Miami.
It was like a dream. Like a glittering vision of heaven, as if Iván had opened the gates for them. Everyone stared, stunned, as though they had never thought they would ever actually see it. When the lights on the horizon became the faint shapes of buildings and roads and trees and they knew for sure they were looking at Miami, they cried and hugged each other again.
Isabel cried again for Iván, cried because he had been so close and hadn’t made it. But her tears for him were mixed with relief that she would make it to the States, and that made her feel guilty and cry even harder.
How could she be sad for Iván and happy for herself at the same time?
Crunk. Something bent and broke under Papi’s foot, and the boat lurched. Water streamed in from a new crack in the hull, and suddenly all
feelings of relief ended.
The boat was sinking.
“No!” Papi cried. He dove to try to shore up the hole, but there was nothing he could do. The weight of the ship and its passengers was pulling
it apart at last. They all scrambled to the front of the boat, but the back end sank deeper and deeper under the weight of the heavy engine. The top of the hull was almost to the waterline at the back. When the two met, the ocean would flood in over the side and there would be no going back. They
would drown.
Or end up like Iván.
Terror rose in Isabel like the water filling the boat. She couldn’t drown.
Couldn’t disappear beneath the waves like Lita. Like Iván. No. No!
“Bail!” her grandfather cried.
Mami was lying in the prow of the boat, as far away from the rising water as possible, her breath coming harder and shorter now. But everyone else dove for their cups and jugs. It wasn’t going to be enough, though.
Isabel could see that. There was too much water. Too much weight.
The engine. Isabel suddenly remembered the way it had been working itself loose from its bolts. She threw herself at it, trying to knock it loose.
When she couldn’t wrench it free by hand she wedged herself in between it and the next bench, down in the water, and kicked at it with her feet.
“Chabela! Leave the engine alone and help us bail!” her father called.
Isabel ignored him and kicked. If she could just get the engine free—
Another foot joined hers. Amara! She understood! Together they kicked at the engine until Isabel finally felt the wet wood around the bolts give.
The engine tumbled to the bottom of the boat, covering up Fidel Castro’s commandment to them.
Fight against the impossible and win, Isabel thought.
“One, two, three!” Amara said. Together she and Isabel rolled the motorcycle engine up the side and almost over—until Isabel slipped and it rolled back down with a splash into the water inside the boat.
“Again!” Amara told her. “One, two, three!”
Up, up, up they rolled the engine, and onto the top of the side, where it pushed the hull down below the surface of the sea. Water gushed in, and Isabel felt the boat sinking under her feet, pulling her with it down into the black depths, down with Iván and the sharks—
“No—wait!” Señor Castillo cried—
—and with one last good push Isabel and Amara tipped the engine over the side. It slipped into the water with a slurp and dropped like a stone, and the back end of the boat shot back up out of the water, the weight of the engine no longer dragging it down.
“What have you done?” Señor Castillo cried. “Now we’ll never make it to shore!”
“We weren’t going to make it if we sank!” Amara told him.
“We’ll row,” Lito said. “When we’re close enough in, the tide will take
us the rest of the way. Or we’ll swim.”
Swim? Isabel worried. With the sharks?
“Just bail, or we won’t be doing anything!” Luis cried. “Bail!”
BWEEP-BWEEP!
An electronic siren made them all jump, and a red swirling light came on a few hundred meters to their left.
A person speaking English said something over a bullhorn. Isabel didn’t understand. From the confused looks on everyone else’s faces in the boat, they didn’t, either. Then the same voice repeated the message in Spanish.
“Halt! This is the United States Coast Guard. You are in violation of US waters. Remain where you are and prepare to be boarded.”