“For the first scene, I’m on the ship. Like I’m standing on a deck,” Tori says. “The ship is rocking and there’s a lot of spray and big swells like you’d find in the ocean. There are benches out here, and then there’s a door that leads to . . . like a giant glass room, and I can see a bunch of empty seats in there. Rows of them, like in an airport terminal. Some tables, too. There’s stuff strewn all around.”
Ben looks up. He tilts his head, eyes narrowed, but says nothing.
“Can you see any land in this frame?” Sawyer asks.
“Not this one. Just sky. Cloudy, possibly raining, windy. Slight bit of yellow behind low clouds, like it’s morning.”
“Anything else? Any writing on the ship that you can see?”
“The benches have words indicating there are life vests inside. That’s all I notice.”
“Any people in this shot?”
“Only blurry images far inside that glass room. Nobody’s sitting—if they’re not on the floor, they’re all in one place, crowding around.”
Sawyer hands her a piece of tracing paper and the pencil, and she holds it up to the screen and quickly traces what she sees.
Tori slides the video play bar slightly to the right, narrowing her eyes and trying to get it in just the right spot. “Okay,” she says. “The next scene is from farther away, like I’m not on the boat, because I can see the whole thing and a vast expanse of water behind it. There are words on the side, but I can’t read them—I’m really far away, like maybe my view is from land. When this scene is in motion, there’s a very sudden jolt or something. I can’t really describe it, and there’s no sound or anything. It’s like the vision has a glitch in it. . . .” She stares at the computer and we all look at her quietly.
“Oooh,” she says softly. “That’s why.” She looks closer at the screen. “There’s something in the water, and I think the ship hits it. I never realized what that bump in the vision was until now.” She touches the screen and slides her finger across it, as if we can see what she’s pointing at. “There,” she says. “It’s like a seawall sticking out.” She looks up. “It’s almost invisible because the waves are so high.”
“Good job, Tori,” I say. “That explains a lot.”
She traces this picture and Sawyer passes it around the room.
“Are the people on the floor before or after the little jolt?” I ask.
“Hmm. Before. That’s weird.”
I write everything down.
As Tori goes on to find the next frame, Ben studies the sketch. He looks up. “Am I allowed to ask questions or . . .”
“Please,” I say. “Yes.”
“Tori,” he says, “I’m just curious. Have you spent much time on the water? Sailing, fishing, swimming, anything like that?”
“No, hardly at all. I mean, my mom and I went to this little cottage once on a lake that was more like a pond, and I’ve spent a few hours at the beach now and then, but I’m not really a beach fan.”
He smiles warmly. “So you won’t be offended if I correct you?”
She laughs. “Heck no.”
Ben nods and holds up her sketch. “Technically, this isn’t what I’d call a ship. It’s a ferry. I wondered that at first when you mentioned all the rows of seating and the glassed-in observation deck.” He points to the vessel drawing. “See how stout and flat it is? Unless the computer stretched the image, I’d say this might even be a car ferry.”
Sawyer looks at Ben. “Sawyer is impressed,” he says, and glances at me. “Did I do that right?”
I grin. “Perfect.” I turn to Ben. “Great. So, Ben, have you been on the water much?”
He scratches his head. “I have.”
“What’s your experience?”
“Well,” he says, almost sheepishly, “my family owns a marina. And I’m also a lifeguard.”
Twenty-Eight
I blink. “Seriously, Ben?”
“Yep.”
“I think I’m in love right now.”
“Me too,” says everybody else in the room.
Ben laughs it off.
“No, I’m serious,” I say. “This whole impossible feat just got a little bit easier, thanks to you. I mean, as long as it’s not in an ocean somewhere.” I press my lips together, forgetting that I hadn’t mentioned that little caveat to Tori. If this happens in the ocean and we bail, we don’t save Tori from going insane.
“My guess is it’s right here in Lake Michigan,” Ben says. “You can’t see across it, so Lake Michigan can very easily look like an ocean, especially in a storm. There were twenty-foot waves when the remains of Superstorm Sandy pushed through here—remember that one? And that’s not even the record.”
“What’s the record?” I ask, suddenly curious.
“Oh, heck, I don’t know. Twenty-three feet, I think.”
“Ben, I had no idea you were such a geek,” Sawyer says with sincere admiration in his voice.
“Back off, Sawyer,” Trey mutters as he types frantically on Ben’s computer.
Tori moves on to the next scene, and the next, and the next, all of which offer no additional clues, though the progression of the drawings of the ferry listing and sinking lower and lower in the water is frightening.