Read Not Without Hope for Free Online Page B

have thought of something.”
    Now Will was in another situation, much more dangerous, but he was firm in his insistence to retrieve the life jackets.
    “I think I can get to that closet,” he said. He was getting loud and frustrated. “Okay,” he asked Marquis again, “are they in that closet?”
    Will must have dived under six or seven times. He and Marquis would go back and forth. Marquis would explain where everything was. Finally, Will went under the boat and came up with two life jackets, the standard bright orange kind that slip around your neck and clasp in the front. He submerged again and found a third life jacket. Then he spotted a seat cushion that must have come from a bin beneath one of the two chairs at the stern of the boat. Marquis, Corey, and I slipped the life jackets on. Will slipped his arms through two straps on the cushion and put it on his back like a turtle’s shell. “Thanks,” we told Will. I felt bad that he and Marquis were doing all the work, but there wasn’t much that Corey and I could do.
    Will had also ripped loose the twenty-gallon cooler that sat in front of the center console. It popped to the surface. Everything had come loose inside and sunk or got stuck under the boat. Only a gallon jug of water was in there. It kind of fell out and floated away. We let it go—didn’t think anything of it.
    We grabbed the cooler, though. If the boat sank, we would be desperate to grab on to something that could float. Without any discussion about who would go where, we climbed into unsteady positions on the upside-down boat, all of us facing the bow.
    Everything was inverted. The propeller stuck out of the water. To the right of the motor was a tiny ladder attached to a swim platform, which stuck out from the stern like a lunchroom tray. On either side of the motor at the stern, trim tabs juttedout about a foot and a half or two feet. On an upright boat, the swim platform provided a place to sit or put on a pair of skis or launch a dip into the water. The platform and the ladder also helped swimmers board the boat. Trim tabs were controllable stainless-steel plates that helped adjust the pitch attitude of a boat—the degree to which the bow tilted up or down. The tabs helped a boat get on plane quickly, reduced pounding, and corrected listing to port or starboard. Now the ladder, swim platform, and trim tabs all had another unintended usage: life-saving equipment.
    I stood to the right of the motor, out of the water from about midthigh, holding the outboard with my left hand. I had my left foot on the swim platform or just below, on a trim tab.
    Will stood near me. We were in a tight space, and he kept stepping on my foot. He kind of straddled the motor in the water, his left leg perched somehow on the outboard or just dangling. Corey stood on a trim tab to the left of the motor. Marquis basically got on his hands and knees on the hull, his chest pressing on the cooler. He braced his feet against the motor, held the cooler with his left hand and reached with his right hand to grab my right ankle once I propped my foot on the hull. There was nothing else to grab on to.
    “We gotta hold on to this cooler,” we kept saying.
    We had to shout to hear one another. Someone would say something, and another guy would ask, “Huh? What?” It was loud from the wind and the waves crashing and slamming us into the boat—it was a constant barrage. A wave would crash into us, and someone would start coughing from taking in salt water. Every surface was slick and hard to grip. Marquis, exposed to the chilly air atop the hull, wore only a life jacket and his bathing suit. I had on my sweatshirt, orange jacket, sweatpants, skull cap, and gloves. Corey was still wearing his black wind jacket and wind pants. Will was down to his T-shirt and trunks. Corey had held on to his windgear while Will went under the boat, but later we lost the jacket and pants. They must have gotten swept away.
    Near sunset, it went