoming less and less frequent. After a few more minutes, the engine wouldn’t even turn over.
Will was worried too. “Aw, Lyss, I knew you’d bust it!”
“Probably just flooded the carburetor,” said Lyssa, grabbing the toolbox. “I can smell the gas.” Once again, she lowered herself into the engine hatch.
“What’s the problem?” Charla called.
Luke could only shrug. “You should come down. It’s getting dark.”
“Give me another half hour,” came the reply. “I can still see a little.”
After a few minutes, Lyssa emerged, reeking of fuel. “I think I’ve got it this time.” She climbed into the cockpit and reached for the starter.
Luke and Will resumed fanning.
“My arm’s falling off!” Will complained. He only let go for a second to rest his aching shoulder. But at that moment, a gust of wind snatched the greasy terry cloth from his other hand. The towel spread open like a full sail and floated slowly down over the engine hatch.
“Hey, wait — ” Will began.
But Lyssa’s oil-stained finger was already pressing the button.
The spark from the starter ignited the trapped fumes in the engine room. It made a phoom, like the lighting of a propane barbecue, only a lot louder. This was followed by a split-second pause as the fire shot up the fuel lines to the Phoenix’s ninety-gallon gas tanks.
“Get down!” howled Lyssa, hurling herself to the deck of the cockpit.
A mammoth explosion rocked the schooner, and for a moment, dusk was bright as day. Suddenly, the main cabin and galley were gone, replaced by a pillar of flame. The force of the blast threw Luke, Will, and Lyssa out over the transom, clear into the sea. Luke tasted salt water for a moment and then resurfaced into a burning hailstorm. Bits of cabin, deck, and galley — all on fire — pelted down on him, forcing him to dive. The blazing cookstove of the Phoenix hit the waves right where he had been a split second before.
On the foredeck, the shock wave knocked J.J. and Ian off their feet. When they recovered, they found themselves facing a wall of fire that engulfed two-thirds of the boat.
“The extinguisher!” cried Ian, reaching down the companionway and yanking the small tank from its mounting on the bulkhead. He pulled the pin and sprayed foam at the blaze. J.J. picked up a bucket and began bailing water from the cabins and sloshing it into the firestorm. The heat was unbearable, and they stumbled on the ruined deck, which was a tangle of twisted planks and splinters.
“It’s no use!” bawled J.J. “We might as well be throwing Dixie cups of Kool-Aid!”
The blast had knocked Charla out of her post atop the foremast, landing her upside down in the ratlines. It took every ounce of her gymnastics training to right herself again. Through the waves of heat and smoke that billowed over her, she spotted J.J. and Ian. But when she looked aft, she saw only the boiling orange of the blaze.
“Where are the others?” she called down.
“In the stern!” shouted Ian.
“There is no stern! It’s all fire back there!”
With a terrible creaking sound, the flaming stump of the mainmast toppled over in a shower of sparks. It crushed the cabin top, cutting the younger boy off from J.J.
“Ian!” J.J. cried.
Ian jumped back, stumbling on an upended deck board. The extinguisher dropped from his hands, rolled into the fire, and exploded in a whoosh of compressed gas.
The blazing mainmast ignited the foresail. J.J. sloshed water onto the smoldering sail, but flames quickly licked up the canvas, forcing Charla back atop the mast. The fire soon spread to the sheets and rigging.
“Ian, can you hear me?” called J.J.
“Get out of there!” came Ian’s voice from the inferno.
J.J. spun around. “To where?!”
There were only two choices: Either stay on the burning boat or take his chances in the vast, inhospitable, and terrifying sea.
Luke paddled like a four-year-old at his first swimming test. Just keeping his upper lip above water seemed almost impossible. This was crazy! He had a bronze badge from the Red Cross — why was he so helpless?
Panic and shock, he thought. And fear. He was trembling all over.
Stay close to the boat. That was the first rule for a man overboard. But a widening pool of burning gasoline was spreading around the Phoenix, making it look like the waves themselves were on fire. Luke found himself drifting farther and farther from the ship. If he got separated from the others, only the fish would find him.
“Luke!” It was a faint call from the gloom.
Will. The voice seemed to be coming from miles away, although Luke was sure Will couldn’t be very far. “Will, are you okay?” he shouted.
No answer.
Luke looked around, fighting hysteria. The sun was down. Detail disappeared against the incandescent orange of the fire. He saw nothing. Except —
There it was. A flash of color a few yards away. He made for it, splashing wildly.
In the pool at the Y, it would have been a ten-second swim. But now, but here — a distance marathon.
“Will!” Luke’s voice was breathless, unsteady.
Nothing.
And then his flailing arm smacked right into it — a six-foot piece of the Phoenix’s cabin top, floating in the water. The corner glowed like hot coals. Luke used his weight to submerge the smoldering portion. With a puff of steam, the fire was out. He hauled himself on top and lay back, gasping.
“Ow!” His head banged against something hard. He rolled over to find himself staring at a steel-gray smoke-head vent. This was the galley ceiling! It must have been broken off and thrown free when the explosion launched the stove overboard. That’s why it was still in one piece when most of the deck and cabin had been blown to toothpicks.
“Will!” he called again with growing urgency.
The Phoenix was completely engulfed in flames now. As he watched, a large charred section of stern broke off and disappeared below the waves. The rest of the schooner resettled herself, rocking to and fro into a new balance. Could there be anybody alive on there? Surely he wasn’t the only one left?
“Will!” he bellowed. “Lyssa! Ian! Charla!” A pause. “J.J.!” He’d even be happy to see J.J. at this point.
“Luke!”
It was Will. No question about it this time. Careful not to lose his balance on the cabin top, Luke rose to his knees. It was almost completely dark now.
Then he saw it — a flailing arm. He stood up — did he dare stand up? There, twenty yards away, som
eone — Will? — was rolling in and out of the waves, clinging desperately to a mangled deck plank.
Luke flung himself back on his stomach and began to paddle. He looked up. Will wasn’t an inch closer. Here in the open ocean, the wave action canceled out whatever progress he could manage. To save Will, he would have to swim for it.
Swim for it? Was he nuts? He was weak — could hardly force his arms into a dog paddle. A few minutes ago, he’d barely made it to the cabin top ten feet away. This was five times that distance — at least! And the same again coming back, dragging Will, who might be hurt or burned. It was insanity. He’d drown the both of them.
“I can’t hang on much longer!” Will called.
The decision was made. A slim chance was better than no chance at all. Luke threw himself off the cabin top and hit the water. He drove each stroke deep into the waves, fighting the sea and his own exhaustion. His eyes stung from salt, but he forced himself to keep them open. Can’t lose him. Can’t lose him. He tried to call Will’s name and came up choking on seawater.
Alone! Where was Will? Oh, no! He’d lost Will and — a frantic look backward — he could no longer see the floating cabin top!
He’d given up his raft — his one chance at survival — for nothing.
And then a wave broke, and Luke saw him, still clinging to the piece of deck —
“Will?” Luke blurted.
The boy’s face was completely blackened with soot.
Will blinked in amazement. “Luke?” In that instant, Luke realized he must look the same.
He struggled to focus his racing mind on what was important. “Can you swim?”
“I — I’m not sure.” Will seemed aimless and confused. “I found a piece of wood — ”
“Hang on to it,” Luke commanded. “It’ll help us float.”
Grabbing Will Red Cross style — oh, how he wished he’d paid better attention in that lifesaving class! — Luke started back in the direction of the cabin top. We’ll find it, he told himself. If they didn’t, they would both drown. Sidestroke — shuttle-kick. Will’s deadweight threatened to drag him down.
“There’s a cabin top floating up ahead,” Luke managed to say between tortured breaths. His paddling arm throbbed with pain. “Can you see it?”