Free Surrounded by Sharks by Michael Northrop Page B

got in the way. It bent the light and obscured everything below it, especially when there were ripples or swells.
    Then he made a discovery. He was resting his head against the water cooler bottle, as he had been for a while. He usually looked around it, scanning for the boats that refused to show, for the land that refused to appear. But this time he looked through it. He thought maybe it would act like the lens of his glasses. Instead, it worked like the glass sides of a fish tank. Looking below the waterline, everything was much clearer.
    Davey used it as a funky sort of swim mask. He tilted it forward and looked down. One of the little fish swam by. It grew slightly as it passed the middle of the bottle and then slipped by. Davey tilted the bottle more and found it again, swimming down to join its friends.
    He spent some time watching them. They looked a little blurry, because the bottle wasn’t perfectly clear. But apart from that, he had a good view. They made small moves in unison. They’d all turn to the right and then back to the left, or vice versa. Or they’d swim up a few inches and then back down. There didn’t seem to be any reason for the moves, but they did them together, like a tiny boy band.
    He shifted his body down a little lower in the water. It improved his view, but soon he felt a shiver go through him. As warm as the water was — close to eighty degrees — it was still twenty degrees below normal body temperature. The more time he spent in it, the more obvious that became. He scooted himself back up the bottle. He grabbed it near the top and pushed it farther down into the water.
    The sun hit his back again. It took just a few minutes to burn the water off and start warming him up. He felt the skin there getting tight and knew he was already beginning to burn. But what choice did he have? He needed the heat.
    He looked up at the sun. Was it directly overhead? Not quite, he decided. He realized he could tell the time with it. He was pretty sure that straight overhead meant noon. He decided it was around eleven o’clock. That’s it? he thought. It felt like he’d been out here for twice that long. He wondered how long it would’ve felt like if he hadn’t found the bottle. He wondered if he’d still be feeling anything at all.
    He looked up at the sun again. It flashed like the biggest silver fish there ever was. Could he use it to figure out directions, too? A phrase flashed through his head: rises in the east, sets in the west . But he couldn’t make it work because he couldn’t figure out which way he was facing. Or if he was facing a different direction now than he had been five minutes ago. There were no fixed points to go by. There were a few clouds, way up, but they were moving, too. And he was being carried. He was sure of it now. He was drifting along in some larger current.
    Is this the Gulf Stream? he wondered. He didn’t think so; not yet.
    He was sure about one thing, though: It didn’t matter which direction was which when it was the sea deciding where he went.
    As the sun continued to crawl across the sky, Davey went back to looking for boats or land. He went back to listening for helicopters or planes. The report came back the same each time: none, none, none, and none.

The only subject that was even half as interesting to Davey as rescue was this: What had he done wrong? He kept picking at the question like a scab. And it was a big scab, because he’d made a lot of mistakes.
    Should he have stayed in bed? Yes. Could he have read his book there, even with the snoring and toxic gas? Yes. Did those things seem like dumb reasons to sneak away now? Of course.
    But he had.
    So should he have left a note in the room? No, he decided. He’d meant to be back before anyone woke up. And he wouldn’t have known about the beach then anyway, so what good would a note have done?
    Should he have stayed out of the water? One thousand percent yes. Had the sign told him to? Yes! Duh! Oh my