Chapter Text
Where in the world shall I go today?
The screen of Tommy’s old phone was cracked, jagged lines snaking through the glass, but even through them he could still see the schedule of the various ships that had docked. The list of the names of the vessels, as always, was long—even on the weekend, Felixstowe’s port bustled with perpetual activity, spurred on by unrelenting sailors whose work times were not defined by the typical nine-to-five.
He watched them now. They walked about the port, footsteps swift and loud and purposeful. From his vantage point, crouched behind a stack of shipping containers, the vessels themselves were also visible under the light of the crescent moon, enormous silhouettes blotting out the lower horizon in large chunks. If he listened closely, past the clink of machinery and quiet conversation, he could hear the ocean. It brought him a small sense of peace, and settled the nerves that still arose from the process of sneaking his way onto the ships, even after all these years.
Tommy let out a soft exhale, and it came out as a puff of fog before disappearing into the dark. He frowned. He ought to choose soon before his fingers froze off.
Tommy’s eyes flitted back to his phone, where he glanced over the information listed regarding each of the boats docked in the port, noting in particular the type and destination of each ship. From his experience, Tommy knew freighters were the clear winner in terms of stowing away. Between their vast amount of space and minimal crew, they afforded him both a variety of hiding spots to choose from and a decrease in the lingering paranoia he experienced while at sea, brought about by the prospect of being caught. It also helped that they carried edible resources, whether kept in the pantry or sometimes also packed into shipping containers in the hold, so Tommy could occasionally sustain himself without needing to dip into his small pool of supplies.
In terms of destination, large cities were both the best and most frequent option. Regardless of what country he ended up in, their urban areas tended to have a significant portion of the population that could speak English to some degree. And with such a high number of people around, it was easy to become another nameless face in the crowd, and easier still to earn money—even without the supposedly necessary documentation, he could still find under-the-table work as a dishwasher or babysitter or cleaner. Smaller towns were more difficult to disappear in; sooner or later, the locals tended to notice he was not a familiar face. Felixstowe was no exception. He knew from the moment he arrived that he would not be able to stay for long.
He mentally crossed all the non-cargo ships off the list, though that didn’t eliminate a lot of options. From there he eyed the destinations. Teesport would be even colder than here, Kotka doubly so… Bremerhaven could get quite snowy this time of year… Hong Kong would be a warmer destination, but it was a long distance and he didn’t know the language… Gdańsk would also be cold… hmm. Le Havre might be nice. God knew he needed to brush up on his French.
Departing for Rotterdam.
Perfect. Chillier than Le Havre, but given that more people spoke English in the Netherlands, it would be easier for him to get around and secure a job. With a job came money, and with money came, hopefully, some temporary accommodation he could rent out. Given that no responsible landlord would rent to a foreign sixteen-year-old, it would not be good accommodation, of course, but anything was better than the streets. It also helped that Rotterdam was a city he was quite familiar with, having spent his fair share of time there. And even if he didn’t find work, it wouldn’t be difficult to leave, given that it contained the largest port in all of Europe.
Having settled his mind on the matter, he noted the name of the freighter— Blakeley —and then slipped his phone into his pocket.
It was go time.
Tommy stepped out from behind the shipping containers and started off at a reasonable pace towards the ships. He had learned that even though he did stick out a bit, it was still better for him to go at a leisurely pace than to try and make a break for whatever boat he was attempting to sneak onto. If he pretended he belonged here, after all, they would believe it. His false confidence tended to do the trick in preventing any sailors from asking him questions, at least as long as he wasn’t on any of the ships.
Once he got closer to the boats, he began walking parallel to the port’s edge so he could see the name of each vessel printed along the side. The large shipping containers stacked in neat rows and columns obscured some of his view. Other ships’ names were on the side of the hull facing the water, preventing him from seeing them entirely. And even with the light coming from the port cranes and the moon, the gloom of the night made it difficult to make out the letters that were visible. Altogether it amounted to a process of piecing what clues he could glean together, spelling out the name as if he was on Wheel of Fortune , but thus far it hadn’t failed him.
…Well. Admittedly it had failed him a couple times in the past, but those were far and few in between, and he had been able to ship-hop his way back to his desired destination sooner or later. It wasn’t as if he needed to be anywhere at a specific time, anyway. Tommy had no one and nothing waiting for him at the places he visited. The sensation of isolation was freeing and frightening all at once—he could not be controlled, free to choose where to go and who to be, but if he so much as stumbled there would not be any strong arms waiting to catch him or a soothing voice there to reassure him. Some days he stood at the overlooks of the cities and, watching the lights and traffic, felt as though he had entered a world of endless possibilities; but on others, even surrounded by the vibrant colors and perpetual noise, he felt like the only person in the world.
He shook his head. Now was not the time to be getting caught up in his thoughts. If he was not careful, the boat would leave without him, or, worse, he would be found.
Pushing his musings aside, Tommy eyed a dark blue freighter not far ahead of him. The name was painted upon a stripe located near the top of the ship’s front, but since he was approaching it from the stern-end, it was obscured to the point where he had to squint to make it out. Only the first few letters were plainly visible. B… L… A… He thought he could see a K a bit further down if he squinted, along with a couple round shapes that would suggest Os.
Tommy was seventy-five percent sure he had the right ship. Until he could get closer and confirm it, that would have to be good enough.
“Hey, kid.”
The voice came out of the dark: not loud enough to be directly behind him, but too close nonetheless. Tommy kept walking. Maybe if he pretended he hadn’t heard it…
“Kid. Hey. Hold on a sec, I’m talking to you.”
At that he relented—clearly this guy would not be shaken off so easily—and turned around to look the stranger in the eyes. He was met with a tall man clad in a military uniform, though from what country’s navy, he couldn’t be sure. The sailor held a cigarette in one hand, the embers at the end glowing red-hot in the cool night air. Wisps of smoke trailed from the corner of his mouth.
“My mum told me not to talk to strangers,” Tommy said.
The sailor ignored his poor attempt at a distraction. “Awfully late for a kid your age to be up and about.”
“Was just hangin’ out with my cousin, he works around here. Must’ve lost track of time,” Tommy replied. He sent out a silent prayer to whatever gods might’ve been out there that his nervousness didn’t show. “Mum’s gonna be proper pissed I didn’t get home before curfew. Reckon she’ll ground me or something…”
He looked up to make sheepish eye contact with the sailor in an attempt to seem more like a mere scolded child and not the ship-hopping teenager he truly was. But to his surprise, the sailor’s gaze wasn’t even meeting his—instead, the man’s eyes were fixed just at Tommy’s shoulder, on the strap of his backpack. Not good, not good at all.
“She’ll have my hide if I get back any later than I am now, I oughta go, really—I get I’m, um, not even supposed to be here, classified area ‘n allat, but I promise me and my cousin aren’t drug dealin’ wrong’uns or nothing, I—”
“Why don’t I walk you to your house?” the sailor said. At last he made eye contact with Tommy. The brim of his cap cast the lower half of his face in shadow, eyes appearing purple-black in the dim light. “It’s dangerous to be wandering out alone at this time of night.”
And God if that didn’t make Tommy want to bolt. At best, this guy had assumed Tommy was a runaway and felt it was his duty to return him to his home. At worst… He suppressed a shiver. Like hell he was going to stick around to find out.
“Actually…” Tommy started, scrambling for a brief distraction. “D’you mind if I use your phone to call my mum real quick? I’d do it myself, but mine died a couple hours ago.”
The sailor nodded. “Sure thing, kid.” It took everything in Tommy for him to not let out a sigh of relief.
He dropped the butt of his cigarette on the ground and stubbed it out under the heel of his boot. Now free, his hands went to his pocket, pulling out an iPhone. It looked damn near brand new. A real shame about what Tommy was going to do, then.
The sailor held out his phone in a loose grip. Tommy brought his arm back, then swung it underhand in a fist, right towards the man’s hand—
The phone went flying into the dark.
“Whoopsie!”
The sailor’s curses faded into the distance as Tommy sprinted off, making a mad dash in the direction he’d been heading. He zigzagged between several stacks of crates, leapt over a pile of support beams, zipped past the metal legs of the port cranes so fast it made his head spin. With how quickly the forms of obstacles emerged out of the shadows he was shocked he hadn’t crashed into anything. Not that he was complaining, though; his quick reflexes had gotten him out of many a sticky situation.
Spotting a small piece of debris on the ground—concrete, maybe, he couldn’t be sure—he snatched it up as he passed. Good intentions or not, it was time to send this sailor fellow on a good old wild goose chase.
After running some distance, he made it to the side of freighter he’d been targeting, hunched down behind the legs of one of the cranes. Breathing rapidly, nearly gasping for air from the exertion, he was hit with the overwhelming smells that came with cargo ships: heavy diesel fumes, cigarette smoke, and the salty ocean air. He attempted to quiet his breaths so he could hear past them. If he strained his ears he could catch the sound of rapid footsteps heading in his general direction, but not approaching the ship itself. It seemed the sailor had lost him due to the lack of light. Well, he was about to get even more lost!
Tommy stepped out from behind the crane leg and wound up his arm, curling his fingers around the chunk of quite-possibly-concrete. If Tommy was an American, he might’ve compared the stance to pitching a baseball, but he was a citizen of the Queen’s country, thank you very much, and did not do such things. He pushed off with his back foot, then lobbed the rock up and out, as far as he possibly could, watching it soar in a beautiful arc before landing with a loud THUNK .
A loud shout rang out, and the footsteps changed direction, growing quieter by the second as the sailor ran in the direct opposite way he needed to go.
Tommy couldn’t help but let out a small snort. What a dumbass, really, falling for the oldest trick in the book.
Turning his gaze back to the boat he was seventy-five percent sure was Blakeley, Tommy gave it a look over. He was close enough to it that at this distance he would have normally been able to see the name in clear lettering, but since the boat’s bow curved forwards and out of sight, he could not get a proper view of it. Ah, well. He had boarded ships with less certainty as to their names. And with that sailor out looking for him, he had no time left to hesitate.
He took a brief glance over the accommodation ladder to ensure it was empty before making his way up it, keeping his footsteps light against the metal steps. His heart was still racing from the chase, and he felt terribly out of breath, so he tried to console himself by focusing on the rhythm of ascending the stairs. He was nearly in the clear, now. Just a bit more work and then he could relax.
Once Tommy made it onto the freighter—emerging on one of the lower weather decks, open to the outside—he ducked behind several crates of supplies and began to evaluate his options. Over the years he’d created a mental list of the different places he could hide, and he tended to consider all of them whenever he boarded a new ship, regardless of comfort. It was good to keep his options open: he couldn’t afford to be picky considering what he was doing was more than a little illegal.
Even so, though, he would have to be either desperate or an idiot hide in the rudder trunk. It was the classic spot for stowaways, which made it the first place the crew would check. And the only way to access it was to swim to it and then climb inside. Tommy knew for a fact that he was a Big Man, of course, but he was not sure he was strong enough to be able to clamber his way up the side of a boat while soaking wet, freezing cold, and wearing a backpack. He did not intend to find out the hard way.
Hiding out under the tarpaulin covering the lifeboats was another option, though it was dark, cramped, and potentially dangerous if it rained. But that was always checked, too. The same went for the cofferdams—empty compartments between tanks holding two liquids, so as to prevent them from mixing should one of them rupture—as well as the engine room and the paint locker.
It was a damn shame, really, that most of the places Tommy could have hunkered down in had been used already by other stowaways who had been too slow to not get caught. There was no sense in complaining about it, though; that wouldn’t change it. It just meant he had to be more alert and more clever than the rest of the sorry blokes who dared to smuggle themselves aboard.
On his luckier excursions, he snuck into one of the lower decks and took up residence in an empty accommodation hall. Most container ships tended to contain several accommodation areas that remained unused. As many as a dozen non-crew passengers could be housed onboard in addition to the workers, but it was uncommon—traveling by freighter was nowhere near as glamorous as taking a cruise, and the price tended to be equal to or more expensive than a flight regardless.
Camping out in one of the accommodation halls would seem risky to some, but Tommy knew better. Though a ship’s crew was always required to do a full security check of their vessel prior to leaving a port, they were never rigorous enough to look under each and every bed in the passenger quarters. Hell, sometimes all it took to convince the crew a room was secure was the door still being locked. The lockpicks he’d purchased several years ago had been an expensive but smart investment, that was for sure. And checks only tended to be more thorough at ports near or in countries stricken by war or poverty, as there were more people there attempting to escape in search of a better, safer life. Such was not the case in England, where the most pressing thing he could be fleeing from was Boris Johnson.
Since this was going to be a shorter trip, though—based off past experience, he estimated it wouldn’t take more than seven hours for the freighter to dock at Rotterdam—he figured it wasn’t worth the effort and paranoia that came with trying to nab an actual room. That narrowed his options down.
He could try sneaking into the ventilation system. It was one of the most discrete means of stowing away, and was fairly comfortable once he set down the clothes in his bag to make a sort of nest against the cold metal ground. The trouble, though, was getting in and getting out. The process of unscrewing a vent cover, crawling in, and then fixing it so as to keep it attached on the door both without its screws in and without trapping him inside… well, it required a great deal of time and effort, to say the least. He had only ever attempted it during the rare occasion when he’d been certain the entire crew was departing from a ship.
Of course, there had also been times where he’d been desperate and had bribed a member of the crew to seal him in and let him out, but such a method was a drain on his limited finances. And though some cities tended to contain more people willing to accept said bribes, he never knew if a deal would go well or not until he offered it—or if they’d call the cops on him for asking. It was already a risk when he lingered by the port searching for someone willing to let him sneak on. Like hell he was going to try it now, while already on the ship.
The hold was his best bet, then.
Tommy listened for any signs of people approaching, but the only noises he caught were the port workers lashing the upper shipping containers onto the freighter and the distant whirr of cranes.
Stepping out from his hiding spot, he looked both ways before scurrying off in the direction of the nearest hatch. He spotted it easily—bright red and protruding from the deck. It took several twists of the locking mechanism before he could pry it open. Without hesitation Tommy climbed inside, lowering the hatch until it closed over his head. He could not seal it back up from the inside, unfortunately, but with luck the crew members would just think they had forgotten to close it earlier.
With the hatch closed, the passage into the hold was cast into heavy shadows. The only thing keeping the darkness at bay was the singular fluorescent light hanging from the ceiling a ways down the narrow hall. He quickly clambered down the ladder; once his feet hit the metal ground, he let out a sigh of relief, the tension draining from his shoulders.
“Fuck yeah,” he mumbled, feeling awfully proud.
The holds of container ships were, in some way, built like ribcages. Like most freighters, the vast majority of Blakeley ’s hold space was taken up by rows upon rows and stacks upon stacks of shipping containers. The ‘ribs’ of the boats, then, were the cell guides: slim, multi-floor metal hallway structures that spanned the width of the ship, supporting the containers and allowing crew members to descend into the hold. The cell guide he stood inside now would also serve as his quarters for the duration. All Tommy had to do now was get past the hold inspection, and he’d be guaranteed his spot here.
The key to not being discovered during the security check was simple in concept but difficult to execute, and was best summed up in one word: Move . If he used two different spots, hiding in one while the one he wasn’t at was being looked over, the crew members would assume both places were devoid of any stowaways. As long as Tommy kept out of their line of sight, he was golden.
The first thing he did was slip off his trainers and put them into his backpack; his footsteps would be too loud to pull off his next trick if he was in anything but his socks alone. Satisfied with his de-shoeing, he started off towards one of the ladders and began his descent to the bottommost floor.
The cell guide, though sparse, was not entirely empty. As Tommy descended he spotted a variety of features that lined the metal corridors: wires snaking down from and around the sparse lights; electrical boxes protruding from the walls; thin guardrails fencing in the parts open to the hold, which was filled to the brim by colorful, stacked shipping containers. The further down he went, the more the smell of lube oil and diesel fumes faded, replaced by humid air thick with the musty, metallic scent of iron.
After reaching the lowest floor, he immediately headed to one of the ends of the narrow space. The far end of each floor had a large metal support beam on each side that extended into the upper floors. Big enough for a person to hide behind and with enough space behind them for one to do so, they were the ideal way to conceal his presence. Once he was behind the beam, Tommy reached into the front pocket of his backpack and pulled out a small stone, one he kept around exclusively for this purpose.
He waited for an indeterminate amount of time. It felt like at least half an hour, but then again, his hypervigilance had a way of making the seconds feel much longer than they had any right to be. Even so, he nearly jumped out of his skin when the distant, steady thud of footsteps against ladder rungs rang out from far above. Dusting off his pants, he got to his feet.
Tommy sucked in a breath, then let it out slow, trying to ignore how his hands were trembling. It was showtime.
From what he could tell, the boots thumping above him made up a single pair of footsteps. Good. It was much easier to evade the attention of person than two. He strained his ears, listening to them stride the length of a floor, then take the ladder down a floor, and then repeat the process. Brushing his thumb over the stone in his palm, he waited and tried to calm his breathing.
There were two facts working in his favor, he reminded himself. The first was the common superstition among crew members of freighters that the hold was haunted—or, at the very least, a generally spooky place to be—due to the dim lighting and the perpetual creaking of the ship. A bit mean-spirited to use that against them, sure, but hey, all’s fair in love, war, and sneaking onto international trade vessels.
The second was that most ships had two sets of ladders or stairs within each cell guide—one ladder on port side, the other on starboard. This gave him his discreet escape route provided he could create a distraction, which he fully intended to do.
By now the steps rang out on the floor just above him, heavy footfalls starting just above his head before moving down the hall. Tommy peeked out from behind the support beam; his gaze went to the ladder further from him, and he squeezed the stone in his hand. He had to throw it just before the head appeared, in case they were looking in his direction.
The boots appeared, descending step by step.
The legs emerged. There was the lower torso. He could see arms—
Now!
Tommy hurled the rock at the far end of the hallway.
CLUNK.
“SHIT, ” the sailor shrieked.
Tommy fought to stifle his laughter as the sailor’s head whipped towards the direction of the stone’s impact, flashlight held out as though it were a weapon. Call him cheap or a one-trick pony for using the same ruse repeatedly, but in the wise words of some random American (a rare thing, he thought, for ‘wise’ and ‘American’ to go in the same sentence): if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. And he had to admit it was pretty damn funny to boot.
As the sailor hesitantly shuffled towards the origin of the sound, Tommy crept out from behind the support beam and scaled the ladder as quickly and quietly as he could, gaze flitting between his feet and the crew member all the while. Not that he needed to cover up any noises much, though—the faint sounds of his movements were far softer than the heavy, panicked breathing of the sailor.
Once he made it to the penultimate-bottom floor, he ducked behind the support beam closest to himself. He just barely resisted the urge to fist-pump into the air in glee, instead opting to press himself as closely to the beam as he could.
He held his breath. His heart pounded in his ears.
Boots thumped heavily against the ladder as the sailor began his ascent, not more than four meters away from Tommy. The poor bloke was mumbling something to himself; Tommy caught a snippet of it before he disappeared onto the next floor.
“—fucking haunted , I swear to God—”
He had to bite his lip this time to prevent any giggling from spilling out. The footsteps and mumbled curses grew quieter and quieter until they were completely inaudible, drowned out by the muffled whirr of machinery and the hum of the fluorescent lights.
Once he was certain the sailor was gone, Tommy leaned against the wall and sank to the ground, knees curled up to his chest. The breath he’d been holding escaped him in one sudden, shaky exhale.
The only time the hold was inspected, he reminded himself, was shortly before a freighter left the dock. The exception was reefer ships—which carried refrigerated shipping containers, typically holding perishable goods—where a crew member descended into the hold twice a day to check the temperatures of the cargo. But this was no reefer ship; none of the shipping containers had the telltale temperature sensors on their exteriors.
He was in the clear.
At last Tommy let out a sudden, quiet laugh, brought out half from amusement, and half from sheer, delirious relief. “I did it,” he whispered, touching his face as if he couldn’t believe it was still intact. His hands were clammy against his skin. “I fucking did it.”
Not that he doubted he could do it—no, no, surely not, he knew damn well he was a genius, a mastermind, the world’s greatest stealthmaster, et cetera, et cetera. He supposed he only felt some degree of shock due to the adrenaline rush that came with sneaking his way onboard. Though this was far from his first time stowing away on a ship, nonetheless he always found himself shaky and disbelieving in the minutes following a successful boarding. It was his fight-or-flight response acting up, that was all. And it didn’t help that most folks planned out their stowaway escapades for months in advance, yet here he was gaming the system with nothing but a rock in his hand and a backpack on his shoulders. The whole ordeal felt like some kind of dream.
Except it wasn’t, he thought, pulling his backpack off his shoulders and onto his lap. There was still more to do before the freighter arrived at Rotterdam, and he had no time to lose.
Tommy pulled several pieces of clothing from his backpack and laid them on the floor, then settled himself upon them. The metal floor could be harsh against anyone, but given how lanky he was it had an especially adverse effect on him, so creating some kind of barrier between him and the ground was a necessity.
Next he raised his arm into the dim light to observe the fancy digital wristwatch on his wrist—Tommy had swiped it off some Tory back in Southampton, since he clearly needed it more than the fellow did. In addition to making him look slightly less like a suspicious vagabond, it allowed him to set alarms. He punched one in to go off in six hours, just in case the ship arrived at the port faster than he expected.
His last step was reaching into his backpack and fishing out a stick of jerky from his supply stash. Pulling off the wrapper, he took a small bite—ingesting food in smaller chunks would trick his brain into thinking he’d eaten more—and relaxed as the taste of salted beef washed over his tongue.
Tommy curled up into the little nook he’d created in an attempt to get comfortable. God knew he’d need the rest before getting to Rotterdam. The hold creaked around him, dark and stuffy and oh so empty, as he settled down for the ride.
***
Sometimes, when Tommy curled up in some desolate corner of a ship, alone and cold and half-asleep, he took what recollections he had of his parents and played them in his head like a movie. He felt as though he was watching some distant past life through the glass of a snowglobe, viewing a happier moment frozen in time. He feared he’d come to forget those better days, but he had no way to write them down and carry them around, so he would go over them in his lonelier moments.
They were born travelers. He liked to think that trait was in his blood, some remnant of them he could keep besides the tattered old photographs carefully stashed in a plastic bag in his backpack. Even before he was in the picture, his parents had a reputation as globetrotters. Their weekends were spent traveling throughout England or hiking the countryside near their inner-city apartment. They saved their money from eight-hour office drudgery jobs for vacations to national parks and beaches and ski resorts, intent on traveling to the four corners of the world and beyond. But whenever they returned home, they found themselves restless, desperate to leave the confines of their ordinary life again.
By the time Tommy was born, they’d saved up a significant amount of money for a ship. And before Tommy could remember—he was two or three years old, perhaps—they moved onto the sailboat that doubled as their home. It was not especially large, containing much fewer belongings than a typical house, but since he had grown up in such a setting he had come to accept such conditions as the norm. He had found the lack of space to be more cozy than anything else, truly; whenever he walked into the cabin, he felt as though he had stepped into a warm embrace, held by the depths of the ship. Even now he could still see it in his mind’s eye: patterned pillows on the living room benches; homeschooling textbooks nestled into the shelves; a small netted hammock hanging from the ceiling, holding their fruit supply; a map of the world marked with sailing routes, smiley-face stickers denoting all the places they’d visited. His family seldom bought souvenirs from the places they visited given the lack of space, but there were a few exceptions, like the cow plushie they’d bought him in a French marketplace and the small Italian painting of a mountainside they’d hung up on the wall.
Even when they docked back in their home city, their lives were still defined by motion. His parents seemed intent on squeezing every last hour of daylight for all it could give, taking Tommy to every place they could find—bakeries tucked into alleyways; libraries full of ancient shelves crammed to their brims; playgrounds with brightly colored plastic slides and children that wanted to play pirates just as badly as Tommy did. His days were a whirlwind of activity, fast-paced and thrilling.
Until.
That was the kicker, that word: until that night, until the incident, until it all changed. One mere addition shifted the entire trajectory of his life. All it had taken was a brief separation and a span of time not longer than six hours, and just like that his world was shattered, blown to bits. Just like that he was left in the ashes of his former life, able only to think: Why?
His parents had not been perfect—no one was—but nonetheless he viewed them with high esteem even to this day. If anything, their deaths and the ensuing string of tragedies had cemented their place in his mind as almost divine, a haven of former safety and comfort in comparison to the unpredictability of his current lifestyle. Even so, there was one conviction of theirs he could not accept because of how often he asked himself that one-word question.
They would not have described themselves as religious, but as spiritual, holding the belief that there was some overarching force that silently worked for the greater good, infusing every incident, every day, every life with meaning. One day they had stayed docked due to a storm rolling in in the morning—it meant they wouldn’t be able to visit the aquarium Tommy wanted to see until tomorrow, and he had been disappointed, to say the least. Everything happens for a reason, sweetheart, his mother told him to comfort him, ruffling a gentle hand through his hair. Even if you don’t quite understand why when it occurs.
By the time the clouds cleared, the summer heat had cooled to a perfect temperature, and he and his parents were able to sit at the docks and eat ice cream they’d bought off a street vendor: chocolate for his father, butterscotch for his mother, and mint chip for himself. They had the perfect view of the sunset that evening, burning red and pale gold staining the sky. It was easy to believe his mother’s words then. The greatest inconvenience in his life was having to see the aquarium stingrays a day later than anticipated, and his parents had a way of turning any remotely bad situation into a good one, making their belief into more of a self-fulfilling prophecy than anything else.
Tommy wondered what his mother would say if she could see him now, arms wrapped around himself to keep the warmth in, tucked away in a hold that could hold him in return but never embrace. He wondered what she would say if she could see her own grave and realize that her body had not been turned to ashes and scattered as she had wanted, but buried, confined to one place forever.
Tommy dug his teeth into his bottom lip, trying to ignore the burning feeling in the back of his eyes. He did not want to think about it anymore.
He instead focused on a memory of his parents laughing as he flipped over a game board on their dining table. As the pieces clattered to the floor, his eyes closed, and he drifted off.
***
Once the sound of his watch alarm woke him, there was not much else for Tommy to do other than sit in his hiding spot and wait for the freighter to dock. He went through the usual motions of preparing for his departure and/or distracting himself: doing stretches to alleviate his slightly sore muscles, eating another stick of jerky, and drinking some water. Following that he packed his clothes back into his backpack, then did some more stretches for good measure. After that, he waited.
And waited.
And waited.
No cessation in the creaking of the shipping containers, which happened much more frequently whenever a cargo ship moved, occurred. No whirr of port cranes far above or clunk of above-hold containers being lifted rang out. He did not hear the rapid thumping of boots as the majority of the crew got on deck, or the freighter blasting its horn three times as it approached the port. As far as he could tell, nestled within the depths of the hold, Blakeley was still sailing.
Glancing down at his watch, Tommy frowned. It had been two hours since he woke now, and the fact that the ship had not yet docked was disconcerting, to say the least. Briefly he considered the possibility that he had slept through the arrival at Rotterdam, but that was impossible. He would have been woken by the sound of the horn. And if he had somehow slept through that , the lifting of the enormous hatches that covered the entirety of the hold would’ve done him in, since without those on, daylight would come streaming in.
He bit at his nails. It was far from a healthy habit, but he couldn’t help it, his hand gravitating to his mouth before he could think to stop himself. Already his thoughts were going too fast and too alarmist, raising every single possible worst-case scenario. He could escape the freighter at its true destination, only to become trapped in a country he had no knowledge of. He could run out of water and die a slow, painful death to dehydration. He could be discovered and sent back to England, back to the one person he never wanted to see again.
One hour, he decided. Delays of this degree were uncommon, but not impossible. He would give it one more hour before he determined he had boarded the wrong ship and declared a state of emergency. But even if that happened, he would be fine. He’d gotten out of worse pickles before. He was alright, he had to be.
Taking in a deep breath, Tommy settled back down on the ground, pulling clothes out of his backpack to cushion the metal flooring again. He clasped his hands together in an attempt to soothe the steady tremor that had come over them. His heartbeat seemed to drown out all else, even the incessant groaning of metal that surrounded him, as the freighter sailed on and on to a destination he could no longer be certain of.