Surrounded by Sharks (3 page)

Brando got up to go to the bathroom. He was so sleepy that he didn’t notice his brother was gone until he got back. For a few moments he just stood at the end of his bed looking at the empty cot. At first he thought that something exciting might’ve happened. Maybe his brother had been carried off by a gator or captured by drug smugglers. He’d watched enough TV to know that Florida had both.

He walked over to the cot, knelt down, and looked underneath. Davey wasn’t camped out under there. He looked over at his own bed: comfortable and warm. He could just go back to sleep and forget about it, but now he was curious. He knew his older brother well — he’d lived with him his entire life — so he knew what to look for.

He checked the floor on both sides of the cot, everywhere within an arm’s length or so. Sure enough, Davey’s glasses were gone. And where was that book he’d been carrying around all week,
The Silma-something-or-other
? He found Davey’s little stack of books and checked each one. It was gone, too.

So he took his glasses and his book
, thought Brando.
Probably his key card for the room, too
. That pretty much ruled out gator attack or kidnapping. Brando shrugged it off. That had been a long shot, anyway. So that meant …

Davey had snuck out of the room. It didn’t surprise Brando that much. His brother was always wandering off to hang out by himself these days. He’d become so boring. But this was different. This wasn’t heading straight up to his room after dinner. He could get in major trouble for this.

Brando reached down and felt the cot. The plan was for them to alternate nights on it. Their dad had called it an “army cot,” trying to spin it into something cool. Brando wasn’t fooled. He touched the metal frame and coarse canvas and could tell it would be seriously uncomfortable.

A plan took shape. If Davey got in trouble, he should have to sleep on the cot all week. That was only fair, right? Brando could just quietly suggest it at some point. He liked the plan, but now he was all kinds of conflicted. He was many things, most of which he’d admit with pride: loud, moody, maybe a little devious around the edges. But he was not a rat. And he had a lot of opinions about his older brother, who never wanted to hang out with him anymore. But he didn’t hate him.

He looked back at his parents. He knew his dad was still asleep because he could hear him snoring, so he only really had to check on his mom. She was motionless, balanced on the very edge of the bed. How did she sleep through that noise at point-blank range? For a second Brando wondered if he snored, too.
Nah
, he thought.
Not me
.

He looked directly at them and thought, as hard as he could:

WAKE UP
.

WAKE UP
.

YOUR SON HAS FLOWN THE COOP — WAKE UP!

Nothing.

Brando made a deal with himself: He wouldn’t intentionally wake them up. That would be the same as ratting on his brother. He’d just behave totally normally. If they happened to hear him and wake up before Davey got back, well, Davey had made his cot, and now he had to lie in it. All week.

Brando went over to the little desk, pulled out the chair, and sat down. He spent some time reading the room service menu. He considered his breakfast options. Then he got up and walked over to the mini fridge on the other side of the room. It was fairly close to his dad’s head, but he wasn’t especially careful opening it.

His dad didn’t seem to notice. Brando pushed through all of the expensive stuff the hotel was trying to sell: the five-dollar pack of M&M’s, the mixed nuts for seven fifty. He took out the half-full bottle of Coke he’d picked up in Key West and put in there last night. He undid the cap, but it was too flat to hiss or fizz or anything.

He wasn’t supposed to have soda in the morning, but this was a no-lose situation for him. If his parents woke up right now, he wouldn’t be the one in trouble. He stood right next to their bed and took a long drink. Still nothing. He put the cap back on and put it back in the mini fridge. He closed the door kind of hard. Wouldn’t want to waste electricity.

His dad shifted in the bed. He started to roll over, but his body seemed to remember that it had nowhere to go and stopped. It amounted to a shoulder fake, one way and then the other. He even stopped snoring for a moment. Brando held his breath, but his dad went right back to snoring. His mom hadn’t moved an inch.

Brando walked back across the room. He sat on the edge of his bed. It really was comfortable. He lay back to consider his next move. A minute later, he was snoring, too.

Davey was surprised how warm the water was. He was standing at the very edge of the breaking waves, up to his ankles. He’d kicked off his sneakers and walked right past the
NO SW MM NG
sign, which was fine because he wasn’t sw mm ng. He still had his glasses on, still had the book in his hand. He was just testing out the water for later.

He figured he’d go in that afternoon — if he wasn’t hotel-grounded, anyway. That would be fine with him, too. That was Davey’s secret weapon. Most of the things his parents could do to punish him — send him to his room, revoke TV privileges — he did to himself anyway. If they really wanted to get to him, they could take his books away. That might work, but no parent ever did that. In parent logic, that would be like forbidding him from doing his homework.

The little waves curled around his ankles, clean and clear and warm. They seemed almost friendly. It was like being licked by a giant kitten, he thought — except not as weird or creepy as that. He looked out over the water and could see all the way to the horizon. He felt like an explorer. There was nothing in between him and the edge of the world. He remembered the sight of Key West off in the distance from the other side of the island. He pictured the image of Aszure Island he’d seen on Google Maps. If Key West was east of here, then he was looking at the open ocean to the west now. Next stop: Mexico, a thousand miles away.

A larger wave broke in front of him, sending water halfway up his shin. He reached down and ran his right hand through it as it rushed past, clutching his book to his chest with his left. It was like a bath, like stepping into a vast, gently rolling bath. The water tugged at his calves as it rushed back out to sea, and he stood up to steady himself.

Maybe this week won’t be so bad, after all
, he thought as he walked out of the water and back up the beach. If he stood right in the breakers the whole time, he’d hardly be able to hear his family. Or maybe if he just didn’t tell them about this little spot … He looked around the little beach. He had it to himself and could sit anywhere. He chose a spot at the edge of the trees, where he could be half in and half out of the sun.

He sat down, opened his book to the page he’d dog-eared, and got started. He read for a while, but he wasn’t quite as lost in it as he had been the first two times he’d read it. He kept looking up at the sea. He watched the little waves build themselves up and fall over. He watched the foamy white breakers that had pushed and pulled playfully at his ankles.

He decided to go in again, maybe just a little farther this time.

He hadn’t put his sneakers back on, so he didn’t have to worry about them. Sand clung unevenly to his feet like threadbare socks. He took the key card and the eight dollars — a five and three ones, folded neatly — out of the pocket of his swim trunks. He looked around to make sure there were no witnesses and took his T-shirt off. He figured he’d go in up to his waist.

He looked down at his little pile of stuff and then looked over at the mouth of the path. No one else had come through it so far, but it was just a couple dozen yards from the main walkway. Better safe than sorry. He bundled up all his stuff, sneakers included, and walked back to the line of trees. He found a bush that was a little greener and less patchy than the others and stashed his stuff underneath the far side. He got a nasty scratch on his arm from one of the sharp little branches. It turned red with tiny pinpricks of blood as he walked across the sand. It didn’t bother him. He used to get a lot of cuts and scratches back when he and his brother used to roam around the neighborhood, climbing trees and crashing through bushes. When he turned around, he couldn’t see his stuff at all. He was satisfied, except …

He reached up and took off his glasses. Just in case. He’d only had them for a year. He’d gotten them when he’d started having trouble seeing what his teachers were writing on the board. He jogged over and put them under the bush as well, careful not to scratch himself this time. He kicked the sand around as he walked back so there wouldn’t be an obvious line of footprints heading right toward his eight bucks. He stopped after a while. The sand was too fine to hold a shape for long.

He passed that sign again.
Relax, little sign
, he thought.
Don’t lose any more letters worrying about me. I’m just going to wade around for a few minutes
. The sign was probably just there because there was no lifeguard on duty or something dumb like that anyway.

He marched right into the water this time. He didn’t even pause at the line of breakers. It was so great because he didn’t have to hold his breath for that first shock of cold, the way he did at the lake back home. He didn’t have to go slowly, waiting for his body to adjust. He just strode forward like a hero heading into battle.

He braced himself for the force of the first wave. It hit him at the knees and splashed up the front of his trunks. The waves were bigger now. The tide was coming in.

Drew was on the roof of the hotel. She’d found the sun deck. It was still too early for proper sunbathing, she supposed, but it was a nice opportunity to give her parents the slip. They were in the lobby waiting — dead serious — for the gift shop to open. As if they didn’t have all week. Plus, she could give her bikini a test run before they all headed to the beach later.

She was standing at the railing and looking out over the little island. She could see nearly all of it from up here. “I am the master of all I survey,” she told herself, “the queen of my castle.” But then she gazed out over the water and saw the hazy lump of Key West, and she knew the truth. A queen, maybe, but in exile.

She lowered her gaze and saw the dock again. She tried to find the little boy from earlier, but it was impossible. He was just one small figure among many now. There were other kids, and other parents, too. A small crowd had gathered, still waiting for the first boat of the day.

A pile of luggage was growing at the edge of the dock. Drew looked at the pile, looked at the people, looked back at the pile, added it up. It wasn’t enough luggage for the number of people. That meant some of them were just going into Key West for the day. She heard her friend’s voice: “where the party’s at.” She needed to figure out how to get on that boat.

Her parents would never let her go alone. She had to give up on that dream right now. They simply wouldn’t. And if she snuck off and hopped on the boat right before it left, they’d hop right on the next one. They’d comb every square centimeter of the place until they found her, shouting “Drew-Bear! Drew-Bear!” the whole time and embarrassing her to high heaven.

No, she’d have to bring them, and even that wouldn’t be easy. She’d have to work on them, convince them. She made up her mind to start later that day. A few casual comments here and there, just to plant the seed.

She wandered over to the railing and looked out into the distance. It was open ocean as far as the eye could see: clear blue tropical water, shadow and light and wind playing over its surface. Her mom was right; it was quite pretty.

She took one last look over toward Key West as she tugged her shorts up her legs, and there it was, a fat boat making slow progress across the water. The little crowd was more animated now, as if someone had stepped on their anthill. She pulled her shirt over her head, found her second flip-flop, and headed down to find her parents. The restaurant would be open now, and she was hungry.

*  *  *

Down at the dock, the fat-bottomed boat bumped to a stop against the rubber tires strung along the side of the pilings. The day manager of the hotel was there to meet it and throw the rope.

“Hey, Zeke,” he said to the boat’s captain.

“Hey, Marco,” said the captain.

Zeke’s real name was Jonathan Palpen, but he’d learned long ago that the tourists preferred something a little more down-home. He’d picked Zeke off a show about gator wrestlers.

“Hold on now, folks,” Zeke called. The tourists on board were already standing up and trying to get off the boat. The ones onshore were already rumbling down the dock, jockeying for position. Sundays were always the worst. “Let me tie up first!”

There was a little edge in his voice that made them listen. Zeke had been out at the local bars the night before. It was what they called “a late night” in most places, but in Key West they just called it Saturday. He tied up, fore and aft, and then squinted up into the sunlight. He eyeballed the count: maybe a dozen, most with luggage. It would be close to capacity.

“Let ’em off first,” he called, as the inbound passengers began to file off the boat. He didn’t bother to soften his voice. The tourists liked that, too. Captain Zeke, with his tattered white captain’s hat, short temper, and faint smell of booze — so authentic!

“Marco, my man, can you help me collect the money?” he called, even louder. “Five bucks a head, no exceptions!”

“Sure thing, Zeke!” called Marco.

They always did it this way because some of the outgoing guests would give Marco one last tip, a few dollar bills to go along with the fiver for the boat. Marco would then quietly slip some of the haul over to Zeke, along with the outgoing mail and any FedEx packages that needed to be dropped in the box at the marina.

The tourists bumped and jostled their way along the dock, out of and into the boat. Luggage was dropped from the boat onto the dock and vice versa. And all that sound was conducted into the water, through the wood of the dock or the bottom of the boat. It was a thick bass beat, an irregular, spastic drumming, an entire rhythm section of commerce.

It carried through the water, and it didn’t go unnoticed. Some days, Zeke would see a small shark come right alongside the boat to investigate, maybe a spinner or even a blue. Some days he saw something larger. Today, he mostly just saw luggage. He eyed the tags as he stowed the cases:
EYW
for the little airport on Key West,
FLL
or
MIA
for the larger ones in Fort Lauderdale or Miami. That last one always seemed unlucky to him:
MIA
… missing in action. Maybe that’s why he never made it up that far.

Some of the passengers greeted him. They remembered him from the trip out or the year before, or even the day before for the day-trippers. He grunted a response. The truth was they all sort of blended together after a while, different faces every day of every week of every year.

Soon the money had been collected and the luggage stowed. The ropes that had just been thrown on were thrown off. Marco gave them a theatrical wave. “Thanks again for choosing the Aszure Island Inn!” he called as the old boat began to putter away. “Tell your friends!”

The passengers waved back at him and then turned around to face forward. Most of them had long trips ahead, long trips to cold places. Zeke kept his eyes on the water ahead. A long, dark shadow crossed paths with the boat sixty yards out and slipped silently underneath. A part of the creature’s primitive brain told it to follow this noisy thing. It knew what it was now. But it was too small. It was the big ones that sometimes left food in their wakes. It was the ones as big as a dozen whales that were worth following. Not this one.

The shark glided silently on.