Capping waves of chatter crash against the cafeteria table. The blue, marbled floor sways underfoot, streaked with bleeding red stools and ship wreckage, and atop the scarlet buoys, a bundle of teenagers barely bob above the sea.
There is an empty chair.
Another wave of noise washes over them, suffocating, but they ignore it. The scraps of their vessel go unmentioned too, just like the hawk circling above them, though it waits with eager eyes to swoop down and –
Yes. Avoiding is better.
“What’s after lunch?” The cook asks, carefully weighing her words before mixing them into the silence, as if she would for a cake.
“I have chemistry.” A fellow castaway answers. “I think you’re going to art.”
The cook already knew the answer, but she nods nonetheless. “Yeah, that sounds right.”
The lost sailors’ grief is pungent, mingling into the water (the way milk suspends itself in the cafeteria tea) and splashing back against them in the waves. They talk, but not really; Silence is better than pointing to the hawk, growing more and more frantic – its circles an obvious whirlpool in the sky – Don’t mention it. It’s better than pointing out that they have no way home, than thinking of what was lost in Davy Jones’s locker, or who was lost in Davy Jones’s locker, or how they feel, or how they don’t, or how really – They hate the silence.
It’s better.
Eventually, the cook slips off her stool and into the sea. The water level creeps to her neck, a shadow marking just where a guillotine blade would cut. “I’m going to class, then.” (It’s 15 minutes early.) “I have some stuff to do.” (That’s a lie.)
“Oh, wait for me,” says a different crew member with bleached hair like a surrender flag.
The riptide drags them away from the rest as they speak of nothing. They ignore how they drown, just as they avoid the memorial’s glare, and as how they will not acknowledge when the hawk finally lunges down, down, down, dives –
Into the depths, knocking their friend’s portrait along with it.
