The Turn of the Tide Read online

  “What?” Kai gasped. “But I have a job. We’re bringing fish up for people to eat.”

  The men in the group moved back to the work of unloading fish, but not before giving Kai stern looks for his undignified outburst. Miller lowered his voice and switched to English. “Look around you, Kai. There’s no clean water, no food, no power, no phones. Things are going to get a whole lot worse before they get better.”

  “More reason to stay and help,” Kai insisted.

  “One less mouth to feed. One less kid to keep track of.”

  “I’m not a kid. I’m working.”

  Miller sighed and leaned closer, so they were speaking almost in a whisper. “The hard part hasn’t even started yet. People are pulling together fine today, and they’ll be fine tomorrow, but a week from now, when everyone is hot and hungry, when people start getting sick, and they still don’t have a roof over their heads, and the power is still out…”

  Miller paused. He looked around the ruins of the town.

  “If your folks were here, right here with you, it would be different,” he went on. “But this is no place for a kid to be on his own.”

  Kai balled his hands into fists. “This is my home! I won’t run away!”

  Miller crossed his well-muscled and heavily tattooed arms over his chest. He was the only person Kai had ever met who was as tall as his dad. They were almost the only grown-ups left who towered over him.

  “I promised your father I’d bring you to the airport, and I will, even if I have to tie you up in a sack to get you there.”

  “A little help here?” Valdez barged in. He was serving as a crutch for a woman who had a row of bloody gashes below her knee. Kai went to the woman’s other side. His anger was still bubbling, but he fell in step with the injured woman and helped Valdez get her into the boat.

  “That kid who’s wheezing,” Valdez said over his shoulder. “Might be a respiratory thing.”

  Kai scurried back to help Valdez with his next casualty and the one after that.

  “I could stay with you,” Kai said quietly as they helped the last injured man into the boat. “I’ll work hard. I’ll do whatever you say. I’m not afraid of anything. Please.”

  Miller sighed. “I don’t doubt you, Kai. But I gave Ellstrom my word. Are you going to make a liar of me?”

  Miller’s job in the navy was probably anchor. He was solid as a tree. And he was definitely not kidding about tying Kai up in a sack. It was only the prospect of being scooped up and carried away like a toddler that made Kai get into the boat with as much dignity as he could muster.

  As his hometown grew smaller in the distance, Kai felt shame wash over him. He’d failed at everything he’d tried, and now there was no way to make it up. He’d be the coward who ran away. Forever. He tried to bear it as Ojī-san would want him to, but a groan that he could not hold in escaped.

  JET CHECKED HER phone one last time. Beck hadn’t returned her text. Not that she cared. No. Sailing with her little brother was just fine.

  “Ten minutes!” she hollered to Oliver.

  He was reading in exactly the same position on the living room floor, as if time had stood still. Jet got a glass of milk, a plate, and a banana from the kitchen. She retrieved his muffin from the floor, confiscated the book, and nudged him toward the food.

  “No breakfast, no book, mister,” she said firmly.

  Oliver glared at her, crammed the whole muffin in his mouth, and chewed with his mouth open. He held out his hand for the book. A cascade of blueberry crumbs fell to the rug. Jet shuddered, returned the book, and retreated to the kitchen. She filled a plastic bag with M&M’s and mini-marshmallows. The morning paper wasn’t on the table. Never mind. She could see the weather was fine; she’d get the tide later.

  The streets were quiet when Jet and Oliver flew down the hill on their bikes. They took a left at the highway and turned off when they came to the sailing club.

  It was nothing fancy. In Astoria, sailors were fishermen, cannery workers, and loggers. They patched up old pleasure boats or repurposed worn-out fishing dories. The club had a mossy boat ramp, a dock, a few picnic tables, and a row of sheds where people could store their boats in the winter. A bulletin board had flyers for the regatta, a thing about the Regatta Princess Pageant, boats for sale, and a tattered sheet of paper with the tide table.

  Jet ignored it all, except for the tide table. She ran her finger down the date column. The table stopped with the last day of May. Jet got out her phone and punched her tides app. It loaded at a snail’s pace.

  “Did you get the tide this morning?” she asked. Oliver shrugged and leaned his bike up against Jet’s. “We should check. Dad would murder me if I forgot something so basic as check the tide.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Oliver said.

  He took the bag of treats and walked onto the dock where the Saga was tied up. He fished a handful of marshmallows out of the bag and threw them into Youngs Bay. For a moment they just bobbed in the water, but then they started moving toward the Columbia River and out to sea.

  “The tide’s going out,” Oliver announced.

  Jet shook her head and smiled. Oliver had been reading before kindergarten, and he remembered everything. Dad had showed them the marshmallow trick three summers ago.

  “Rats!” Jet said.

  They weren’t supposed to sail on an outgoing tide. The shipping lane lay across the mouth of Youngs Bay. It was no place for a sailboat as small as theirs. A seagull swooped in and ate a marshmallow.

  “It’s not going very fast,” Oliver said.

  More seagulls came and squawked over the remaining marshmallows. Jet looked at their beloved Saga. She was tiny, barely twelve feet from bow to stern, oars instead of a motor, nothing fancy about her. But Jet loved her clean lines and sky-blue decks. The boat had been in her family since Dad was a kid. Sometimes they looked around on the sailboat websites for something new, but Jet knew her dad would never part with the boat that won him the championship.

  “The tide’s probably about to turn,” Oliver said.

  Early-morning sunlight shimmered on the mudflats around the edges of the bay. The old pilings were sticking up more than six feet above the water. It was as low a tide as she’d ever seen.

  “Yeah,” Jet said. “But we should wait. Just to be safe.”

  Oliver took out his book and dove headlong into naval warfare while Jet leaned back to soak up the sun. After nine months of rain, it was easy to forget how quickly her skin went from winter white to summer lobster. Jet was slathering on sunscreen when she heard a truck coming down the drive. It was Captain Chandler’s van, the new one with the wheelchair lift. Maybe Beck wanted to sail with her, after all.

  The van pulled into the drive, and Jet caught sight of a boat trailer. She stood on tiptoes for a better view. It looked like a Hobie, one of those racing boats that had two hulls and a trampoline deck. They weren’t the kind of all-purpose boat the Saga was, with room enough for camping gear or fishing tackle or little brothers. Nope, a Hobie did one thing. It went fast—really fast! The van rolled to a stop, and before Jet could even take a step in their direction, the side door slid open, and Beck popped out. Roland was right behind him.

  Jet turned away. She should go up there and chat with them about the new boat. That’s what her dad would do. She and Beck had been friends since they were tiny. It was silly not to. But everything about Roland rubbed her the wrong way. It’s not just that he was so competitive. She didn’t mind having someone to push her at swim team, although, to be perfectly honest, she was a little steamed when he won the Geography Bee last month. No, what she minded was that he was a dork to girls. Separate tables at lunch was his idea.

  “Come on, Oliver,” Jet said. “Let’s get out there.”

  OLIVER TOOK HIS usual spot at the bow of the Saga. Jet tossed him a life jacket and slipped into her own. She swung the front of the boat away from the dock and hopped into the stern. The wind was steady from the east. J
et lowered the rudder into the water. Oliver raised the mainsail and then the jib. Jet settled herself comfortably in the stern of the boat with the mainsheet in her right hand. She felt the familiar thrill as she took the tiller in her left to steer the boat. Her grandfather’s initials were carved into the polished mahogany of the tiller handle. Her father and Uncle Lars had their initials carved beside his. Last August, after Jet’s first solo sail, Dad carved her initials right beside his. Beck made his first solo the same day, and they had a big barbecue at the Chandlers’ place to celebrate.

  Winning the Treasure Island Race was the first step on her path. All the bar pilots had been kid sailors, and every one of them had regatta trophies. Jet knew it would take plenty of work to go from sailing a twelve-foot dinghy to piloting a thousand-foot Panamax cargo ship. But from here on out, it was all practice. Jet felt her heart soar as wind filled the sails and pushed them across the water. In a boat it didn’t matter that she was the shortest kid in her class. Seamanship was all that counted. She pulled in the mainsheet to adjust the sail, getting a feel for the strength of the wind and the tug of the current.

  The rivers that dumped into Youngs Bay were tiny compared to the Columbia, and usually Youngs Bay was flat and easy—not quite a lake, but the safest open water for miles around. Jet pulled the tiller toward her to swing the nose of the Saga upstream and away from the shipping lane. The wind dumped out of her sail, and they came to a standstill.

  “We’re going to have to beat windward,” Jet said. “Are we clear on your side?”

  “All clear,” Oliver answered.

  “Perfect,” Jet said. “Ready about?”

  “Ready.”

  “Helm’s alee.”

  She slid the tiller away from her and let the boom swing out over the starboard rail.

  “Duck!” Jet called.

  She grabbed her brother’s head and pulled it down so the metal bar holding the bottom of the sail wouldn’t hit him. They fell into a rhythm of tacking back and forth, Jet manning the mainsail and Oliver handling the smaller jib in the front of the boat. Jet didn’t look back at the sailing-club dock.

  Except every once in a while.

  The new boat was longer than the Saga, maybe four or five feet longer.

  She chatted naval strategy with Oliver. She listened to his idea for the perfect pirate movie.

  The new boat had a red sail. It was named the Viking.

  “Kind of weird that we haven’t gotten any farther, isn’t it?” Oliver said.

  They’d been zigzagging for twenty minutes and still hadn’t gotten past Dagget Point.

  “The tide must still be going out,” Jet said. She took another hard look at the shore on either side of them. “Weird, though, because the tide is already super low.”

  “I’m bored. Let’s go home,” Oliver said.

  The new boat was rigged up and ready. No way was Jet going back there where Roland could mock her with a bigger boat.

  “Let’s stay a little longer,” she said to Oliver. “We can go toward the mouth of the bay, where there’s more room to run. It’ll be lots more fun.”

  “What about the tide?”

  “Let’s check.” Jet held the mainsheet in her teeth, fished her phone out of her pocket, and handed it off to her brother. Oliver ran his finger along the screen, scrolling through icons.

  “Here it is.” Oliver tapped the screen and then frowned. “It says we’re at high tide. That’s messed up. Is this a free app?”

  “No way. Let me see.”

  Oliver leaned toward the stern, holding the phone out for her to look.

  “Well, duh! That’s for Hawaii.”

  The trouble with the phone tide table was that you needed a hand free to use it. If Beck were here she’d just hand him the tiller and mainsheet, but Oliver wasn’t big enough for that.

  “Ready about?”

  Oliver put the phone away and got ready to turn the boat.

  “Helm’s alee!”

  Jet swung the tiller and let out the mainsheet. A gust of wind caught the sail and swung it across the deck twice as fast as the last time. The Saga dipped away from the wind, and Oliver remembered to duck in time to keep the boom from whacking him in the head.

  “Mutiny, is it?” Oliver said. “Are you trying to knock me overboard? You pirate!”

  He and Dad had just finished their third reading of Treasure Island.

  “Total mutiny,” Jet said. “I was going to maroon you on Haven Island, steal the Saga, and head for…um…”

  “Hanapepe Bay?” Oliver said, looking at the phone. “On Kauai, where it’s high tide right now. In case you were wondering.” He tugged the jib sail over to the same side as the mainsail.

  The wind blew harder, making the sails rattle, almost as if the boat was as eager as Jet to go skimming over the water at top speed. Jet looked over her shoulder at the stretch of open water near the bridge. The wind was too perfect to resist.

  JET TURNED THE Saga’s tail to the wind and her nose to the Columbia. She eased out the mainsheet so the wind filled the mainsail like a big pregnant belly. She felt the Saga surge forward.

  “Wahoo!” Oliver shouted, leaning over the starboard rail to counterbalance the tilt of the boat.

  Jet grinned. The Saga was going fast enough to make a real wake, like a powerboat. She let out a whoop of joy. She teased the mainsheet in and out a little to wring every last bit of speed from the wind. She heard the whop-whop of a helicopter. It had the yellow tail with PILOT in black letters on both sides. It was headed out to sea, where a ship was waiting to be guided over the bar.

  Oliver laughed and drummed on the hull of the boat, his boredom forgotten. Jet edged out the tiller to gain speed. Who says an old boat is slow? Handle her right, and the Saga’s as fast as any brand-new catamaran. Let Roland and Beck have their shiny new sailboat. It would be all the sweeter when she won the race.

  Jet leaned out and looked under the Highway 101 bridge to the Columbia River. A cruise ship was inbound. Jet could see the gleaming white prow of the Norwegian Jewel, as tall as any car carrier, bigger than everything except the Panamax container ships, and far cleaner and fancier than anything that carried cargo. She had cleared her turn at Tansy Point, and her pilot would be looking for river traffic, not a tiny sailboat that had no business in those waters. By the time they saw the Saga, there’d be no room to stop.

  “Shouldn’t we turn back?” Oliver called.

  “In a minute,” Jet answered. She and Dad had a deal about not passing under the bridge.

  “Okay! Ready about!” Jet called at the last moment. She wound the mainsheet around her hand twice to be sure she wouldn’t lose her grip. She couldn’t remember a stronger following wind than this. Ever.

  “Helm’s alee,” Jet said, turning away from the bridge.

  Instead of sailing across the wind, the Saga slid sideways toward the bridge. Jet could feel water pressing against the blade of the tiller. She had to fight to hold their position. The wind died off for just a moment, and the current swung them back toward the shipping channel.

  “Jet?!”

  “I know!”

  “What’s going on?”

  “It’s the current; it’s never been this strong!”

  Jet had never sailed this close to the bridge before. Maybe the current was always this strong here. The channel was deep down the middle of the bay. They should never have come this far. Jet pulled the tiller in and turned the nose of the Saga toward shore again. Oliver crouched in the bow, a hand on each end of the jib sheet and an eye on the concrete legs of the bridge, which were coming up with alarming speed.

  “Jet! Get us out of here!” Oliver yelled.

  “Steady,” Jet said, more to herself than to her brother.

  They were gaining the shore, but the outgoing current was so strong, they weren’t going to make it before they were swept under the bridge and into the shipping channel. Sweat ran down Jet’s back.

  The ruins of an abandoned
fish cannery stood on the shore just ahead. It was a dangerous spot, with submerged bits of foundation, the rusting remains of a boiler, and rotting pilings sticking out of the water. It was death for a boat in there. But if she could just get close enough, maybe she could get a rope around one of the pilings and hold the Saga until the tide came up.

  “Oliver,” Jet called. “Dig out the anchor.”

  “It’s too deep for the anchor!”

  “I’m not going to drop it. I’m going to use it like a lasso.”

  “You’re crazy!” Oliver yelled.

  “Not if this works.”

  Jet took the anchor from him and prayed it would. It was a torpedo-shaped piece of steel, half a foot long, with four arms that folded out. It was about as heavy as a half gallon of milk and tied to a length of red-and-white rope. Jet tied the end of the anchor’s rope to the thwart that ran across the middle of the boat.

  “Get ready to strike the sail,” Jet said. “I’m going to need some room to throw.”

  She looked at the cluster of pilings ahead. There was no way this would work. She’d never tried to rope anything in her life.

  “Now!” Jet called. “Drop the sail!”

  Oliver untied the halyard and reached up to tug the sail down until it was resting in long folds over the boom.

  “Take the tiller,” Jet said.

  “But I can’t steer!”

  “Just keep it in the middle. You can do it!”

  She put the tiller in his hand. They were out of the swiftest current and over shallow water now, but the tide was still pulling them toward the bridge. Jet stood up, circled the rope and anchor over her head, and let go. The anchor caught in the notch at the top of a wooden piling.

  “Yes!” Oliver shouted.

  The rope slid through Jet’s hands, leaving a red mark. It was a good thing she’d thought to tie off the rope. It grew taut with a snap and yanked the tiller out of Oliver’s hand. Jet toppled backward.

  Oliver pulled Jet back into the helmsman’s spot. “Look!” he said. “There’s a bunch of stuff down there!”