Stranded Read online

  Carter grabbed on to the only thing he had left—his safety line. As the boat tipped, gravity took hold, and his body pivoted toward the water. The mesh of the jackline dug hard into his palms, but it held him where he was.

  At the same moment, a scream came from across the deck. He looked over—up, really—and saw Vanessa tumbling free of her own line, straight toward him. With the railing gone, there was nothing to keep her from dropping right off the edge and into the water.

  Nothing but me, Carter thought, and strained to reach his hand out as far as he could.

  * * *

  Vanessa felt a sharp snap when her safety line gave way. She pinwheeled her arms to try and stop herself, but it was no good. Already, she was falling sideways with the tilt of the boat. Her shoulder pounded hard against . . . something . . . as the world turned upside down and over again in the dark.

  The only thing left to grab was Carter’s hand. Vanessa reached for it as she went past, and for a moment, they connected. But then her fingers slipped out of his. Her body flew across the last of the rain-slick deck and out over the water.

  “Nooo!”

  Just as quickly, she snapped back hard. The hood of her raincoat had caught on something, even as the waves below tried to swallow her up to the waist.

  “I’ve got you!” Carter yelled from behind. “Give me your hand!”

  Vanessa reached toward his voice, grasping blindly. She found his arm first and started to climb it like a rope, one hand over the other, until she could swing a leg back up onto the deck. She pulled herself the rest of the way on board and collapsed there, catching her breath while Carter clipped her onto his own line.

  “Don’t move!” he shouted.

  Lying flat against the rocking deck of the boat, Vanessa caught sight of Jane huddled on the galley stairs. She was only a shadow in the dark from here, but the tiny size of her was unmistakable.

  “Jane!” she yelled. “Jane!”

  Jane barely moved at all. Her only response was to point back the other way, toward the front of the boat. When Vanessa turned to look, all she saw was a dark blur. But then, with the next flash of lightning, it became clear. The unmistakable, jagged mounds of a rocky shoreline loomed straight ahead of them.

  “We’re going to crash!” she screamed.

  * * *

  Jane wedged her foot against the opposite wall of the stairwell and squeezed her eyes shut, unable to move or even to yell out. It was like the voice inside her head was trapped there, even as her mouth opened and closed.

  Wake up, wake up, wake up!

  But this was no dream, and the crash came all too soon.

  With one last surge, a huge swell of water rose up under the boat, even as it sent the whole craft hurtling forward. Another unbearable sound of rock tearing at the hull came from below. Jane heard breaking, splintering sounds—and then nothing at all, as the force of the crash sent her tumbling back down into the galley.

  She felt herself turning over, and over again, as the water continued to flood into the boat. Then she slammed into something hard as everything came to a fast standstill.

  For several bewildering seconds, Jane swung her hands around, trying to find something to grab on to. She couldn’t even tell which way was up, and a wave of panic threatened to overwhelm her.

  Finally, her feet found solid ground. She stood up quickly, gasping—the water in the cabin was now up to her chest.

  But where were the others?

  The boat had stopped moving—a bizarre feeling after the roller coaster of the storm—but the wind and rain and lightning were still raging outside as much as ever.

  She heard Carter first, shouting her name in the dark.

  “Jane? Jane!”

  “I’m here!” she screamed back, and stumbled through the water until she hit the galley steps, just as Carter came down to get her.

  Vanessa and Buzz were right behind, just shadows in the dark now.

  “Are you hurt?” Carter asked.

  Jane had banged both her knees, and her head, but nothing felt broken. When she tried to answer, all that came out was a choked sob. Carter pulled her closer and held on tight.

  “Hang on, Janie. Don’t be afraid,” he said. “I’ve got you.”

  “What do we do now?” Buzz shouted.

  But there was no answer for that, either. The boat seemed to be lodged against whatever rocks they’d landed on, at least for the time being. Everything beyond the edges of the deck was invisible in the dark, and the whole cabin down below was flooded. They were already doing the only thing they could, huddling together on the stairs for warmth, keeping as much out of the storm as possible and just waiting for it to be over.

  CHAPTER 5

  Carter blinked awake.

  At first, nothing made sense. The clean white deck. The bright sunlight. The soft sound of the ocean.

  He blinked again, several times, and then remembered where he was. Jane, Buzz, and Vanessa were all right there, still asleep on the stairs. The galley down below was a total wreck, but outside, it was a clear, blue-sky day. Even that seemed strange.

  Carter eased his arm from around Jane to crawl up onto the deck and look around. His whole ribcage sent up a sharp wave of pain as he did—from the crash, he remembered. It was all coming back in pieces. When he lifted up his still-damp T-shirt, the bruises on his chest and midsection made him look like he’d gone a couple of rounds with a heavyweight champion.

  But he was alive, anyway. They all were. The whole crash seemed like some kind of bad dream now.

  Up on the deck, the first thing he saw was the high cliff wall they’d crashed into in the dark. The bow of the boat looked as if it had been chewed right off, leaving the rest of the Lucky Star wedged in among the rocks at a shallow angle. It was tricky keeping his footing, but not impossible.

  Off to the right, Carter saw where the craggy shoreline continued on for a hundred yards or more before it curved away and out of sight.

  To the left, down a short drop from the rocky shelf where they’d landed, was a long stretch of sandy beach. There were palm trees everywhere, and small crabs skittered around the water’s edge. It looked to Carter like somewhere he might want to go on vacation, if he were sitting at home and seeing all this on TV.

  But I’m not, he thought. I am so not.

  Then with a sudden flash of memory, Dexter and Joe came to mind. Carter whipped around to look out at the ocean, instinctively scanning for a flash of orange life raft. He checked the beach again, too, and even looked toward the woods that grew beyond the line of palms higher up on the shoreline.

  There was no sign of them anywhere.

  “Hello?” he shouted. “Dex? Joe? Anyone?”

  The only answer that came back was from the other three as they started to stir on the galley stairs.

  “Carter?” Vanessa called out.

  “What . . .?” Buzz croaked. “Where are we?”

  Jane looked up from where she was, wide-eyed and silent.

  Slowly, the three of them came up onto the deck. They stayed low at first, as if the boat might start moving again without warning. But in fact, at least thirty yards of rock separated them from the ocean now. The storm’s tide had turned around sometime in the night, leaving the Lucky Star high and dry.

  Nobody said anything at first. Jane came and stuck closer to Carter. Buzz sat down cross-legged on the deck, looking stunned.

  “Where are we?” he said.

  “Good question,” Carter answered.

  After another long silence, Jane spoke up next.

  “Do you think anyone got that SOS?” she asked, looking at Vanessa.

  “I don’t know. Probably,” Vanessa said. “Maybe.”

  “Can we try and send another?” Jane asked.

/>   Major duh, Carter thought. That should have been the first thing they thought of. Leave it to Jane. She was the smartest nine-year-old he knew.

  Vanessa seemed to agree. Without a word, she’d already turned and run down the galley steps. Everyone else followed closely behind.

  * * *

  Down below, the boat’s main cabin looked to Buzz like a disaster area. All the water had drained out by now, but the floor was covered with bloated books, sea charts, cushions, clothing, pots and pans, utensils, and even a few framed maps from the wall, with shattered or missing glass. It reminded him of one of those TV shows where the bad guys come in and trash the good guy’s apartment while they’re looking for something.

  Already, Vanessa had picked her way over to the navigation station, where she was fiddling with several knobs and dials. She was good with computers at home and had spent more time on the boat with all this stuff than the rest of them had. If anyone could figure out how to use the radio, it would be her.

  While they all watched silently, she picked up a handheld transmitter that dangled off the console. It was the same one that Joe used to send an SOS the night before.

  “Hello?” Vanessa said into the transmitter. “Can anyone hear me? Hello?”

  Buzz’s heart thudded in his chest, waiting for something—a voice, or even just static. Vanessa flipped several more switches, but it was no good. The radio was clearly dead.

  “There’s no power,” she said. “Buzz, check the engine. Carter, do you know how to try and start it?”

  “For sure,” Carter said, ducking into the aft cabin and up through the companionway door to the cockpit.

  Buzz went to the engine compartment and opened it up. He’d looked in here only once before, and it had been mostly dark. Now, light flooded in where a long, jagged hole had been torn through the hull from the outside. It didn’t take an expert to see how badly smashed the engine was. For all he knew, half of it had fallen out through that hole.

  “Is anything happening?” Carter yelled down.

  “Nothing,” Vanessa called back up. “Are you sure you know how to start it up?”

  “Yes, I’m sure,” Carter snapped.

  “Uh, guys? It’s not going to happen,” Buzz said, pointing into the compartment. Vanessa came over to look, and then Carter, too, as he climbed back down to join them.

  The only thing that seemed to be intact was the electrical bank. It looked like six car batteries, lined up on a shelf at the side of the compartment. Whether they were still hooked up to the rest of the boat, it was hard to say. Even if they were, Dexter had explained on the very first day that there were only two ways to charge those batteries. One was by running the engine. The other was through the boat’s solar panel, which was now facedown on the deck, where it had ripped free of its mount during the crash.

  “What about the laptop?” Jane asked, picking it up from the mess on the floor. As she did, water drizzled out from several of the ports and even through the keyboard. She tried the On-Off switch anyway, but nothing happened.

  “We wouldn’t be able to get online even if it was working,” Vanessa said. “Not without the modem, and that takes electricity. My cell’s around here somewhere, too, but I haven’t gotten a signal since we left Hawaii. What we really need is. . . .”

  She stopped then, and her hand went up to her mouth. For the first time, Vanessa looked excited.

  “What is it?” Buzz asked.

  “The sat phone!” she said.

  “The what?”

  “The satellite phone! I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before. If it’s still charged, we could . . . omigosh! You guys, we could make a call!”

  “Well, where is it now?” Carter said.

  “I don’t know!” Vanessa said. “But it’s got to be here somewhere. Everyone . . . start looking!”

  * * *

  Vanessa racked her mind, trying to remember where, exactly, she’d been when she last had the phone. Not that it even mattered. After the crash, it could have wound up anywhere.

  “Go through everything!” she told the others. “Watch out for the glass, though. It’s got to be here somewhere.”

  Soon, they were all picking through the mess and piling it, piece by piece, on the table, the galley counter, and anywhere else they could. It was agonizingly slow going, with so much to sort through. But then—

  “Here it is!” Jane shouted. She poked her head out from under the galley table, and held up the chunky black plastic phone. The antenna was up, Vanessa saw, and the small screen above the keypad was lit.

  “It’s still on!” she said, pressing it to her ear. “Hello? Hello?”

  Nobody was there, which wasn’t a surprise. It had been at least ten hours since the crash. The question was—how long did these things hold their charge? When she looked at the display again, the green-and-black battery indicator was down to a single bar. But that could be enough.

  “Who should we call?” Jane said. Vanessa didn’t have to think about it. She turned the unit off, then on again, and hit the Redial button, just like using a regular phone at home. A few seconds later, it started to ring.

  “Please answer, please answer, please answer, please answer. . . .”

  “Wait!” Buzz said suddenly. “Shouldn’t we try to figure out where we are first so we can tell them?”

  The truth of it hit Vanessa like cold water in the face. Of course that made more sense. But then all at once, Beth Benson was there on the phone.

  “Hello?” she said frantically. “Dexter, is that you?”

  “Beth! It’s Vanessa!” she said. All three of the others crowded around, pressing their ears as close as they could get.

  “Vanessa! Thank goodness! Is everyone okay?”

  “No,” Vanessa said. “We’re not okay. We crashed, Beth. Is my dad with you?”

  “Mom?” Jane called out.

  “Jane? Is that you?”

  “We’re all here,” Vanessa told her. “The four of us, anyway.”

  Beth’s voice went up a step. “Where’s Dexter?” she said. “Where’s Joe?”

  “We don’t know,” Vanessa told her. She heard her own voice crack as she said it, and took a deep breath. It wasn’t going to help anyone if she lost it right now. “They were trying to help us into the life raft and it got pulled away before we could get in. Now we aren’t sure where they are.”

  “Vanessa, you’re going to be okay,” Beth said. “Your dad and I are at the Coast Guard station in Kona. They’ve been trying to reach the boat all night. I’m going to put you on with one of the people who are going to come help you. Just hold on.”

  A moment later, an unfamiliar man’s voice came on the line.

  “Hi, Vanessa, my name’s Commander Carl Blakey. I want you to listen carefully, okay?”

  There were other voices in the background, too. They were on speakerphone now, and people were listening in. Vanessa imagined a whole room full of them standing there. Somehow, that only made her more nervous.

  “Okay,” she said. “But, I don’t know how long this phone is going to stay charged. There’s only one bar left.”

  “Then let’s get right to it,” the man said. Vanessa had already forgotten his name. “Where are you on the boat right now?”

  “At the nav station,” Vanessa told him.

  “There should be a GPS unit, either up in the cockpit or right there at the navigation station,” the commander said. “It might look like a small TV mounted on the wall, or it could be a handheld unit. Do you know what I’m talking about?”

  “I think so,” Vanessa said. She remembered Joe saying something about the Global Positioning System on the boat, but right now, she couldn’t come up with a picture of it in her mind, and she didn’t see anything that looked like a little TV
as she scanned the console.

  “I’m looking,” Vanessa said. “But I’m not sure. Could they have taken it in the life raft with them?”

  “That’s possible,” the commander said. “We never received any SOS or distress call, so it’s been hard to track your location.”

  Softly, the phone beeped twice in Vanessa’s ear. When she pulled it away to look, the battery charge indicator was starting to flash.

  “I think the phone’s about to run out!” she said.

  The commander’s voice stayed calm, but he spoke more quickly now. “How about this, Vanessa. Can you tell me anything about where you are? Even just approximately?”

  “Find the charts!” Vanessa whispered to the others. All three of them started rooting through the piles they’d just made, pulling out whatever they could find and spreading them on the table.

  “Is there anything you remember about your location before the storm?” the commander asked her again.

  “Not really . . . I’m sorry,” Vanessa said. There were three different charts in front of her by now, but they all looked alike, with their circles, grids, and tiny numbers. “I’m looking, but I can’t tell where we are.”

  Then Jane spoke up. “Boomerang Day!” she said, as if it had just come to her.

  “That’s right!” Vanessa said. “Right, right! We were just about to come around and head back to Hawaii. That means we were. . . .” She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to remember. “Nine hundred miles from Kona. That’s how far we were going. Except then, he started changing course when the weather got bad.”

  “Your uncle did?” the commander asked her.

  “Yes,” Vanessa said. “Three times, I think. Or maybe four. We were supposed to—”

  Again, the phone beeped twice.

  “It’s going to run out!” Vanessa said.

  “Keep going,” the commander told her. “You were supposed to what, Vanessa?”

  “We were supposed to get back on course this morning. I know that.”