chapter 12
I cried until my eyes burned and the walls became blurry. I started thinking of Dad and Robbie, which was a mistake because it only made me more miserable. Here I was, this selfish little girl wrapped up in my ridiculous infatuation, and I had completely forgotten the hardships my father and brother were probably going through. Only a true monster would encourage the pain they were enduring now—what we all were enduring.
The last genuine hope I had to cling to remained with the knowledge that we would arrive at port any time now. If that was still true, then Charlie, the guys, and the remaining crew only had a limited number of hours to change their mind about what to do with me. But what did I know about truth? Maybe what I had heard from Polo had been a lie to begin with. Obviously Charlie’s affections toward me had been a lie. Despair pinched my insides as I relived it again. How naïve could I have been to have believed that true love could be conceived and consummated in less than a week?
I recklessly paced the room. I felt like a caged zoo animal. Really, a better description would be to say that I was a bird that was never meant to fly, practical and intelligent like a penguin or fowl. So even though all of my parts were there, from an evolutionary standpoint I was defective. That’s why it had been really quite silly of me to think someone like Charlie could ever love me. He was an untamed beast in the wilderness who needed his pack. Meanwhile, I was designed to function in solitude as I always had.
This was my fault, I decided. I should have known better.
A light tapping sounded somewhere outside the cabin. At first I thought it was the rapping of someone outside the door and panic clutched at me. But the tapping was more widespread than that, and I remembered how erratic the waves had been and what Charlie had said about the impending storm.
At least he hadn’t seemed to be lying about that.
The tapping increased into a steady sheet of rain that I could hear bouncing from the ship’s sides like they were flimsy pieces of scrap. Every few minutes, I could hear a thunder clap in the distance as well, but it sounded too far away to do any damage. I was glad the storm had come when it did. I still didn’t know anything about being on a ship, but I imagined there wouldn’t be a whole lot of time for a crew to kill and dismember its stowaway when the weather was disagreeable. Hopefully, Charlie was far away from the cabin, doing something productive to keep the ship and its cargo safe.
I looked down at my swollen ankle and grimaced. It looked worse than it probably was, but it still hurt. The ball of the joint had become swollen and gained an abnormal crimson color. I should have been putting ice on the sprain, but that wasn’t an option now. I could only hope it would be okay in case I had to run. Odds were I would have to do a lot of running.
I listened to the rain, a constant pummeling on the outskirts of the ship. I became somewhat concerned at the intensity of the storm. The ship would be capable of handling this sort of weather, right? I began pacing again and considered my options. Concentrating on the sharp pain above my foot helped to keep me centered, helped to keep the fear away.
When the storm passed, there was a very real chance they would come for me. Then again, it was still possible that they wouldn’t. It could only be just one more day until the ship landed somewhere where I could find an American embassy, or at least someone to help me. But what would I do until then? These guys had to know I was in here by this point; I could give them that much credit.
What was my best move here? Once they considered their options and realized I would probably repeat everything I saw and heard to the first law enforcement official I came into contact with, they would probably cut their losses and toss me overboard, laughing as I struggled for breath.
I shuddered at the notion.
Okay, so what to do? If I stayed bunkered, at least I was familiar with my surroundings and could hold out here for a day or so if need be. On the other hand, I was a sitting duck. I had turned myself into a prisoner that they had access to anytime they wanted, and that could only mean their advantage over mine.
I was going to have to get out. If I was smart about this, I could hide quietly somewhere and then sneak off during what I hoped would be the chaos of getting to port. With any luck, my new talent of being invisible would pay off here, and maybe I could just slip off without much trouble.
I put my brush back in my bag and secured it tightly to my back. I was just trying to psych myself up when an idea occurred to me. I glanced over at Charlie’s stack of sketchbooks and picked one up. This one was unfamiliar to me—the one he never let me look through. Without looking at it, I put it in my bag. I decided I wanted to take a piece of him with me, even if it was only something as inconsequential as a couple of drawings. It was a souvenir, I told myself. Besides, the F.B.I might want it to profile him or something.
It didn’t take much for me to justify myself.
It took longer to slide the mattress back over than it did to move it in the first place. But once I did, I was particularly careful to put my ear to the door to listen for voices or footsteps. If someone was waiting to intercept me, I at least wanted to be prepared. The only thing I could really hear, though, was the sound of my heart beating in my ears and the rain pounding on the deck above. After a few agonizingly long minutes, I decided it was safe to remove the crate and unlock the door.
As I hoped, the door opened without any issues and I slipped out quietly, closing it behind me. I hobbled out into the narrow hall, not failing to realize how much my ankle hurt now. Still, I tried to be as cautious as possible. I noticed some tool boxes and cables hanging from the pipes and rafters, which concerned me a little, but I tried not to focus on them and kept my senses on the direction I had come from last. I distinctly remembered what Polo had mentioned to me about Hold 6 and how it was the last place to get unloaded. I anticipated that even if someone tried to find me there, I could hide away amongst the containers and then run out when an ideal opportunity presented.
I heard some voices charging down a stairwell to my right as I descended a corridor, but I slid behind a large metal frame where I managed to squish myself up enough against the wall so the group didn’t see me. At what felt like two hundred miles a minute, I was certain my pounding heart was a GPS of my location—beeping me away to everyone. But they jogged past and headed in a completely different direction, not having seen me.
I entered the hold, which was still unlocked. Although it was dark and the rain poured through the webs of the crates, it still felt safer than Charlie’s cabin. My eyes took more than a few minutes to adjust, however, as soon as they did, I began hobbling on the planks and used both hands to hold onto the sides of the railing. My hands shook as the planks squeaked from the rain and the motion, but relief still welled within me. If nothing else, I had gotten somewhere I could buy myself some time. I felt proud of my resourcefulness and began thinking that maybe I could get through this after all.
I had to pause every few steps and rest my weight on my good leg. It was frustrating, grueling work, but I kept telling myself it was necessary and I had to be practical. The daunting part was at least relieved by the rain coming through the ceiling. I opened my mouth and let it fill with the freezing water. Within a matter of minutes, however, I was drenched. I briefly considered going back, but knew that being already halfway across the hold and in the midst of the maze of containers, it wasn’t very smart. Besides, I didn’t have anywhere else to go.
I stopped once more, a few steps before the final edge of the passage. The wind was crisp and roared against the metal containers, making them echo in a song I didn’t understand the lyrics to. In another circumstance, I might have liked the noise, I might have thought it was nice, but it only gave me a headache now. I looked up at the wall of the great ship and saw an anomaly in the metal flanking. I reached my hand up to touch the abnormality. It was as though a hole had been made in the wall, only it hadn’t come through all of the way. I pulled myself closer and examined the deformity in an attempt to figure out what it was. Strangely enough, it was misshapen in its center and squared at its ends. I hadn’t noticed it my first time here. As I squinted, I thought I saw smeared red blotches in the center of its core. When I realized what the red was, I was almost in a full-on run to get to the platform.
Once I did get there, the pain running through my ankle had me out of breath. I looked at the dark sky as my lungs heaved. I leaned against the back of one of the containers, no more than a few feet from the confessional itself. I took off my sling bag. Already it was completely soaked. Even its Velcro straps threatened to come undone from the sogginess. I cursed myself and my unusual lack of planning. With everything else, I didn’t want to lose Charlie’s sketches. They were the only part of him that I would really have when everything was said and done. I wanted to cry at the thought of him. Though I may have memories of him, they were false and tainted by lies. And when the time came, they wouldn’t even be mine. I would probably have to share most of them with the F.B.I. He had never really cared for me. That had all been a lie to keep me placid. But maybe I could look back on these someday and lie to myself, pretend like I had mattered to him in some way or another.
My eyes ballooned with tears and I began to laugh at the same time. How completely insane! Here I was in serious bodily danger and I was worried about some stupid sketches? Calm, Addie, calm. Take a deep breath and relax. I had to keep it together for a little while longer. I could lose my mind later when I got home. But until then, what about those these sketches? I clasped my bag as close to me as possible, although I knew it wasn’t doing much good. Even putting it under my shirt probably wouldn’t make much of a difference at this point. My eyes scanned the room for a solution…
In the end I opted to enclose the sketchbook inside the Da Vinci coffee table book in the hopes the inventor would protect my lying love. My hands combed over the various contents of my bag, the few scattered bobby pins at the bottom, some coins, a charger for my phone, the frayed ends of my wallet. All practical parts of a life that was probably about to end.
My eyes wandered over to the confessional again. It was just as dark and ominous as when I had seen it last. I could never forget what Charlie had told me about the sorts of things that had gone on in there and what he truly thought of me. My mind could see it all very clearly now in the cold and the rain. I wanted to banish the images away, but they kept replaying themselves in my head. My tears melded together with the rain and ran together into the sketchbook.
I curled deeper into myself, making myself impossibly small. I had drastically underestimated the cold and how it would affect my time hiding in the hold. I shivered uncontrollably, my teeth chattering until my jaw hurt, my flesh a never-ending row of goosebumps that stung at the touch.
I recited poetry in my head and the capitals of every state, but it did nothing to quench my growing fear. After everything I had been through these last few days, would I now die from hypothermia? I reluctantly removed one of my hands from in-between my knees and examined the numb fingertips. Through strained eyes, I could make out a lovely shade of violet that began at the nail and stretched to the base of the knuckle. I laughed and tried to rub my shoulders. What was better, I wondered: dying sooner or later? Freezing to death or dying by the hands of the man I loved?
The tears were hot on my face compared to the icy rain water I could no longer avoid as the wind blew it in without reprieve. Charlie had been my only protector here, the only one defending me. Even the sweet and oblivious Polo might be accepting to my sudden demise if his close friends had been the ones to cause it. Without Charlie to speak for me, I was as good as dead.
I squeezed my eyes and prayed the rain would stop so I wouldn’t turn into a human Popsicle. Maybe I could hold out and tolerate the cold until they made port at Singapore. It would be a lot more difficult to kill me at one of the busiest ports in the world, wouldn’t it?
I continued to clutch my bag and tucked my hands under my arms, hoping to seek some warmth there. I didn’t want to think of Charlie, but I kept picturing his kaleidoscope eyes, wondering what color they might be projecting just then. While it probably would have been significantly easier if he wasn’t so close by, the idea of knowing he was near made it that much worse. My memories were still so fresh, the pain of the lies he told me raw and festering, without anything to distract me. If I was at home I would just go to the library and straight to the reference section. I would probably stay until the librarians politely kicked me out. I had done something similar in those first days after Mom died. But now I had nowhere to escape and I hated him for that.
Instead, I tried to escape the cold through ceaseless memories, living through them one by one as if they had just occurred. I remembered the first time I drank coffee and all the annoying consequences for Mom. I thought of Robbie showing Dad Angry Birds on the phone and his subsequent addiction thereafter. But as much as I hated it, I thought mostly of Charlie and every one of his endearing traits, the smell of his skin after he had just lit a cigarette, the random facts he would share, how his accent thickened when he was angry.
Charlie. Fewer than twelve hours ago he had kissed me and held me like there was nothing else in the world. I slid deeper into the metal floor of the hold and began to sob. Something fragile and beautiful inside me began to wilt away, the cold taking over a willing body.
When my eyes began burning and blurring over to the point that I could no longer see my own self-pity, I shut them with the hope of taking a brief rest. If nothing else, sleeping would kill time and get me out of my head for a little while. I heard the rain continuing to beat on the outside of the ship and it had almost become soothing. I had even begun to count the number of pitter patters from one to one hundred before starting over again. When the dark closed in, I was actually somewhat comfortable on the metal floor; it brought back memories of broken bunk beds at summer camp and camping with Robbie and his friends.
I tried to focus on stuff like that while I drifted off. I thought of a few summers ago when Dad passed out after tree trimming in the hammock, and Robbie and I painted his toe nails. The time when Robbie jumped from the trampoline trying to dive into a snow pile (Mom had practically lived in the E.R. that day). I laughed to myself and wrapped my arms around my body, trying to keep the memories as close as I possibly could.
As I slept, I dreamt of strange and ominous things. On top of everything else, I’ve never really had dreams before and when I did dream, I usually forgot them by the time I finished my breakfast or brushed my teeth; strange now in the last few days that I would have more than one dream that I could actually remember. It wasn’t just the imagery that shook me, it was a feeling. They became etched in my head, a permanent part of me.
The dream gave me venom-producing snakes slithering their way up walls, trying to get to an unknown destination. How I knew they were poisonous but not where they were going is beyond me. Instinctually, I just knew they were dangerous, deadly. There were dozens of them, all sorts of different colors and sizes, though equally terrifying with their proportions. I couldn’t see myself, but I knew I was nearby enough to be in some serious danger. With the loud hissing coming closer and a hundred tongues and attached fangs approaching, I wanted to call out, to scream for someone, for anyone—for Charlie. And yet I couldn’t. I had no voice, no lungs, and no mouth. I watched them gain momentum as they increased their speed up the wall.
When I opened my eyes, my face was wet from fresh tears and my legs shook from the intensity of the dream, so much that it took me several minutes to stand up straight again. I tried to remember the last time I had even had a nightmare, but I couldn’t. Nightmares were for children, or people who ate too much junk food before bed.
It was just a dream, I told myself. Just a dream.
I don’t know when I stopped acting like an idiot and calmed down. When I finally gave in to the claustrophobia and the cold, I couldn’t do anything more than lie back down and shiver into myself.
I was too busy waiting for death.
I was curled against the web of the hold, alone and quaking as the wind continued to ransack its exterior walls, sending in the occasional splash of rain to provoke me. I tried to go back to those places of memory that made me so happy before: Mom and Dad trying to ride a tandem bike, attempting to help Robbie pick out a Christmas gift for some girl he liked. And even though I didn’t want to, though I tried to avoid it, I also thought of Charlie. I tried to push him out of my head. I didn’t want my final thoughts to be of him; he didn’t deserve them. But eventually, I gave in and recalled every word, every smell, and every sound that was ever him. As the night gave way, so did my mind…
What a funny sort of way to die, I thought.