At Sea by Emma Fedor

Author:Emma Fedor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gallery Books
Published: 2023-03-07T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

Cara could see her breath when she woke up. Her throat stung when she swallowed and the tip of her nose was white with cold. She craved water, but didn’t want to leave the warmth of her bed. She remembered their fight—if you could even call it that, it was so stupid—from the night before and looked over to Brendan’s side of the boat. He wasn’t there. She checked the time on her phone: 5:52 a.m. Where had he gone so early?

She heard a shuffling overhead. Someone was up on the deck. She groaned to herself and pulled a knit hat down over her ears. She wrapped a flannel blanket around her shoulders, shivering, crept out of bed, and pushed open the hatch above the staircase, peeking through the crack until she saw Brendan, sitting folded into himself in his boxer shorts—the ones with little chili peppers on them—arms wrapped around his knees. Cara burst through the door and wrapped her blanket around him, holding Brendan close in her arms.

“Brendan, what are you doing out here? What’s wrong?”

He’d been crying. His eyes were lined with pink and the vein on the left side of his forehead was engorged. His skin was rough to the touch with goose bumps. She tried to flatten them out with the friction from her hands, rubbing back and forth across his shoulders.

“It’s cold. Come back inside.”

“I can’t. I can’t think in there.”

“Okay. Well, can I bring you some clothes?”

Brendan stood up. “I need to go,” he said.

“Go where? Brendan, what’s going on?”

“I just need to think,” he said. “Figure out my next course.”

He was pacing now, running his hands nervously through his hair.

“Is there anything I can do to help you?”

“No. No, it’s safer if you don’t know anything.”

“Should I be worried? You’re scaring me. Why won’t you look at me?”

“I’m sorry. I need to go. Yeah, I need to go.”

Brendan turned his body to climb down the ladder, and Cara grabbed his arm.

“Wait, Brendan. It’s six o’clock in the morning! Where are you going?”

Brendan pulled his arm away, making no attempt to check his strength. Surprised by the force of his resistance, Cara lost her balance and fell back hard onto the deck. She called out Brendan’s name, pleading with him to wait, but could only watch as he ran down the road, his silhouette disappearing into the blackness of the surrounding trees, backdropped by the glow of dawn.

Cara felt paralyzed by shock and indecision. She didn’t know whether to chase after him or wait at the boat for his return. He’d been running so fast, she’d never catch him. But she could hardly sit and wait in the boat. She needed to do something.

She picked up her phone and dialed. It was the only thing she could think to do. Mental state aside, Brendan was physically okay—at least, he seemed to be. She’d seen him down before, but there had never been an episode quite like this. There was a terror radiating from him, made all the more concerning by the fact that, to her, its source was invisible.

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