ocean boulevard | 5sos | michael clifford

x.

chapter ten.

It takes me every ounce of strength I have left to pull myself up and to help Michael paddle. My muscles are sore and my eyes are only halfway open, but sheer determination allows firmness in my grip around an oar. We pool around for a bit, not entirely sure how to steer the liferaft. I can’t see clearly, the pulse in my head hammering ruthlessly, so I leave Michael to come up with a game plan.

“Dip it into the water and pull it straight back. Don’t let it curve,” Michael instructs.

I lower the oar into the ocean and draw it back. It’s harder than I imagined, though, like swimming through oil, so the oar slips out of my hand before I can begin to react.

“WHOA THERE.” Profanities spill out of Michael’s lips as he jerks forward and catches the oar just in time. He pulls it back in and lays it on the canopy. “Maybe that wasn’t such a good idea.” He sounds pissed and I feel terrible.

“I’m so sorry.” The words sound airy and detached. I can’t recognize my own voice.

Michael takes a breath. “Maybe you should rest. I’ll paddle.”

“I’m sorry,” I try to repeat, but it doesn’t come out right. Nonetheless, I comply with Michael’s instructions, knowing that I’ll do more harm than good if I try to help.

Michael sweeps the ocean alone, and that is when I notice how thin he's become. The meat and muscle under his flesh has dissolved under the dearth of proper nutrition. And then it strikes me – the sick irony of society. Because while the both of us are here struggling to scout for sufficient food, a quarter of my grade back home is probably heaving the contents of their stomachs out, in a stupid bid to be thin in order to fit in. They’re undernourished by choice. Michael isn’t. And neither am I, so before I have the chance to mull over this realization, I am out cold again, embedded in a cocoon of fatigue and sombre enlightenment.

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Stillness. That is the first thing I notice when I stir. My mind is in a tousle but there is stillness where I lie – and sand. Stillness, and sand. It takes a while, but I succeed in prying my eyes open, and when I do, I can feel the sting of dry tears burning in my eyes. The sky extends above me, a sight I’ve grown used to, but I am no longer surrounded by water, but by land.

“Payton?” Michael’s voice comes delicately from somewhere close, but out of my sight.

I open my mouth to reply, feel the crack of my lips and dry, chipped-away flakes of surrounding skin, and flinch in pain. Mmph, I try to say, but even then my voice is an inaudible cavity. Mmph. Frustration and lethargy cling onto me like a shadow at noon. I can’t speak. I can’t do anything.

A hand slots itself behind my neck and hoists me up gently. My body is so brittle that I feel as if I’m about to crumble into fragments on the ground, but something firm keeps me propped up. Michael pokes his head into my line of vision, frowns, and disappears again. Seconds later, a coconut surfaces; my lips are so vacated of sensation that I can’t even feel its husk when Michael presses it to my lips. I do, however, notice when Michael tilts the coconut, allowing water to stream into the cave of my mouth and down the tunnel of my throat. It feels cool and achingly quenching all at once. I drink greedily, consuming as much of it as I can in a second, but still desperate for more. When the water has been completely depleted, Michael pulls the coconut away, and suddenly I am crying, pleading, for more. Silently, of course. I still can’t speak, so I let my eyes do the talking.

Michael lowers me back onto the ground and disappears again. I hear his footsteps padding away. The sound of crackling static in my ears wails almost unbearably. All at once I am more aware of the burning drought in my throat and the frozen fossil in my head, emulsified by my own panic.