Monstrum (6 page)

We all go wild with panic. “An!
An!
”

Sammy still has a few neurons firing in his brain, thank God. “Grab the rope! Hang onto it!”

I fumble around the edges of the raft. The worse-case scenario playing inside my head changes. Now I envision the raft sailing safely to the sandy beaches of Miami while the rest of us have the choice of drowning inside or outside the plane.

I search desperately, which isn't easy. My hands feel as useless as caught fish flopping around the bottom of a rowboat. There is a long braided rope, though, and I latch on to it with my nerveless fingers.

“Got it!” I cry.

“Good job,” Gray says to me. And then, “An! Grab the raft, An!”

The boys swarm around me to help pull the thing closer to the plane. The raft bobs atop the water slightly below the door, but it seems to be rising higher as waves make the plane rock and slosh water inside the cabin. There are vertical bars on either side of the door opening, and we cling to them as we peer out into the darkness. The only illumination comes from a blinking white signal light at the far end of the raft.

“An!” we all scream again. “An!”

“I'm here,” she splutters as she crawls into the raft. She coughs, then says, “I'm okay.”

Beside me, Sammy makes a strangled sound of relief.

“But the water,” An continues. “It's polluted or something. It's got all this stringy stuff floating around—eew! What is this? Seaweed? What the heck?”

“It's probably sargassum,” Sammy answers. “It grows—”

“Bro,” interjects Gray, putting a hand on Sammy's shoulder. “We're in the middle of a major crisis here. Bookmark the botany lesson for later.”

“Yeah! Don't just
stand there,
” calls An, who seems to have undergone a quick recovery from her disgust. “Let's go! Jump! We need to be out of the way before the plane goes under! Otherwise we'll get sucked down! Didn't you people see
Titanic
? Hurry!”

Oh, God. She's right. “Go, Maggie!” I cry. Maggie stiffens, peering uncertainly out at the raft. Since I'm in no mood to take any chances about anything, I shove her, hard, in the back.

“No, Bria!” Maggie screeches, falling.

When I hear the rubbery thud as she lands in the raft, I figure she'll forgive me.

“Nice,” Gray says.

“Bria!” The raw anger and fear in Maggie's quavery voice seem to bounce off the water. “Your butt is mine the next time I see you!”

Outraged, I holler back at her. “You're welcome for saving your life, you ungrateful cow!”

Maggie says something else, but I'm too hopped up to hear it.

My frantic heart thunders in my ears, and there are so many things going on right now—splashes and screams coming from somewhere nearby, the relentless lapping of the waves and bobbing of the plane, the boys conferring next to me, the people still in danger, the people that are dead and, worst of all, the nagging feeling that I'm missing something. It takes me a minute to regroup. There seems to be another clump of survivors with their own raft at the back end of the plane, but I can't worry about them now. I have to focus on my gang.

Okay. Okay.
Take a deep breath and think, Bria
, I tell myself, but it'd be easier to take a deep breath and dive to the bottom of the ocean. It's just not happening.

The head count inside my head, meanwhile, scrolls on. Maggie and An are safe. That just leaves me, Gray and Carter, right, and we need Gray and Carter's strength to grip the raft while the others jump, so that means—

“Sammy! You next!” I command.

Sammy, who's hanging on to the handle on the other side of the door from me, shoots me a withering look and gestures me toward the raft. “Females first,” he says. “That's a rule—”

With no warning, Carter lifts a foot and boots him in the butt.

“This ain't 1860, dude,” Carter mutters.

Sammy yelps and disappears over the edge. There's a thud . . . a splash . . . a shocked cry from An . . . and a coughing gurgle.

I can't see very well, but I think it's safe to assume that Sammy fell into the water to one side of the boat.

“Get in here, genius,” An says over Sammy's continued coughing. I can just make out her standing figure as she reaches out to grab Sammy and haul him into the raft. “You can't even
fall
right. Put your leg over the rim—that's it. Okay, guys,” she calls to us. “Who's next? Hurry!”

“Bria,” Gray says, “you next.”

“Great,” I say, not moving.

I tell myself to take that single step out the door and jump—it can't be more than ten feet down or so—but renewed terror shuts my body down. The plane may be sinking, yeah, but at the moment it feels a whole lot safer than that flimsy raft. I look in every direction, straining to see a boat or a strip of land, or even the suggestion of one of those, but there's nothing but desolation and hopelessness. Against the backdrop of the ocean disappearing into the black horizon, the raft looks as viable and practical as burning a candle in the shower.

The truth is, I'm not sure if I can jump.

“Bria?” Gray says again, but he doesn't really register with me because now I've got a new fear: heights.

The raft didn't look so far down when I was pushing Maggie out, but now it looks like jumping from Seattle's Space Needle. What if I fall in the ocean like Sammy did? What if the raft crests a wave and drifts away from the plane just as I'm jumping?

“Bria!”
Gray roars, reaching for me. “Get your ass in that raft! Now!”

I can see where this is going. He's going to push me out, and if he does, my overstressed heart will burst out of my chest, killing me long before I hit the water.

“Don't!” I cry, tightening my grip on the door handle. He's way bigger than I am, and if he gets a grip on me, I don't stand a chance. “I—I can't do it!”

M
y breath races out of my control, becoming strained and wheezy enough for me to feel light-headed. I bend at the waist, frantically trying to think of something calming so I won't collapse into a full-blown panic attack. But calming thoughts and plane crashes are mutually exclusive, and I can't get my lungs to work. I can't operate my voice, either, so I just shake my head and hold up a hand to ward him off.

Gray gets the picture, which is one of the best things about him. He always gets the picture. “Okay,” he says softly, reaching out for my hand. “We'll jump together. It'll be fine. Let's go.”

To my utter shame, I make a mewling sound of despair. I cannot move.

Carter curses sharply under his breath. He's been watching the proceedings and seems to be out of patience with me, but Gray tries again.

“Bria. You can't stay here. You know that, don't you?”

I manage a shaky nod.

“What's going on up there?” An demands.

Gray never takes his eyes off me. “Take my hand, Bria. Let's go.”

With tremendous effort, I suck in a shuddering breath. This allows my throat to loosen up enough for me to speak in a wobbly voice. “I don't”—
breathe, Bria
—“I don't want to fall in.”

Gray hesitates, but Carter steps up. “Where's your seat cushion, Bria? Grab that. It'll make you feel better.”

Sudden comprehension swoops in on me. Seat cushion!
You grabbed it—use it, dummy!

Only I don't have it anymore. My hands are empty, and God alone knows when or where I dropped the thing. “I don't have it,” I confess. “I'll get another one.” Relief loosens me up a little—this won't be so bad if I have my seat cushion—and I slosh a step or two backward. I'm still scared, but now I have a plan, and that makes a huge difference.

Carter nods. “Great. You might want to hurry—”

The plane lurches.

There's no warning. Just a sudden, violent tilt to the right, in the direction of the raft, and I hear the shocked cries of Gray and Carter as they lose their grips and their footing and hurtle over the side.

I also lose my balance and hit the floor spread-eagled. What feels like a gallon of ocean water surges into my mouth, and it tastes like decay salted with brine. I splutter and spit it out as fast as I can. Then I crawl to the door, the boys' names already screeching out of my mouth.

“Gray! Carter!”

Just then the raft's beacon light flashes white, providing enough illumination for me to see the shapes of two heads bobbing in the water about five feet away from the raft.

“They're okay,” Maggie calls.

I groan with relief, listening to the sounds of the boys swimming to the raft and climbing in. Then I hear Gray again.

“Bria—” he has a sudden fit of coughing and has to pause. “You have to jump
now,
before the raft drifts too far away. There's no one there to hold the rope anymore. Forget the seat cushion.
Jump!
”

I want to, but I can't. Just in the two seconds since Carter fell and dropped the rope, the raft has drifted much farther away, and I'm not sure I can make it. On the other hand, I'm going to have to swim a little bit, no matter what, and if I hesitate any longer, I'll have to swim a lot.

I don't want to have to swim a lot. Not in that black water.

And I certainly don't want to be the last living person on the plane while the others float away.

So I stumble to my feet, grab the rail, and hang the toes of my gym shoes over the edge, ready to go. It's now or never.

“I'm coming,” I shout.

“We'll try to wait right here,” Carter reassures me. “This thing's got oars, so we can steer a little bit. Let's go!”

I bend my knees and am halfway into my liftoff when I hear a thin, sobbing voice from deeper inside the cabin.

“Help,” it says faintly. “Oh, God, somebody help me, pleeeeease.”

For one arrested beat, I cannot fathom who could be left on the plane at this point, but then the thing that's been dancing around the edges of my consciousness comes into sharp focus.

How could I have forgotten?

“Espi?”
I call over my shoulder. “Is that you?”

“Bria? Help me! We have to get Macy out of here!”

I hesitate, running through my options, all of which suck.

I could do the instinctive thing, which is call for help, but no one's available to do any rescuing.

I could do what I'd planned to do, which is jump to relative safety, and hope that Espi and Macy are somehow able to do the same.

Or I could swallow my terror, go back into the dark, flooded and sinking cabin, all by myself, and help the girls who are my classmates, if not my friends.

Don't be stupid!
shouts the cowardly portion of my brain, which is about 99 percent at the moment.
What can you do anyway? You're just one medium-sized girl with a hero complex!

Go. Help them,
whispers the remaining 1 percent.

In the end, there's no decision to be made. I can't turn my back on Espi and Macy. I'd never be able to live with myself.

“Bria! Bri-aaaa!”

The sound of Gray's frantic voice mingling with everyone else's in the raft spurs me into action. I stick my head out the door while locking my numb fingers tight around the rail.

“Bria!” He's standing at the end of the raft nearest the plane, arms outstretched like a fireman prepared to catch a baby dropped from the top of a burning apartment. His voice is hoarse and ferocious. “Jump now, goddammit! Now!

“I can't,” I say. “Espi and Macy are still here, and they need help.”

“Bria—”

There was more. The protests sound like they're coming from Maggie and An this time, but I don't have time to argue.