The Raft: Chapters 35–45

The shark was gone almost before I’d registered what happened. I let out a belated but still startled shriek.

My gaze went to the mangled skipjack, who stared up at me with glazed, lifeless eyes.

I popped the morsel into my mouth and chewed.

Nasty. And pretty much incurable too.

I continued eating, hoping Max would wake up so he could have some too. I considered trying to rouse him.

“I was always polite. But she didn’t trust me with her daughter. I could tell. Maybe she had a feeling, an intuition. Maybe she knew something we didn’t.”
I wasn’t sure what that meant, but Max didn’t say anything else.

Having spent the last few years in the company of adults, I’d learned to make myself a little more viable during long dinner conversations involving mainly biologists and other scientists.

I had scoured the Internet and memorized a bunch of cool, gross, or amazing facts about some of the more obscure Northwest Hawaiian Islands, guaranteeing myself at least some attention at the dinner table.

A naturalist visiting the island from Honolulu reported seeing the last newborn rabbit being eaten alive by the last starving mother.

Lisianski was also pretty well known for bird poaching. About the same time as the rabbits, law enforcement raided the island and discovered poachers with the feathers of over 140,000 dead birds.

I sat on my haunches, hands gripping the front of the raft, watching as a wave lifted us.

Feeling gingerly with my fingers, I discovered my left eye was swollen.

My mouth was all gritty and I spit, tried to work up some saliva, then spit again.

My fingers were wrinkled and wet and had cuts on them. I tried to untangle my hair. I must have been lying there for a while, because several of my cornrows were completely twisted in the plant. I tried to unbraid them, to no avail.

Sooty terns flew overhead, their cries raucous and their bellies green from the reflection of the sun off the water.

The fact that it looked so good, the henna so dark, the drawing so pristine, made it seem completely out of place on my wreck of a body.

The odds of someone making it to the beach after such a beating were probably pretty low. I touched my left eye. Maybe I was lucky to come through as unscathed as I had.

Most of the time they just lay there on the beach, snoozing away, oblivious to any humans peering at them through a lens.

I whispered, “Sick.” Her belly was slashed open, bleeding, with innards exposed and tumbling out.

A few pieces of driftwood lay strewn about on the beach, but they looked too light.

As I hefted it, I knew that the board, combined with my current level of adrenaline and emotion, would work.

As I hefted it, I knew that the board, combined with my current level of adrenaline and emotion, would work.

The baby was beginning to molt, lose black fur in places.

So taking into account the baby’s size and the state of its fur, it must have been just about ready to be weaned.

Unable to watch, I trudged back to the raft.

Until, with scarcely a splash, the enormous red-and-white open maw of a tiger shark came up out of the water and chomped down.

“Ouch!” I’d stepped on something sharp and I looked down. An albatross chick, only a skeleton, still half feathered with silvery black down, most of the body eaten by crabs. I grabbed a stick and probed inside the ribs, what used to be the gullet, poking at a pile of red plastic.

“Ouch!” I’d stepped on something sharp and I looked down. An albatross chick, only a skeleton, still half feathered with silvery black down, most of the body eaten by crabs. I grabbed a stick and probed inside the ribs, what used to be the gullet, poking at a pile of red plastic.

One of that season’s chicks whose parents had inadvertently killed it.

Several sooty terns ran along the ground, chortling at me.