Thoughts course through my head as we fly with incredible speed toward the ladder, bumping into pipes sticking out here and there, and then come to an abrupt stop, draping over the steel bottom rung like three heavy sacks filled with sand, one on top of another. Darkness throbs in the red flickering light. The boat's tilt must be close to a thirty degree angle now. I remember reading somewhere that once it careens past forty-five degrees, sinking is inevitable and happens within minutes.

I find my face pressed into my father's chest, hearing his beating heart, his warmth touching my forehead.

"No!" I weep into his shirt, soaked and smelling faintly of fabric softener. Why Jimmy's death has hit me harder than my father blowing up Raidne on the shore of Seward Park, I can't fathom. I don't even know the guy; he was supposed to help Glen kill me. Why it makes me weep from grief instead of getting mad like it did when my father killed Pisinoe, I can't comprehend. Perhaps because I was so close to it, watching Papa execute him without a purpose; perhaps, it's because a part of me has agreed that sirens are indeed monsters and, hence, deserve death; or, perhaps it's because a woman's lower rank has been so firmly ingrained in my mind by my father's constant lectures, that it's now ruling my emotions?

I swallow.

My father jerks up, attempting to sit.

"Off! Get off me! Get—" he yells over the rumble of the creaking trawler that's about to give up. He pushes his free hand into my left shoulder and shoves me away, like I'm the most disgusting creature that's ever touched him. I remember him dropping me into the trunk of his Maserati Quattroporte. This is as close as we've ever gotten to a hug, and I wish he would drop his gun and drape his arms around me, letting me sob into his shoulder. I need him to tell me that we all will be okay, and everything that's happened in the past will be forgotten. We'll start new, and it will be always sunny, warm, and loving. Only life doesn't work this way, and neither does Papa.

Life has a way of reminding you of its fragile balance, just when the future looks rosy. It sends me that reminder as it dunks the trawler another foot down, digging sharp fingers of panic into me, siren or not.

"Hunter!" I yelp over the rushing water, reaching for him. My father intercepts me and pushes my arm away, yelling in response.

"You touch him, he's dead, understand?" His eyeballs bulge, two white, ethereal spheres of hate amidst the pounding darkness. "Help me get him up. There is a lifeboat on the deck. Move!"

I glance at him. Impulse makes me want to circle my hands around his neck and choke him, choke him to his natural death, yet I know it won't work. Not at my hands, no matter how strong. It's like a cruel joke, a joke on this whole siren hunting thing; we are forever destined to torture each other, both armed with unlikely weapons—sirens with the sound of their voice, siren hunters with the sound of a sonic boom.

I'm helpless, barely detecting the off-key melody of Hunter's soul, but not seeing him in the dark. My quiet rage completes a 180 degree turn. It aims at me, wild, because it can't just evaporate, it has to go somewhere. Tears burn my eyes and my muscles scream for action, yet I hold still. The rubber of my fisherman suit drums to the mad patter of leaking water from the ceiling. My arms hang loose, unsure if they can move or if it's best not to stir. Several feet of swirling water ripple with the momentary agony of disaster, splashing around me.

Hunter's body is slumped against the ladder, hugging its very bottom like a torn rag doll dropped into a puddle by its owner. All I can see in the darkness is that his eyes are closed and his nose is bloody. Half of his face floats in and out of the water.

"I said, move it! Get him up, now!" Papa yells, pressing the gun into my left shoulder. "You want to keep your boyfriend alive, don't you, sweetie?"

Papa's manner of mixing a cute name that indicates affection, into a furious tirade, hits me with its ugliness. My helpless rage blooms into a carnivorous flower, its balloon-like chamber ready to swallow me whole. I'm supposed to move the entire ocean. In fact, it was probably me who screwed up the weather in the first place tonight. So what exactly is wrong with me right now? My tongue won't move, and I only manage to nod.

"One arm on the ladder, one arm on the waist. Here—" My father points to direct me, grabbing the ladder with his free hand and pressing his back against it to stabilize himself; the ladder is nearly vertical, so Papa leans against it as if it were a wall, while the trawler continues tilting.

He shoves me toward Hunter. I fall to my knees and lift Hunter's face. He moves his lips, coughing. There is dangerous cracking noise above, one of the riggers must have been torn off by gravity.

"Do it!" my father directs me. He doesn't like to dirty his hands, always finding someone else to carry out his commands. This time, it's me. It's my job to carry Hunter to safety, and I'm glad to do it. So I hold my mouth shut, lest something unpleasant slips out. I pull Hunter up by sticking my hands under his arms and trying to make him stand. He moans and his knees buckle, so I rely on my strength alone. My father watches me struggle, his gun at the ready.

For the next several minutes, I fight the flood and haul myself up with one arm, holding Hunter with the other, carefully stepping up with my bare feet, curling my toes around the metal bars. I leap up to grab the next rung, and the next, until I make it to the upper level and pull us both onto the floor, covered with fishy smelling litter, metal trays, bags of melted ice, and other debris that got washed down. One more level and we'll make it to the deck.

The boat groans and we slide to the side. I desperately try to hold on to something, but everything I touch is slimy slick, and there is no light here except the rectangular opening in the ceiling several feet to the right, oozing in the early morning light and fresh ocean smell.

I turn and see my father emerge from the hole as well, first clamping his hand with the gun over the edge, then the other one, yanking himself out with an agility I didn't think he possessed, and sitting on the edge a little sideways, his legs dangling down.

"There. Go!" He points at the opening, propped on all fours for balance. There is a moment of quiet, of no movement, a brief stillness before the eruption.

"Now!" he barks, and I move. The water gurgles above in splashing waves, and there is another tug down and a dangerous sounding metallic moan of the boat's hull. In my haste, half-way up the second ladder, I don't notice how Hunter's head lolls to the side and hits one of the protruding pipes on the wall with a wet smack. He shudders in pain and yelps loudly, suddenly fighting my hold.

I let go from surprise and hear him collapse several feet down, splashing into the shallow puddle with a crack of the back of his head against steel.

There is a moan and a kick.

"Fucking klutz. Get up!" Another kick.

I scrunch up my entire face, trying not to react to what I hear—not let the commotion, the slapping, and the cursing take me to a place of no return, where red rage will obscure my reasoning and turn me into a monster. My helpless rage is close to driving me insane. Surely, in this chaos, I can easily snatch Hunter away—right from under my father's nose—and escape with him. But the risk of having him killed in the process is too much to bear, so I slowly make myself go down to help both of them.

I ignore my father's insults in an attempt to get me moving, and I try to block out Hunter's moaning. I touch the floor, lean, and scoop up Hunter. Methodically, I make my way back up, step by step, hearing the resin of my new overalls squeak, gripping the rungs with my toes, and my arm firmly around Hunter's waist. I hear him mumble something into my shoulder, but concentrate on making it to the deck.

I grab the edge of the hatch; someone, thankfully, must have left it open. I tense and leap out, landing on top of the open cover, Hunter firmly in my lap. The wind slaps my face and whistles through the gaps of my fisherman suit. Heavy-laden clouds hang low over the horizon. It must be the dawn of day three since I jumped from the bridge.

Lightning strikes, briefly illuminating the storm's angry rain. A few seconds later, the rolling thunder deafens me with an earsplitting accord. This might be the last day I'll see Papa and Hunter alive. I feel a push in the small of my back and turn, watching my father struggle to stand on the leaning deck without sliding, holding on to the railing, wrongly clothed for this weather. Curling his shaky fingers around it, he aims his gun at Hunter and urges me to get him up and into the lifeboat.

I nod, indicating that we're still good with our agreement, lifting and draping Hunter over my shoulder and carrying him like a baby to the aft part of the deck where the orange capsule of the lifeboat gleams in the grayness of the early morning. Suspended from ropes attached to one of the galleys, it careens at a dangerous angle, about to snap and fall. I turn to look behind me. The other half of the deck is fully submerged in the ocean now, and as far as I can hear, there are no other human souls on the sinking trawler.

I pause, taking in the scene.

Its predicament, its terrible beauty, arrests me for a moment. A colorless background of dull water meets the dull sky, and I'm precariously balanced on its edge, with only a drop of orange acting as my salvation. It occurs to me that I can leave them both, Hunter and father, right here, right now; I can leap into the waves, swim away, and never come back. But my feet won't move, and my limbs won't listen. I can't run away anymore.

I grab on to the ropes that are stretched in a pulley mechanism designed to lower the lifeboat, and with a powerful yank, I tear at them, breaking the elaborate on-loading system. I hop away and watch as the lifeboat drops on the deck, screeches, and slides across its remaining twenty feet and into the water. It's roughly the size of a small car, shaped like a sandwiched plastic boat little kids play with during bath time, the wind-up type with two concave oval halves, both orange, the top and bottom identical; a welded ridge runs along its middle. The lifeboat has an orange waterproof cover, hatches in its roof, and a series of circular windows adorning its front, each large enough for one person to peek through.

The trawler growls and tilts, rapidly reaching the forty-five degree incline. Yelling into Hunter's ear to hold his breath, hoping he'll come to his senses and hear me, I let him slide to face me, hugging him tightly. I dive from the trawler's deck, emerging a second later; I hear his breathing to my satisfaction, and circle about the bobbing lifeboat. Leaping into the air with Hunter firmly pressed to my chest, I plop right into the middle between both of its hatches on the roof. Feeling it shift to the side, I have time to rip off one of the hatch's lids and push Hunter into the opening, feet first.

He moans and grabs hold of my ankles, but I have no time to explain what is going on.

There is a deafening explosion of gunfire, my father no doubt thinking that I broke our agreement and decided to take off with Hunter alone. And I could, right? But I won't. I'm simply unable to leave my father stranded in the middle of the ocean, letting him die of hypothermia or exhaustion, or both. I hate myself for feeling this way, but I can't help it. Deep inside, under protective layers of loathing and revulsion and teenage defiance, I still love him. I love him the way every little girl loves her father, idolizing and adoring him no matter what.

"Get in there and wait for me!" I say into Hunter's ear, shoving him into the hole and diving back into the ocean.

I land in a froth of turbulent bubbles, white foam on the ocean's surface created by the sinking trawler. A few life preservers float around, the only things left to indicate that, only seconds ago, a fifty-foot trawler was here. The whole thing is gone, victim to an enormous body of saline water.

About twenty feet away I spot a bobbing head.

I swim across the whirlpool, held back by the clumsy fisherman suit that's catching on the water and not letting me move fast enough. Diving under, I emerge directly beneath my father, grabbing his shifting torso and surfacing with him in my hold, willing myself deaf to his threats and shouts and two more gun shots in the air, which is just a pointless waste of ammunition. I repeat my trick of leaping out of the water and landing on top of the lifeboat, managing to turn midair to hit it with my back, protecting Papa like I did Hunter from the fall. The impact makes the boat rock dangerously and we begin sliding. I reach out and hold on to the protruding contraption that was secured to a hook before I yanked the lifeboat down from its hold.

My father is shouting and motioning me in, shaking from the cold. I'm in a daze of suppressed rage, moving automatically and focusing on the task at hand so that I don't lose it. Crawling on top and worming inside, my father urges me in. I descend into what looks like a small bathroom with a low ceiling and tiny circular windows. No, it looks more like a sauna with those shelf-like seats stacked on either side of the boat's interior, four in total, strapping belts hanging loose across them and contrasting their orange color against the walls' white. My bare feet touch the smooth surface of the floor. Papa hops down next to me and pushes me into a seat to the left, positioning himself in the top seat to the right, the one next to all kinds of controls and knobs and a couple sticks.

Hunter is slumped into a seat below me, his eyes open, studying me, clearly uncomprehending and dazed. He is mouthing something, shivering and wet, his arms crossed over his pulled up legs.

I open my mouth to talk when, incredibly, the first thing I hear in the relative quiet of the lifeboat is my father's voice, complaining—not about losing his trawler, no—about his outfit.

"Do you know how much I paid for this suit?" he mutters. "Finest Italian wool. Look at it now, it's ruined."

An incredible thought passes through my mind. Is he embarrassed by having to accept my help? Because that's what it sounds like. I've never seen my father embarrassed before, so I can only guess. He lifts his eyes and there is stunned wonder there, a question in them. I know what it is, without him having to say it aloud. He's wondering why I didn't leave him, why I saved him when I know that he will make it hell for Hunter and me.

"Thank you," he says, gun in his lap. Then clears his throat and repeats again, explaining. "Thank you for sticking to our agreement. I admire the fact that you held to your word and did as promised." But I know by his face that the first thanks was not meant for this. The first one was an important one that slipped off his tongue before he could catch it. He thanked me for not leaving him out there all alone, and I smile, returning the favor.

"You're welcome." I lean in with the urge to...I don't know what. To touch his hand? To hug him? A second later, I'm sorry I did.

A contortion of repugnance crosses my father's face, wrinkling his forehead. He points his real gun at me, simultaneously groping behind him and yanking a sonic weapon off the wall with his left hand and pointing that at me, too. How considerate, now I know that this was indeed his siren hunting trawler after all, stocked with the necessary supplies to do the job. He even had them stored in the lifeboat.

"Stay back!" my father shrieks.

I freeze, studying his eyes. Rain softly patters on the floor, falling inside through the still open hatch, breaking up the white noise of relative silence.

He's afraid of me. After a second or two, I slowly lean back againstthe smooth wall, feeling my legs dangle over the seat and my feet catching onwarm drifts of Hunter's breath below. I suppress my anger by turning it inward,and now it's eating me inside. It's tearing me apart—one part of me loving him,the other hating him, both not being able to peacefully coexist.