Red Sea by Diane Tullson

overwhelming need to lay down. There is less water in my cabin. I rip off my wet clothes, leaving them in a puddle on the floor, hang my jacket on a hook and ransack a pile of clothes to find a T-shirt and shorts. My hands fumble as I put on the clothes. So cold. I jam my mattress back into place and turn over my slashed pillow, then crawl into the bunk. My quilt is gone, but I find a blanket that is dry and wrap it around me. My knees are weak, everything is weak, my head feels too heavy for my neck. Using the pillow as a brace against the storm, I cram myself into a ball in the corner of my bunk. I cover my ears to block out the howling wind. I don’t close my eyes because when I do, I see Eggman, and Duncan, so I lie there and listen to the blood racing through my arteries and veins and capillaries, and wish I could stop shaking.

SEVEN
    F OR ONE LONG MINUTE , I think I’ve gone blind. Then I realize that I’ve fallen asleep, and now it’s dark. I have no idea if it’s just night, or almost morning. All I know is I must have been sleeping for hours.
    â€œMom!” How could I just leave her like that? What if she woke up and thought she was alone?
    â€œI’m coming, Mom.” Automatically I reach for the flashlight clamped on the wall by my bed. It’s not there, of course. I wrestle out of the bunk and swing my feet to the floor. The shock of cold water past my ankles makes me gasp. We’re taking on water, a lot of water. Not good. I tryto swallow the panic rising in my gut and wade out to the main cabin.
    I still have to hang on, but the motion in the boat now feels like angry aftershocks. The books and debris on the floor have transformed into a kind of pulp porridge. I feel my way to the dining table.
    â€œMom?” I can’t see her, not in the dark, but I find her face with my hand. “Are you awake?”
    Under my hand, she stirs, moans, then falls quiet again.
    â€œMom?”
    No response. Her skin feels warmer. I listen to her breathing, matching my intake with hers, grateful for every breath. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep. I was just so cold.” I tug the quilt tighter over her shoulders and make sure her feet are covered. “You’re okay. You’re going to be fine.” Right.
    I slog my way to the locker where we keep our boots. In the dark I can’t tell if the boots are mine or Duncan’s, not that it matters. I pour the water out of the boots, then put them on. Now I don’t have to worry about slicing my feet open on broken glass. The breaker panel is dark. When I flipped all the breakers, I turned off the bilge pump too. I wonder how much battery juice a bilge pump needs to expel a small swimming pool from the inside of a boat? What I do know is that a bilge pump can’t handle sodden textbooks. With my boot, I stir the mess in the water. “I’ve got to get rid of this stuff.”
    It’s probably just as well that I can’t see what I’m doing. Using the plastic garbage pail, I sift the bilge water forarmfuls of debris that I dump in the bucket. Then I haul the bucket up the steps to the cockpit, and dump it into the cockpit. The cockpit is designed to drain itself, and the stuff I pour in flows out over the stern through the open transom. Big stuff, like cushions, I just heave out into the cockpit, not caring if they blow overboard. I am a one-woman environmental disaster. Out goes one of the plastic food containers. Another I find seems to be still closed, and I taste the contents. Lasagna. The cold congealed pasta makes my stomach roll and I can’t choke it down. I remember when my mother was making the lasagna the day before we set out. She’d been thrilled to find the right kind of cheese at the market, not Mozzarella, but something that would work. Small victories gave her such pleasure. Then I think about Eggman, and I toss the container out into the cockpit.
    I find what feels like