Washed Ashore by Kerr Thomson

Author:Kerr Thomson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.

The water was cold. It sucked Hayley’s breath from her and for a few long seconds she wondered if it was ever coming back. Then her body made an involuntary gasp, she coughed and spluttered and tasted the salt of the sea. As she rose and fell with the ocean, she kicked her legs and moved her arms, but this wasn’t swimming. Her bulky life jacket restricted any kind of movement, although it was keeping her alive. The sea was too cold and too heaving to allow anything more than floating and keeping her head above water. And then Hayley remembered why she was here: Dunny.

She looked around her and there were only waves and the Moby Dick looming large above her. The whales were gone, or were they just circling below, waiting to attack? Walls of water led up to a circle of light far above her head and for a moment she fancied she saw her mom and Fraser Dunbar looking down into the well and shouting words she couldn’t hear. It was a lonely place at the bottom of this hole in the sea. The beginnings of a scream gathered itself at the back of her throat, the beginnings of terror and the loss of control. She watched her arm rise above the waves and knew she was only a pounding heartbeat away from frenzied thrashing at the water. And then something touched her arm and held on; when she looked, Dunny was there beside her and he was grinning.

Hayley grabbed hold of him and together they rose out of the trough. As the wave crested, with the two of them on top, they were momentarily as high as the deck of the Moby Dick. Her mom stood there, a frantic look on her face, flanked by Fraser. Ben was desperately searching the stern of the boat, for a life belt maybe.

Hayley waved. It seemed a silly thing to do, as if she was warming up for a high school swim meet, with her mom sitting in the bleachers. Her mom was shouting something, encouragement, presumably, to swim in her direction.

Hayley tried, but she had too much to contend with: the swell, the cold, the bulky life jacket, the tight hold she had on Dunny. She was a strong swimmer—she had been going for state finals—but this wasn’t swimming, this was survival. She floated in the water, concentrated on keeping their heads above the waves, hoped the Moby Dick would come to them.

Then there was movement and a splash and suddenly Fraser was there, bobbing beside her. He tried to speak, but the air had been wrenched from his lungs. Hayley saw he wasn’t wearing a life jacket.

How does this help? she thought.

“Come on,” Fraser shouted finally, offering no advice on how this might be achieved.

Hayley slapped the water a few times but made no forward progress. The boat was only a few feet away, with Fraser in between, but it could have been moored on Mars for all the hope she had of reaching it.

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