Page 26 of No One Aboard
“That’s the part I don’t get,” Rylan said. “I understand school. I mean, it wasn’t easy, but I could sort through my thoughts. With this... whenever he tries to teach me, my head drains.”
“You can’t be good at everything.” Nico glanced his way, and Rylan’s stomach dipped. “I heard your mom bragging about you being salutatorian. So you can’t be a geniusanda top-notch rescue diver. I mean—” he flashed a grin “—leave some stuff for the rest of us.”
Rylan’s face heated. “I’m not a genius.”
Nico shrugged. “I dropped out of high school my junior year. I was failing all my classes, wasn’t gonna make it anyway. So trust me when I say salutatorian’s a big deal. At least to me.”
“You dropped out of high school?”
Nico eased the helm to one side, andThe Old Eileenadjusted. “Yeah. I was tired of everyone seeing me as stupid. The Ds and Fs were beginning to affect the person I saw when I looked in the mirror. So I dropped out, skipped town, and gothired with no experience as a deckhand a month later. I get to see the world and learn in a whole different way. Now I’m on track to get my captain’s license by winter.”
Rylan couldn’t take his eyes off him. Nico de la Vega was like a mythic hero or world wanderer. Maybe Rylan and Tia could come up with a call sign for him that would capture something to that effect.
“You’re clearly not stupid,” Rylan managed. He hoped Nico could tell he was impressed. Rylan couldn’t be late to first period, let alone drop out and skip town. What had made Nico so brave? Was it the opposite of what kept Rylan so scared?
“You clearly aren’t either, Rylan,” Nico replied.
Rylan drew his knees up to his chest.
Nico faced him, holding the wheel steady with one hand. “You wanna try steering her?”
“What? No, no, I couldn’t. I can’t.” Rylan sunk his teeth into his upper lip.
Please don’t make me.
Nico smiled. “No worries. It’s scary as hell. Being in charge of something this big.”
Rylan relaxed again, although he didn’t believe that Nico was afraid of anything.
“How do you... handle it, I guess? Especially if you started being a deckhand at like sixteen. How were you not panicked all the time?”
Nico seemed to consider the question with his whole being, curving over the wheel as he let his chin fall into one hand. “You know... the problem was Iwasn’tscared. Not in the beginning.”
“Are you scared now?” Rylan couldn’t help but look up and down Nico’s left arm at the longitude and latitude tattoos. Did they represent all the places he’d been? Or all the places he wanted to go?
Nico pushed back his curls. “My uncle—Alejandro—was on the same ship as me a few years back. He was cheffing, I was crewing. We weren’t super close. He’s my mom’s distant big brother that I barely knew.”
Alejandro had never told Rylan he had a nephew or even a little sister. Rylan hadn’t even known Alejandro cheffed for other families. He certainly didn’t need the money. Maybe he needed the space.
“But anyway, a storm was brewing, and the captain ordered us to turn the ship around and go back to port. I did what I was told, but I was complaining to Alejandro later that night. That I thought the captain was too timid, that storms are half the fun of the sea. And my uncle got all serious. He sat me down like a little boy and told me a story.”
Rylan’s gaze was locked on Nico’s hands. He had rested his wrists on the helm and was using his hands to animate every word, punctuating the important parts. With each movement, Rylan felt himself wound tighter in the story. It wasn’t the words themselves; it was the way Nico breathed life into them.
Nico continued. “Apparently he had been sailing a rich man’s boat a couple decades ago. The rich guy wasn’t there. He’d left them in charge of chartering the ship to a different port. But my uncle and his two best friends didn’t go straight to the port. They went storm chasing. The way my uncle told it, the waves looked like tombstones, and the lightning seemed to sever pieces of the sky. The ship was out of control, and there weren’t enough of them to handle that amount of weather. They were working so fast to try and trim the sails that they weren’t following all the safety stuff. One of his friends got swept over the side. No life jacket.”
Nico lowered his hands back to the helm. “They found his body days later. My uncle told me to always fear the sea.It’s the only way to respect her properly. So yeah. The ocean’s fucking terrifying.”
Rylan suppressed a shudder that slid down his spine. People died at sea all the time, he knew. But Alejandro was part of Rylan’s family, and he had lost a friend. That was personal and close to home. Why hadn’t Alejandro ever told him any of this? Rylan supposed he had never asked. And maybe it was too painful for Alejandro to talk about.
“Shit,” he said softly.
“Yeah... You know, I’m kinda surprised you don’t know that story,” Nico said, tilting the wheel of the ship the other way.
“Why?” Rylan chewed on his upper lip.
“Because,” Nico said as his eyes flickered to his, “your father was the other survivor.”
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