Rain came this morning.
Too bad it was fine as dust.
The mist settled on everything but never pooled up and certainly didn’t fill the water jugs I opened up. Couldn’t even figure out how to drink it. Best I could come up with is to lick it off of the center console and the steering wheel. Then my arms. Then the gunnels.
Then I wrung up my shirt and sucked on it to get a couple extra drops. All of it tasted salty and none of it stopped the thirst.
Still can’t spit if I wanted to, but at least my tongue doesn't feel quite as thick.
I wish, instead of regular school, I’d gone to survival school. I heard they have those for people in the navy and stuff. I don’t know if they teach you how to make it home when you’re lost at sea, but I bet I would have learned how to drink misty rain.
I guess, in a way, being here is kind of like my own personal survival school. Except there ain’t no teachers to give me an A for effort. Which means I have to get serious about learning. And since I need something to do anyways, I’m going to set up my own classes and projects.
First period is gonna be Water. Has to be. If I can’t get at least a D-minus pretty quick, none of the other classes matter.
Which is a shame cause I’m doing way better in my second class–Food. Might even give myself top marks (that’s what Mrs. Harrison says to the smart kids). A good fisherman won't go hungry–teach a man to fish and all that. Not to say that I eat five course meals, but I’ve caught a couple of fish since I've been out. No way to cook them of course, but they taste just like sushi.
After that is gonna be Shelter. And then Rescue. No idea on those two yet.
I figure I’ll hang on to some normal classes too. PE for starters. Survival school is going to be gym class all day every day. Except that we’re fresh out of ice packs if anybody gets beaned by a dodgeball.
I’m going to keep art class too. In school, we only have it once a week but I’d like to have it every day. For whatever reason, art is my one hall pass from feeling stupid. Mrs. Harrison calls it a gift. I can’t tell you how my hand knows how to draw. It just does. And besides, I owe Captain Caruso a hundred-dollar drawing of his boat.
My last class, and the one that ties it all together, is Math. Because maybe, just maybe, Math is going to go and save my life.
All thanks to Mrs. Harrison.
A few months back during homeroom she handed me a photocopy of a newspaper article. It was about real-life astronauts stuck in outer space with faulty rocket boosters on their spaceship or something like that. It happened before I was born and I couldn’t understand all of it, but I kept the paper anyway.
Probably because, when she gave it to me, Mrs. Harrison said maybe I’d want to be an astronaut one day.
“So you’re hoping I get stuck in outer space?” I asked.
“No!” She went a little red in the face. “That’s not what I meant at all!”
Then I grinned and she knew I’d made a joke and she grinned back.
“Jim Hobbins! I thought you might appreciate the article because these astronauts were so clever and daring and adventurous.”
“Like superheroes or something?”
“Actually, they remind me of you.”
I didn’t answer back. At the time I couldn’t think of what to say.
So I just took the paper and stared down at my desk.
Still, it’s kind of nice to have someone believe in you more than you believe in yourself.
I always liked that about Mrs. Harrison.
You can tell her I said so.
But that story about those astronauts gave me an idea. They made a list of everything they had with them so they could calculate how much longer they might survive while they figured out which roll of duct tape matched up with what coffee straws to make the spaceship work again Not quite as simple as two plus two, but the astronauts got home in the end. So maybe it's worth a shot.
In any case, here's what I have:
Me, including one set of clothes made up of a bathing suit (commando style), tank top, snapback hat, and dollar store flip flops.
Three empty water jugs. The gallon size.
One dry box with a flare gun (one last flare), ship-to-shore radio (no extra batteries), this notebook and pen, a flashlight, and a laminated navigational chart.
Fishing gear including two heavy tackle rods, a tackle box full of weights and hooks, plus a bait knife and needle nose pliers.
A landing net.
One dive mask and snorkel (for scallops).
Two orange life jackets (the cheap square kind, not the vests).
One danforth-style boat anchor with four feet of chain and maybe 100 feet of rope.
One fire extinguisher. Expired but still works. Probably.
One 1988 Boston Whaler Montauk, including a 1975 Johnson 90 hp two-stroke engine, one cranking battery that still has some life, a retractable canvas sun shade on a metal frame, and two 12-gallon gas tanks–one bone dry, the other with maybe a half a gallon left.
That's what I've got to work with, even if I can’t quite see how everything fits together to get me back home. It’s like having a bunch of puzzle pieces that all came from different boxes.
Or a really hard math problem.
I never minded messing up my math problems in regular school. Probably because I still got to go home at night. Miss a problem then, it’s just a red mark on some old piece of paper. Miss a problem in survival school and I can’t make it up with extra credit.
Every day from here on out is a test with only two possible grades.
Pass or flunk out.