“I—I don’t know. It’s in the water. It looks like the ocean.”
“The ocean?” Sawyer and I exclaim again. We need to stop doing that.
“I mean, I don’t know. There are huge waves and rocks. And the ship is sinking.”
This time Sawyer and I are silent. “Are there people on board?” I ask after a pause. Of course there are, dumb shit.
“Yes. Lots of people. And they’re jumping and sliding and falling off . . .” She chokes on a sob. “Some are hurt. A bunch of them are going to drown.”
We are silent.
“The looks on their faces . . . ,” Tori says in a near whisper. “The panic and fear . . .”
Sawyer springs to life after the initial shock and starts typing everything into his phone. I wait for him to catch up, and I try to pull my thoughts together.
“How big is the ship?” I ask, my voice more gentle now. I know how horrible it is to see death over and over.
“I don’t know. Pretty big. Not like a giant freighter or cruise ship or anything, but yeah. Kind of big.”
“What color is it?”
“White. And some blue.”
“How many people do you see?”
She’s quiet for a long moment, and I think she might be counting. “Twenty or thirty,” she says. “It’s hard to count them because the scene goes by so fast.”
Sawyer mutters an expletive.
“And do they all . . . drown?”
“I—I think so.”
“Dear God,” I say. I slump against the step and stare blindly at the phone. I can’t comprehend. How are we supposed to save that many people? “Hey, Tori?” I say after a minute. “I’m going to have to call you back once I come up with a list of questions for you. Okay?”
“Yeah.”
“You okay? I know this is horrible.” All my anger toward her and her mother has now evaporated.
“I’m okay,” she says. But I hear her crying.
“Tori, if you help us, it’s going to be okay. Why are you crying?”
It takes her a minute. And then she says through sobs, “I don’t want this to be my fault too.”
Twenty-Five
When I hang up, I hear a noise behind me, and for a second I panic. What if my parents heard everything? How would I explain this? But when I turn to look, it’s Trey. Rowan’s there too, behind him.
“You gave me a heart attack,” I say. “How long have you been standing there?”
“I had the bedroom window open and I could hear you guys talking,” Rowan says. “So I got Trey and we came out.”
“We heard almost the whole thing,” Trey says, his voice grim. He glances over his shoulder at the house and says, “Let’s take a walk. I’m pulling Ben in on this over the phone if that’s okay.”
“Yeah, definitely,” I say. We head across the street to the elementary school and walk the sidewalks around the property while Trey updates Ben, and then he keeps him on the line to listen to our conversation.
Sawyer begins by recapping the notes he took. “White-and-blue ship, ocean, high waves, rocks, twenty to thirty people, some injured, in the water, all going to drown.” He stumbles and sucks in a breath. “Geez,” he mutters, shoving his phone into his pocket.
“You okay?” I ask.
“Yeah. Just . . . just blinded for a minute by the phone’s backlight.”
I frown, because his breathing is a little too heavy and his hand a little too clammy in mine for that to be the problem. But I push it aside. We need to figure this out.
“Okay,” Trey says. “I’m really not excited about this at all. So let’s start with this ocean bit. I’m telling you guys right now, we are not going to any freaking ocean. If this thing isn’t local, it’s out of our hands. That’s my decision, and I’m the oldest, and I can, like, vote an’ shit, and I’m telling you that this is the way it’s going to be.” He sounds like he thinks we’re going to argue.
“No, you’re right,” I say. “I’m on board with that.” I cringe at the unintended pun. “Anybody want to challenge Trey and his self-appointed authoritay? Nobody? Okay.” I look at Trey. “Hey, I think you just defined us as being strictly local superheroes.”
“There’s only so much a superhero with no actual powers can do,” Rowan says matter-of-factly.
“And we’re a picky, demanding bunch,” Sawyer adds, apparently feeling better now. “We put our foot down whenever we decide a tragedy is on the wrong side of the local boundary line.”
“Feet,” I say. “Our foot? Like we all have one big collective foot?” I shake my head. “I don’t think so.”
“Thank you, grammar whore,” Rowan mutters.
“I also have feet, not foot,” Ben contributes through the phone.
Sometimes this is just how we do our best thinking.
• • •
We come up with a list of questions and call Tori back. Her phone rings and rings, and finally someone answers—Tori’s mother. I get a sick feeling in my stomach, like I’m about to be yelled at, but all she says is that Tori is asleep, and can we maybe text the questions instead?
I agree and she actually thanks me, and we hang up. I start typing.
Five things to ask Tori:
1. Are the rocks in the middle of water or part of a shoreline or what?