this world of broken people

Prologue

Prologue

A banging on the hatch of my berth startles me out of my sleep.

“Lottie!” a male voice yells, and then the banging resumes. “Charlotte! Wake up!”

I drowsily sit up and unscrew the knob that lets my personal hatch on the sailboat flip up and outward. It takes a few half-tries to get it undone, but once I do, the boy responsible for all the noise yanks it open and shoves his head through the hole. As I watch him attempt to push his broad shoulders through the opening as well, I can’t help but smile at how quickly he manages to get stuck in an awkward position. His ideas never quite work out like he plans them in his head.

I giggle and then sneeze from his raven colored hair ticking my nose. “I’m cutting your hair later,” I mumble and he rolls his eyes.

“Sure, whatever. Anyway,” he says, “We’re leaving today for Miami!” His usual grin is plastered on his sun kissed face, a little darker than mine is at this point. Usually by the end of summer we are both close to being considered black from spending all our time on our dad’s two sailboats.

At first they had shared the one that my dad now claims as his own, but after saving up for years, they managed to buy another thirty foot sailboat for Andy and his dad. I personally like the original one better, but I could be biased. Andy and I do have a strange competition going on about this.

I smile up at his upside-down face. “You act like we’ve never been to Miami before,” I state and then stretch my arms above my head, managing to hit Andy in the face and bang my wrist on the overhead in one swoop.

The rooms aren’t exactly spacious.

In reality, though, all my room consists of is once large wooden platform with green cushions on top, also known as my bed. All my clothes are stashed either in the back of my dad’s berth or in the tiny head. Half the time I have to fish something out of the dry-flush toilet, usually my hairbrush or a pair of sweats. It gets irritating after a while, but the good outweighs the bad on these trips so I try and ignore it.

“It’s the first time we’ve been this summer, loser.” His head suddenly disappears from the hatch. “Get up, I wanna go swimming before we leave,” he yells and then I hear the thump of footsteps as he expertly stumbles across the topside of my boat and then onto his boat, connected to ours by a floating rubber dock running from bow to stern.

I lie back in bed for a few seconds and enjoy the sound of the ocean lapping against the side of the freshly painted boat but eventually I force myself up and out of the slightly lumpy bed. My feet reach for the wooden floor, and as soon as they touch, a wave crashes against the side of the boat and makes me stagger into one of the sides. My hands automatically fly out to stop my falling body and, as soon as the boat stops perilously rocking back and forth, I steady myself and walk into the head located right beside my bedroom.

Even after sitting through what seems like a million rain storms in this boat, I still haven’t mastered keeping my balance when the boat is rocked too hard. True, none of the storms have been particularly dangerous or anything, but still, you would think I would be able to not fall over every time a wave hits the boat and catches me by surprise. Let’s hope there is never any storm worse than, like, a bad thunderstorm, though, so I don’t have to worry about breaking any bones.

As fast as humanly possible, I pull on a plain black bikini top, a random pair of bottoms and board shorts, and then rush out onto the deck. Somehow I manage not to stagger as I clamor up the three-step ladder leading to the topside, which is a feat in itself. My klutziness is why I gave up on dancing in the third grade and stuck with piano lessons.