Red Sea by Diane Tullson Page B

blue V-neck shirt. Jesse bought the same shirt and it looks better on her because she actually has cleavage. She said she forgot I bought it. At least she didn’t get her picture taken in it. I don’t have the shirt anymore. It got torn and I threw it away.
    I wonder if Mom has this picture so she could show it to the authorities if I ever made a break for it. Like I would. Half the time I spent in the cities was within sight of the boat, reading a book in the shade of a building, or playing with the seawall cats. Not that I’d ever tell her that.
    The bags are beaded with water, and I feel a small puddle in the bottom of the cabinet. I get right down on my belly and peer inside. A perfect circle of daylight meets my eye, a bullet hole in the side of the boat. Oh, good. The hole is above the water line, but in the storm the waves must have washed in. How many other holes like this are hidden behind the furniture?
    There’s one last bag, a small package inside wrapped in tissue paper. There’s no card, but the tag is my father’s handwriting:
For Lib, on your birthday
. The wrapping paper is the same he used on my Christmas gift that came while we still were in Australia. He must have mailed this one along with it.
    My birthday isn’t until April. Through the plastic I feel the package, tantalizingly heavy. What the hell. I open the plastic bag, pull out the gift and rip off the paper.
    It’s a folding knife, with a blue handle and a bright yellow cord. I open the blade. It has saw teeth, like Duncan’s sailing knife he always carried in his pants. Duncan would have slept with his. It would be in the pants he was wearing when he went overboard. My temples pound.
    So, it’s a sailing knife. On it are tools I wouldn’t know what to do with—a nail file, a small paring knife. I study each one, marveling at how much fits in one compact knife. As gifts go, it is definitely the most weird, but somehow, it pleases me.
    A year ago on my birthday, I was grounded. Jesse and I had been at the mall and met some guys who were going in to see a movie. We went with them, without phoning, of course, and so were hours late getting home. Dad said that for my birthday he’d bake me a cake with a file in it like they used to do for convicts so they could break out.
    This year, Mom would be happy if all she had to worry about was me being at a movie late. Using my new knife, I cut a piece of heavy-duty silver tape and plaster it over the hole in the hull. Won’t hold out much, but it gives the illusion of repair. I leave the drawers pulled out so I can keep an eye on the hole, but I fold all Mom and Duncan’s stuff neatly back into the drawers and stack them on the bed. I slip the yellow cord of the knife around my neck.

ELEVEN
    N O ANTIBIOTICS . I grab the Tylenol tube and set it in the galley where I’ve put the rest of Mom’s bandage supplies. To Mom I say, “Unless you have another secret stash somewhere, then we don’t have any antibiotics. And if you
do
have a secret stash, then by all means, wake up and tell me where it is.”
    From the bruised apples I select a relatively healthy victim and take it and a foil pack of tuna over to the dining bench. With my knife I carve paper-thin slices of apple that I set onto my tongue, imagining that they are dissolving like snowflakes. I roll tuna inside the apple wafers and eat themtogether. The sweet crunch of the apple goes well, I think, with the salty blandness of the tuna. Surprising, really, that no one has thought of doing this before.
    I open the saw-tooth blade of the knife. Duncan said his could cut through wire rigging if it had to. Mine would surely cut through fishnet. I would just have to dive underwater to the propeller. Dive under the boat.
    I swallow.
    â€œHow hard could it be?” I direct the question to my mother. “I can put my head under water in the bathtub. I’ve done it in a pool. I just