Working Title: A Lack of Color, Part 2

He’d been staring at the sky the night before when Matthew walked onto the deck.

“Look’s like a big one coming,” he’d said, still looking up. “We’ll probably hit it tonight.”

Matthew had come up hoping for stars, but he couldn’t even find the moon behind all the clouds. Every day of this stupid voyage was worse than the last. He looked up again with practiced disinterest, then saw that Edmundo was absently peeling an orange.

“Hey Edmundo,” he said, “I’m hungry. Let me have that.”

Edmundo didn’t look down. “I’m hungry too.”

Matthew was too bored to be agreeable. “Give it to me!” he yelled. “Give it or I’ll tell my father you stole it!”

Edmundo still gripped the half-peeled orange but now looked at Matthew with disbelief, or was it fear? Matthew hoped it was fear. For nine years old, Edmundo looked unusually intimidating without a shirt on, and Matthew didn’t like the idea of fighting him with anything more than words, even if he was a year younger.

“I’ll tell my father you broke into one of the bins and stole it, and then we’ll see if your old man ever finds another lousy job on a ship again.”

He’d gone too far with that one and he knew it, Edmundo’s father was the most experienced captain in the whole company and a personal friend of the family, but Edmundo let go anyway. He was never one to make trouble for his father, a fact that Matthew used to his advantage as often as possible.

“Here,” said Edmundo. His right hand clutched at his stomach while his left hung limply at his side in defeat. “Can I at least have half?”

Matthew dropped the peel on the deck and sectioned off a piece of the orange, then looked his adversary in the eyes as he chewed the first bite. “Good night, Edmundo,” he said, tagging on his name at the end in an effort to make it sound stupid, then walked inside.

Edmundo was such a pushover, and so eager to please. “Call me Eddie,” he was probably saying.

A gut wrenching cry startled Matthew awake. A hoarse voice yelled frightened pleas from somewhere in the dark.

“Help, I can’t swim! Don’t let me go. I can’t…”

The voice trailed off into silence as Matthew realized it was his own. His body was stiff on the floor of the lifeboat. Blood and mucus clung thick in the corners of his mouth, chapped from screaming. Tears still rolled from his closed eyes down well-beaten paths that joined at one nostril and ran across his cheek. The sea rocked heavier than it had during the day, but much less than the night before. Much less. He listened to the ocean thump against the sides of the boat, then sunk back into sleep under the light of the watching moon.