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Paul!”
    “Peach,” I say. Her breaths come rapid fire, as hearing her name helps her brain reconnect to reality. But I can sense she’s still on the brink of madness. “Peach, it’s Jane. You’re safe.”
    “What? Where are we?”
    “Life raft,” I say.
    “Life raft?”
    “The Sentinel sank.”
    I hear a quick intake of air. Her shaking hands cover her mouth as she tries to grasp the horribleness of the situation she’s awoken to. When she speaks, she sounds numb. “There was an explosion. Everything shook. My ears. Paul… He pushed me down. The glass… I saw it.” There’s a long expulsion of breath before she asks, “Is he…”
    “He didn’t make it,” I say, trying to speak with a gentle voice, but I don’t think there’s any good way to say someone is dead.
    “God,” she says, and she’s silent for a moment.
    “Sorry I screamed,” Jenny says. “You scared the shit out of me.”
    “How many made it off the ship?” Peach asks.
    “Peach,” I say, not looking forward to delivering the news, “it’s just the three of us.”
    The silence that follows is unbearable. I prefer to get painful experiences over with fast, so I verbally vomit the answers to her unasked questions. “No one below decks made it. The explosion or rush of water did them in. We got the only life raft. When I came to, the bridge was full of smoke, but I checked for survivors. I found Paul first. Then you.”
    “She saved you,” Jenny says. “Pulled you out of the smoke. Got the life raft.”
    “I had some help,” I say, feeling embarrassed by the praise. But when Peach doesn’t thank either of us, I wonder if she realizes the truth of our situation—I saved her for a much longer and more painful death of starving and freezing in Arctic Ocean.
    “You didn’t see McAfee or Chase?” she finally asks.
    “Nope,” I say, and had planned to leave it at that, but Jenny chimes in.
    “The assholes left us to go down with the ship. Took the last Zodiac.”
    “They haven’t come looking for us?” she asks, a tinge of disbelief in her voice. She idolized Captain McAfee and supported his hardcore stance on saving whales.
    “They either capsized and drowned,” I say, “or made for land and didn’t look back,” which seems the more likely of the two options, but I keep that to myself. “We’re on our own.”
    That sinks in like an iron anchor and no one speaks for fifteen minutes. I sit with my arms crossed over my chest. It’s chilly inside the life raft, but I think it must be made of something that retains heat because I’m not freezing. My feet are frigid from being wet, so I sit up with my back against the firm side of the raft and pull my shoes off. As I’m working off my soaked socks, a bright light blossoms from the center of the octagonal tent.
    I look at the bright light and see Peach sitting back down. The light is a bright blue-ish LED tap light. I wouldn’t have known it was there if Peach hadn’t turned it on. I glance at Jenny lying down on the floor, eyes closed, head on arms. Sleeping. She’s got her shoes off too, and her socks are draped over them.
    “You know we don’t need that, right?” I say, looking up at the light. “This far north, we’re in the land, or sea, of perpetual sun.”
    “Knowing we have something with power kind of makes me feel better. Stupid, I know, but…” Peach shrugs and then points to the ceiling. “You can hang your socks up there.”
    A few vinyl lines are strung taut across the ceiling. Seems the maker of this life raft thought of everything. I drape my socks over the line, then take Jenny’s massive wool socks and hang them next to mine.
    “Thanks,” Peach says.
    “I’ve just hung up a pair of socks that smell like a dead fish that’s been in the sun too long, and you’re thanking me?”
    She laughs and I’m glad to see her smile. “For saving me.”
    “We’re not saved yet,” I say. When her smile fades some, I make a mental note never to