Gasp (Visions) - Lisa McMann Page 0,44

we three Demarcos head inside our house, lured by the smells of something delicious cooking in the kitchen and the pleasant faces of two seemingly normal parents who are happy to see us and enjoying life. Bizarre.

All I know is that if anything happens to us now . . . it’ll pretty much wreck everything.

Thirty-Eight

We all sleep terribly for about five hours, and are extra quiet getting ready so our parents don’t wake up. Which they never do. Their body clocks are permanently on restaurant time, which means late to bed, late to rise. I see their faces before school so rarely I can count the number of times on one hand.

Shortly after three, we’re off. Clad in wet suits and sweats, each of us carrying a duffel bag containing a life vest and rope, we are a glaringly obvious group of kids who are clearly skipping school and running away from home. Rowan, who can do Mom’s voice best, remembers to call the absentee hotline and report us all absent so Mom and Dad don’t get a call later.

We pick up Sawyer first, who is waiting at the entrance of Kate’s apartment building. He holds my hand in the backseat, not saying much, his face strained. By four, the rain has started. We reach the UC campus and Ben hops into the backseat next to me. He’s wearing contacts today, not his usual glasses. He gives my arm a friendly squeeze and whispers, “We got this, kid,” for which I am more grateful than I expect to be. The journey continues.

The wind picks up, blowing unidentifiable bits of floaty garbage across the highway, and the rain is steady. Occasional lightning streaks across the sky. There’s not much traffic heading out of Chicago at four in the morning, and we make great time, reaching the ferry terminal before five thirty. Trey parks the car and we sit for a moment, listening to the rain on the car’s roof and spraying the windows.

“I have to pee,” Rowan says. It breaks the mood, and I’m glad she’s here.

“Good luck with that,” Trey says.

It might be our first mistake, putting these wet suits on at home. “I blame Ben,” I say.

“Yeah,” he says. “I forgot about that part. It’s not as easy to pee in the suits if you’re not actually in the lake.”

I look at him. “Are you saying these suits have been peed in by strangers?”

“I’d say that’s pretty likely.”

I close my eyes as the giant wave of grossness washes over me.

“Why do you think I told you not to go commando?”

There is silence.

“We clean them, though, obviously,” Ben adds.

I hold up a hand to him. “Okay, no. Let’s pretend we never had this conversation.” I take in a resigned breath and loop my fingers around my duffel bag. “Come on, guys. Let’s do this. Are you ready?”

The murmur of agreement is soft but resolute. We have a plan.

• • •

Ben hands over our tickets and we board. The ferry is bigger than I pictured, and I imagine how monstrous and strange it’ll look tipped on its side. I grip my duffel bag tighter.

I catch a glimpse of the vehicles driving onto the ferry and wince, wishing I could tell everyone to leave their cars on land. And themselves. One good thing about the weather this morning is that it’s probably keeping people from using the ferry. But there are still plenty of passengers boarding.

We take a tour of our surroundings. There’s a private room for first-class passengers. I peek through the open doorway, and hastily back out when a guy in a suit gives me a cool stare.

And there’s the banner. WELCOME TO OUR 13TH SEASON, it reads.

“Lucky thirteen,” Rowan remarks.

Glass doors and stairways lead to multiple open decks, which would be great on a sunny summer day, but everyone stays inside the glassed-in area today. There’s a snack bar, where passengers line up to get coffee and breakfast. We seek out the location of the lifeboats and flotation devices, and assign a lifeboat to each of us to man—if things work out to enable us to man them. That’s the thing. Who knows how this goes down? Who knows how hard that bump is when the ferry hits the wall? And what else happens that we don’t know about? I know there’s got to be something that puts people on the floor before the jolt.

Once we feel comfortable with the layout, we find a spot with a table by