Chapter 16-3
879 Words
Tammy saw her chance after lunch.
Jasp had been sticking close by Mr. Morgan, learning all about sailing. He’d obviously geeked out when Mr. Morgan taught him how to steer. She couldn’t quite bring herself to call him Russell, even if she felt fine with Cassidy. He was nice enough, but he was so big and imposing and so…male. At last she supposed that’s what it was, but whatever, she stuck with using Mr. Morgan.
Tammy wouldn’t have minded learning to sail too, but talking with Cassidy and Perrin like grownups, and watching her dad with Perrin was occupying her mind.
She wondered how Perrin would answer the question now about whether she was trying to marry their dad. There was no way to get her alone to ask. She and Dad were suddenly attached at the hip.
But now Jasp had gone forward alone to sit on the front hatch and stare out at the waves. So Tammy left the cockpit and headed up to the bow. The couple of ropes no bigger around than her thumb that ran like a railing along the edge of the deck didn’t look like enough to stop anyone. There was a thin netting between the lines that didn’t impress her much either. The boat was tipped way over and the water was rushing madly by just inches below the edge of the deck. From the cockpit, it hadn’t looked like they were going so fast.
She backed off. The walkway down the other side of where the cabin stuck up through the deck was high out of the water. She tried that side. A glance back showed Cassidy, Dad, and Perrin all laughing together. Mr. Morgan, clearly keeping an eye on everything, nodded easily at her from where he sat at the tiller, clearly telling Tammy that she was right to go along the high side of the cabin. Lesson learned. She decided he was okay and hoped that he wouldn’t laugh at her too much for how she had to edge forward on the tilted deck clutching the thigh-high thin rope with both hands.
Earlier, Jasp had been trotting up and down the deck as if it was nothing. She didn’t have the feel of this yet. Every time they hit a wave, she was sure they were going over, or at least that she was. Finally she made it, very glad she was wearing the life vest.
She edged up and squatted beside Jasp, “Hey, Troll.”
“Go away.”
Usually that nickname at least earned a courtesy laugh.
“C’mon, Jasp. Give. What’s up with you?”
“With me? Up with me?!” He spun to face her, his skin suffused with deep red, and blotchy as if he’d been on the verge of crying. He hated crying.
“Yeah. With you!” She learned sometimes you had to face his steam with your own steam. “You’ve been grouchy all day.”
“Like you care.”
“I do. Honest.”
“Yeah. You care, just like Dad does. Only not about me. You two only care about her.” He made the pronoun sound awful, like it was acid or evil goo.
“That’s not true.” Tammy glanced back down the long deck to where Perrin sat curled in Dad’s arms. They’d been like that the whole trip. It wasn’t true, was it?
“Are you blind?” Jasp hadn’t bothered to look back, he was just staring over the bow again, out at the rushing waves, blinking hard at the wind. Wind that was dragging tears straight back from his eyes and into his hair so she hadn’t noticed them at first.
“Not blind, troll. She’s neat, that’s all.”
“She’s not neat. She’s trying to shove us out.”
“No!” Tammy protested. “She’s not like that.”
“i***t!” he shoved her away and she fell on her butt.
She shoved against his shoulder hard enough to knock him off the hatch. He tumbled down the sloped deck and landed hard against one of the vertical metal things that held up the lifelines every couple feet.
He cried out. Jasp struggled to stand, reached out with a hand to steady himself, but his arm hung funny and it didn’t work. The boat dropped down over a wave, making them almost weightless at just the wrong instant. With another cry, Jasp stumbled and fell over the lifeline into the water. His life vest inflated with a loud pop, then he disappeared toward the back.
She screamed.
That’s the only part of what happened next that Tammy clearly remembered, her own scream. How it tore at her throat, at her heart. How it hurt her ears and echoed from the sky. She’d already lost her mother and now she screwed up and Jasp was gone. Just like that. Only this time it wasn’t some drunk driver who did it. It was her.
Mr. Morgan’s shout and dive over the side were a blur. At some point, someone, Perrin maybe, remembered Tammy was alone at the bow and came to get her.
The rest was just images. The boat rocking in the water, no longer moving. A wet Mr. Morgan and a crying and shivering Jasp. Phone call for an ambulance to be at the dock.
And tears. She’d cried herself sick and remembered throwing up somewhere, maybe off the edge of the dock. Someone carrying her. Mr. Morgan? Whoever, they’d still been wet. Her own clothes now clammy down one whole side of her body. She and Perrin in the car, her dad with Jasp already gone.
She knew she’d have nightmares forever of Jasp falling into the water and never coming back.
Just like Mom.
- Writer
