Unlocked

  Another wave, another jolt against the struggling ship. Dan couldn’t make out the captain, and he wondered if the man had abandoned the wheel and gone below. No, Captain Charlie would never do that. He was a survivor. Surely he’d seen storms this bad before.

  Dan held his breath again and waited for the water to run off the deck. He had one chance, one hope to get to the hatch and get below deck. He would run for it. If he made it to the hatch on time, he would survive the next few minutes. If not, if a wave hit while he was moving across the deck, he didn’t stand a chance.

  But then he couldn’t survive another few seconds on deck either. The strain on his arms was shooting fire through his body, and he wasn’t sure how many more waves he could withstand.

  Again his lungs were bursting, desperate for air, when the water finally cleared. He gasped and scrambled to his feet. He could see the next wave out of the corner of his eye, approaching fast, looming toward them. Please, God … He took long, lunging strides and flung himself onto the deck at the edge of the hatch.

  Hurry … come on, hurry. Please help me, Lord.

  He grabbed the hatch and tried to lift it, but—what was this? Dan let out a guttural yell, a shout that came from the core of his being. The hatch wouldn’t move, wouldn’t budge. Jammed from the pressure the water had placed on the ship. “No! Please, God!”

  The wave was like a living, breathing beast, and Dan didn’t have to turn around to know it was the biggest one yet. He could feel it behind him, building and growing and ready to slam him down, ready to take his life. At the last possible second, he threw himself into a cubby built into a post at the center of the deck a few feet away. The space was for extra rope, but whatever had been there was gone now.

  Just as his body slammed into the space, the wave hit. The freezing water engulfed him and he felt himself losing consciousness. Why hadn’t they seen this coming? And what sort of storm moved in this fast without warning? I’m sorry, Tracy … I never meant for it to end this way.

  He’d been in some terrible storms since he’d started fishing in Alaska, but nothing like this. And suddenly, in the moments before death could claim him, he had to question what he was doing here, why he’d chosen a job that placed him in one dangerous situation after another.

  The answer was easy.

  It was because nothing out here could compare to the storm back home, the one he couldn’t stand up against. The one he couldn’t survive. He’d come here because maybe fighting the wind and waves would somehow teach him how to win the war he’d fought against autism for the past fifteen years.

  He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t feel his arms or legs. Any moment now he would inhale the salt water and that would be that. Battle over … victory to the storm. But the saddest thing, the part that made Dan want to fight a few seconds longer, was that he wasn’t only losing the battle against the storm here at sea. His death would mean he’d lost the battle with Holden as well.

  And then in a myriad of swirling colors and emotions, he was there again, back with Tracy in their pretty house in Dunwoody and he was the foreman of the area’s best custom cabinet shop and money was as easy as the seasons. Holden was the darling of the neighborhood, drawing comments and attention wherever he went. And Ella Reynolds was his friend and they were going to grow up together, go to the prom together.

  The girls had it all figured out.

  And they’d go to Randy Reynolds’ minor-league games and play cards back at the house later, and Holden … Holden would sing and laugh and dance with Ella and then … Then what happened? Was it the vaccines Tracy had read about a few years back? That must’ve been part of it, because he was whole and happy and here. He was so here back then.

  Dan still couldn’t take a breath, but his life no longer mattered. He was caught up in the past, in the calm before the storm, the one that claimed him a long time ago. No little boy was cuter than Holden. His blond hair and light-blue eyes stopped people wherever they went.

  Even at the doctor’s office when Holden was three. Tracy had told him that evening that the doctor felt bad. So many shots in one day. Upsetting the child when he was so happy. And Dan could see like it was yesterday the way Holden looked the next day, tired and beat up, a fever racking his little body.

  “Why so many shots?” he’d asked Tracy.

  The reason had made sense to everyone: his previously scheduled checkups hadn’t worked out … Holden had been sick … or they’d been on vacation. Always something. By the time he came in that fall, he was behind on his vaccine chart. The preschool he and Ella attended wanted his immunizations up to date.

  Dan had called. He’d at least done that much. When the doctor called back, Dan’s tone verged on short. “He’s sick. How many shots did he get?”

  “Nine. But that’s very normal, Mr. Harris. Kids Holden’s age handle that many shots all the time.”

  “Nine shots!” Dan had argued with the guy, but it went nowhere. Since then they knew that a single shot contained three hundred times more mercury than the FDA considered safe in adults. Even so, the argument in favor of shots remained stronger than any opposed to them. Kids needed protection from diseases, and research on immunizations held no smoking gun.

  So maybe they’d lost Holden for some other reason. Maybe the timing was nothing more than coincidence.

  The water was everywhere. Dan couldn’t see or hear, couldn’t feel even his heartbeat anymore. He must be dead, but at least he could remember. He could spend these final moments in the place where they’d lost Holden. He could go back, the way he’d forbidden himself to go back since the day he set out for Alaska.

  Holden’s fever got worse before it got better, but then it went away and they waited. They waited day after day for Holden to snap out of it, for his energy to return and his smile to fill his eyes again. But the days turned into weeks and Dan could feel it. He could feel his boy slipping through their fingers and there was nothing he could do about it.

  The diagnosis came six months later. Holden was autistic, but that only created in Dan a fight that raged to this day. Back then, when he wasn’t at work or sleeping, he spent every possible moment with Holden—talking to him, playing with him, working with him. Raging against the storm. And he could still hear the therapist, remember the day the woman looked him straight in the face and gave him the truth. “Holden will always be like this, Mr. Harris. You can help him regain some social skills, but you will never have him back the way he was.”

  Never … never the way he was.

  It was the final wave in the storm that was his life, the one that buried him and suffocated him and took the breath from him. He had failed Tracy and their son. The waves had hit with a sudden force, and they’d lost everything. After that, every day with Holden was a painful reminder that the storm had won. That this new Holden would never be that boy who sang and danced with his friend Ella. Like a cruel vicious kidnapping, the storm had come upon them and taken Holden with it.

  And so, he had walked away, gone off to battle this storm and others like it instead—the ones in Alaska. Because here he could actually fight the wind and waves and with every victory he could at least do one thing for his son: he could pay for therapy. The white water and deadly seas made him feel like he was still in the fight, still capable of doing some good.

  But he was wrong about all of it. The therapy wasn’t helping. The fierce and sudden storm that hit when Holden was three had taken their son for all time.

  And now this fierce and sudden storm would take him too.

  Dan had no idea how much time passed, and for most of it he was in and out of reality. Minutes, maybe, or hours. He wasn’t sure. The first sign he had that he’d survived was the sound of Captain Charlie’s voice.

  “Harris… we thought we lost you.” The guy’s tone was frantic. He slapped Dan’s cheek a couple times. “Get up. We gotta get you warm.”

  “Wh… what?” He tried to open his eyes, but they were swollen shut. “What h
appened?”

  “You got lucky, that’s what.” Charlie grabbed his arm. “Come on, get up.”

  Dizziness swept over him, and as he lumbered to his feet he jerked to the side and threw up. Two times, then a third. He wiped at his mouth and forced himself to see through the slit in his thick eyelids. The skies were blue, the storm gone. The captain and another deckhand helped him down below the hatch, walked him to a bunk.

  “Bury him in blankets. Whatever you can find.” The captain stood beside him a minute longer. “You’ll be okay, Harris. You’re strong.”

  Dan felt weak and sick and feverish. But he had survived the storm, so the captain was probably right. He’d drink some bottled water and get warm and he’d be good as new in a day or so. This time, the storm wouldn’t take his life.

  But if it had, then what? Tracy and Holden would miss him, yes. But he was no longer a part of their lives. The truth was something Captain Charlie didn’t understand: it didn’t matter if Dan survived.

  Because in every way that mattered, the storm had already won.

  Five

  ELLA WALKED BY HERSELF TO THE DRAMA ROOM. SHE SHOULD’VE been the happiest girl at Fulton High. LaShante and the girls were still celebrating for her. Telling everyone how she had won the role of Belle, and congratulating her because Jake Collins threw three touchdown passes to beat nearby Johns Creek High over the weekend.

  But as Ella walked into her sixth-period drama class, she couldn’t shake the cold feeling in her heart. The football game was fun, but afterward she and Jake had gone with a bunch of kids to the parking lot of Stone Mountain. Almost everyone was drinking, including Jake —which was why Ella insisted on driving home. The whole way, Jake kept tickling her and trying to touch her in places where she didn’t want to be touched.

  She wanted to blame her irritation on Jake’s drinking, but the closer she got to home the more she remembered Jake and his buddies picking on the special-needs kid. Maybe Jake wasn’t the great guy she thought he was. So, yeah, that was a problem.

  Then there was the whole deal with her parents.

  Her mom spent the weekend wearing dark sunglasses and a lightweight turtleneck. “I never like anyone to see the work until it’s healed up,” she told them. All weekend she seemed flighty and distracted, and since she never asked Ella about her news, Ella never told her. And though her dad was in town that weekend he never came home. Even her little brothers figured out something was wrong with that.

  “What’s up with Dad?” Alex literally had to take hold of their mom’s hand and force her to stop long enough to look at him.

  “Yeah.” Andrew walked up, identical in looks and concern with Alex. “He should be home.”

  “He’s busy. Lots of meetings. His contract’s up at the end of the year.” She smiled, but across the kitchen Ella noticed her chin was trembling. Like she was fighting tears. “He said to think good thoughts for him. This might be his year.”

  Think good thoughts? Ella hated that phrase.

  Ella reached the classroom and set her backpack on a desk at the front. LaShante was a Christian. Well, maybe not a practicing Christian, but at least she went to church every now and then. And when something went wrong or any of the girls needed help, she was the first to offer to pray.

  Prayer made sense. At least that meant asking help from a higher power. But good thoughts? Like what … like people had the power to think something good into existence?

  Ella had done a little snooping around on Sunday afternoon when her mom was out getting the color in her hair extensions adjusted. She called the clubhouse and asked for her father. The man too busy practicing baseball to come home and see them.

  One of the player personnel guys answered. “He’s been in the weight room all weekend.” He knew Ella, and he made a few minutes of small talk. Concern leaked into the man’s tone. “The boys are off Monday. I’m sure you’ll see him.”

  “I’m sure.” Ella didn’t want the guy to think he’d said something wrong. He ended up being right. Her dad came home late that night and stayed home Monday. But he was distant and distracted, on the phone a lot.

  Ella dropped into a classroom chair and stared blankly at the empty stage at the front of the room. Her dad needed to start hitting or he’d never be the guy he used to be. He’d done this a number of times while they were growing up, whenever he wasn’t playing well. When that happened, her mom slipped into some strange insecurity. She spent every morning at the gym with a trainer and every afternoon at the spa getting one treatment or another. This time the distance between her parents seemed worse than usual.

  For all Ella knew, they could be on the verge of a divorce. There was no telling.

  Even LaShante noticed. She’d come home with Ella once last week and the scene was embarrassing. Ella’s mom was applying mascara at the living room mirror when they walked in. She wore tight black jeans and a skintight white tank top. When the girls headed back out to Ella’s car, LaShante whistled. “Your mom,

  Ella … Wow.”

  “I know. Too far, huh?”

  “She’s trying awful hard.” LaShante had beautiful dark-brown skin and bright brown eyes. Her hair was a spray of short braids that fit her fun personality. “I mean, I might get hair extensions. You know, sport the Jordin Sparks look.” She made a concerned face. “But your mom … I mean, wow.”

  It was to the point where Ella hoped both her parents would stay away from Fulton. Life was hard enough without them showing up and making a bunch of kids talk. When he was around anymore, her dad seemed like some washed-up wannabe, dressed in designer jeans and white V-necks and high-fashion jackets. And her mom … well, LaShante said it best.

  Wow.

  The drama class was filling up, and Mr. Hawkins was sorting through a stack of scripts piled high on his desk. Rumor had it this might be Mr. Hawkins’ last year at Fulton. He was pretty old, and he didn’t have a lot of patience for the kids with nervous stage habits or the ones who had trouble memorizing their lines. If Mr. Hawkins were a character from Winnie the Pooh, he’d be Eeyore for sure.

  Sixth period with Mr. Hawkins was only for the kids cast in the play. Up until now, they’d gone over basic theater and production. The turnout at auditions had been small—despite LaShante’s grand ideas about a hundred girls vying for the role of Belle. Budget cuts forced the school to charge a production fee this year, so the numbers were down, and there weren’t a lot of guys in the cast. The boy playing Gaston was tall and self absorbed. So that would work out. The Beast was being played by a guy with so much facial hair the costume people wouldn’t have to do much.

  But other than that, the townspeople all looked pretty wimpy and mild-mannered. It was hard to imagine them slamming their pitchforks against a stage shouting that it was time to “Kill the

  Beast!”

  Oh, well. It didn’t matter. The kids at Fulton High never came to the plays anyway. The theater would be maybe a quarter filled with parents and relatives. It would be a very forgiving audience. Ella figured she might not tell her mom about the play at all. That would serve her right for not asking.

  “Okay, young thespians, on your feet.” Mr. Hawkins sounded worn out, but he changed up his usual monotone. “First day of rehearsals. Let’s warm up.”

  This was the way Mr. Hawkins always ran his program. Vocal warm-ups would lead to the kids learning the ensemble numbers. Once they had the music down, the blocking would begin. In the meantime, they were all responsible to learn their own lines. Two weeks into rehearsals everyone would be expected to know their part.

  Mr. Hawkins took his place at an old upright piano in the front corner of the room. “Ready …” He held up one hand. “Begin.”

  He led them up and down a series of scales, changing the vowel sound with each set. Five minutes of that, and he motioned for the production secretary to pass out the scripts. “Turn to the first number. It’s one of the biggest in the show, and it’s one you’re probably familiar with. In the f
irst half hour today I want us to be comfortable with the rhythm and lyrics. Then we’ll break into parts.”

  Ella loved this—watching a show come to life. The music started and they sang in unison, some with better vocal control than others. Ella had taken voice lessons since she was six, so the number was as simple as it was familiar, and she easily sang her several solos in the song.

  “Oh … isn’t this amazing … it’s my favorite part because you see …” She was midway through the prettiest few lines of the song when a movement near the open classroom door caught her eye.

  She kept singing, but she looked away from her music to see a line of kids walk by. It was the special-needs kids, headed to the small gym—their last class of the day. They walked past the drama wing every day at this time, but Ella never really noticed them.

  He had to be there, right? The kid with the blue eyes? She kept singing, kept watching, and then there he was, last in line. He was flapping his arms again, but as he heard the music he slowed to a stop. His arms settled at his sides and he took a half step into the room, holding onto the doorframe. This time he didn’t look at her the way he had in the lunch area. Instead he closed his eyes and swayed to the music.

  Ella’s voice died off, and the others were drawn into the interruption.

  “We have to focus, people.” Mr. Hawkins pushed back from the piano and cast a disappointed look at Ella. He didn’t seem to notice the kid in the doorway. “I’m counting on your leadership, Miss Reynolds.” His shoulders dropped a few inches and he tossed his hands. “Everyone take five. We’ll pick it back up at the beginning.”

  Ella barely heard him. She moved from her seat, slowly, so she wouldn’t startle the boy at the door. By then he had his eyes open and he was looking at her, those piercing eyes that seemed to see straight through her. Once more she had the strangest feeling she knew him. It wasn’t possible, of course. But his eyes had that sort of pull on her. As she drew closer, one of the special-ed teachers came for him, gently touching his elbow and encouraging him out into the hall again.