Page 68 of Dance Practice, Marooned: Part 2

My hands are clenched so tightly by my sides, my fingers ache.

“We have a doctor on board, but we are a long way out from land. It might be the only chance you’ve got.”

They have a doctor on board. I could scream, because it truly feels like a miracle.

“Do you have GPS?” the man goes on. “Any navigation equipment at all?”

“Nothing works,” Adrian says. “The ship is old and broken, but it is enough to have gotten us off the island.”

We aren’t about to tell them we hijacked a pirate ship after murdering everyone on board.

Another pause. “Alright. You got any maps?”

“Yes,” Adrian continues. “Paper, but yes.”

“Anything else? Anything at all you can use?”

Adrian shakes his head, as if the man can see. “No, but we have an old compass we have been using to take us in one direction in hopes we find land.”

“This radio only picks up signal from other ships less than fifty miles away, so you are close to our location. Head north, north-east, and we will wait in our current location. If you keep coming in that direction, you will run into us. I will give you our coordinates, too.”

The man lists off some coordinates, and Adrian frantically scribbles them down.

“I will check in if I can,” the man says. “We are in this location for twenty-four hours. If you’re not here before then, we can’t help you. Over.”

The line goes dead.

For a moment, the whole room is silent except for the crackle of the line, as if no one dares to say what we all feel—disbelief, giddy relief, the tingle of hope flooding through all the cracks left by weeks of dread.

I look at Aggie; she is shaking so hard the tea spills over the side of her mug, dripping down her wrist. She doesn’t even seem to notice. I want to hug her, but instead, we both just start to laugh—high, ugly, kind of deranged.

It’s desperate, but it’s all we have. It feels like we have finally been granted our miracle.

“I’m going to tell Tati,” I breathe.

The others stay glued to the radio, Zeke and Kellen watching the horizon through binoculars. Ace and Adrian lean over the controls, rolling the maps out and lining up the compass. I drift out, down the corridor toward Tati’s room. The door is half-closed, and inside, everything is quiet.

I step in.

Tati is awake, staring at the ceiling, her skin grey and shiny with sweat.

“Guess what,” I say, trying to keep my voice from shaking. “We got the radio to work, and contacted a ship. We are heading there now. They have a doctor on board.”

Tati makes a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “You’re not fucking with me?”

I shake my head, and then, because there’s nothing left to do but wait for our rescue, I sit on the floor, lean my back against the bulkhead, and finally, finally let myself hope that I might get to see what happens next.

IT TAKES US SIX HOURS to find them. It is the longest six hours of my life.

We all pace, taking turns watching Tati and staring out at the horizon, just waiting for a ship to appear. Finally, we see it. It starts as nothing more than a shadow in the distance, but slowly, we move closer and closer. It is old, but large. Probably twice the size of the ship we’re in. Kellen did his best to remove any traces of proof that this was a pirate ship, just in case.

We are so close, we can’t have them turning on us now.

“Do you think they’re good people?” Rachel asks, standing at the front windows, staring out through the binoculars. “It doesn’t look like a pirate ship, more like a fishing boat of some sort.”

That makes sense.

“We can only hope,” I say, hopping from one foot to another with excess energy.