The Raft by S. A. Bodeen

pseudo-sail, but it wasn’t big enough to do much. And my arms were too tired to hold anything aloft for long.
    A clump of something appeared about fifty yards away. I paddled again, trying to head toward it. As I got closer, I saw it was just a bunch of marine debris. The beaches at Midway were full of it. Every Sunday my parents and I picked the beaches to try to keep them clean for sea turtles and seals, but it was a losing battle. There was so much trash, a constant barrage, that we didn’t make any difference.
    For me, it had become a treasure hunt. Ask anyone on Midway, and the one thing they all wanted to find was a glass ball. Glass balls were actually old Japanese fishing floats. They used to be handblown, but then became factory produced before they stopped making them from glass altogether and switched to plastic. Shops in Honolulu sold them for a ton of money, and it was fun to find something for free that you knew tourists paid a lot of money for.
    They were made of very sturdy glass, and I rarely saw a broken one, even though they had been floating around in the ocean for years and years. Some were small, the size of a baseball. But some were huge, the size of a basketball. I had a couple softball-size ones up on a shelf. I was always looking for those when we cleaned beaches. They were supposed to bring good luck.
    So when I neared the batch of debris, I naturally looked for a glint of glass. We could use a little luck.
    The smell of dead fish and rotten sea reached me before I got close enough to see what was in the debris. Covering my nose, I leaned over to look. Mainly a fishing net, with all its captured trash. An empty ketchup bottle, a soda can, each with Japanese writing. As far as I could tell, most ships in the Pacific just tossed their trash overboard. No wonder the oceans were in trouble.
    A battered green toothbrush lay entwined in some of the net. My teeth felt like they’d grown fur and I was tempted … for about half a second.
    Something red caught my eye. Without thinking, I reached out to snag it.
    I let out a short laugh.
    A fat, red-and-white plastic Santa Claus, both arms outstretched, with only one short stubby leg. Barnacles covered half of him, and a good deal of his paint was missing, but his jolly smile was still there. Along with his merry eyes.
    “Maybe you’ll be my luck.”
    Holding him to my chest, I grinned up at the sky where one white puffy cloud crept across the unbroken blue. But no others showed up to filter the blazing sun as the morning crept by.
    I wanted to cry.
    Hunger, thirst, pain from the infected piercing in my nose. And my lips. They were so dry I was afraid to move them. I forgot once, and licked them. My hands turned into fists until the stinging passed. I made a mental note not to ever lick my lips again.
    I thought about The Hunger Games , how when the main character was about to give up, a little silver parachute would come floating down with exactly the item she needed.
    At that moment, if I could have a silver parachute bring me anything, I would want some kind of lip balm. Well, no, that would be dumb. I needed food. Maybe some Power Bars. No, I wasn’t supposed to eat if I didn’t have water. So I’d want the silver parachute to bring water. A gallon of water. No, I’d use that up right away. I’d want a water purifier thing, so I could convert salt water to fresh water.
    But was I going to get any of those things? No. There were no silver parachutes coming my way.
    I sighed.
    Some distraction from my situation would be really welcome.
    Once again, I picked up the ditty bag. The Survival at Sea card was still crumpled in the bottom and I pulled it out, smoothing it down. “Okay, Survival at Sea dweebs, I’ll give you another chance to help me survive.” My voice was raspy. Maybe I should add talking out loud to the list of things I should no longer do. Except hearing my voice aloud was comforting for some reason. I liked it.
    I skimmed past