Stowaway Read online

  Copyright © Pam Withers, 2018

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purpose of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.

  All characters in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Cover image: FOG: Shutterstock.com/leolintang BOAT: shutterstock.com/Girts Pavlins

  Printer: Webcom

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Withers, Pam, author

  Stowaway / Pam Withers.

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-4597-4191-1 (softcover).--ISBN 978-1-4597-4192-8 (PDF).--

  ISBN 978-1-4597-4193-5 (EPUB)

  I. Title.

  PS8595.I8453S76 2018 jC813’.6 C2017-907455-5

  C2017-907456-3

  1 2 3 4 5 22 21 20 19 18

  We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $153 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country, and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Ontario, through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Ontario Media Development Corporation, and the Government of Canada.

  Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien. L’an dernier, le Conseil a investi 153 millions de dollars pour mettre de l’art dans la vie des Canadiennes et des Canadiens de tout le pays.

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  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  SAVING LIVES AT SEA

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  PROLOGUE

  Guatemala City, Guatemala

  ARTURO

  Crack! Crack!

  The sound of gunshots rips my eyes open and sends rats scurrying across the abandoned warehouse.

  “Try in there!” Men’s shouts make me spring up from the dirt-coated concrete floor, where the kids and I have been dozing in a corner.

  Fifteen pairs of sleep-deprived eyes widen and turn to me in the near-total darkness. Small, grimy hands reach out to grip my arm, but no one makes a sound. Not so much as a whimper. I have trained them well.

  “Follow me!” I whisper. I grab my backpack and roll through the hole in the crumbling brick wall beside us. The night’s fresh, salty air fills my lungs as I get to my feet and head for the bay. I twist around once, just in time to see the last child crawl through the gap seconds before the watchmen’s powerful flashlights shine there. In the pre-dawn stillness, the soft pounding of the youngsters’ feet behind me gives wind to my own.

  Not a night passes that I don’t have a backup plan. It is why my contingent of street kids and I are still alive. Tonight, I’m aiming for the empty Dumpster beside the shipyard, no more than a two-minute sprint away.

  But I worry about them all fitting inside. The size of my group has become unwieldy.

  “Too many of us,” pants Freddy, my second-in-command, not for the first time.

  At eleven, he’s the oldest and most street-savvy of them all — ready, we’ve agreed, to take command of his own pack soon. My group is dangerously large because, unlike other teen leaders, I don’t beat my charges. And when bruised, battered, homeless boys show up after defecting from other clans, I don’t have the heart to turn away these mirror images of my six-year-old self.

  “Take half the boys tomorrow,” I tell Freddy as we reach the Dumpster. “Or all if I get whacked.”

  His lips curl into a grim smile.

  The slight squeak as I lift the Dumpster lid is drowned out by our pursuers’ continued shouts. I cup my hands to hoist the youngest boy up by his foot, like I once saw a rich man lifting his child onto a saddled pony. With the older boys helping, they’re soon all up and over. Freddy throws himself on top of the squirming pile, shushing them as I lower the lid.

  “Get him!” a guard shouts, and I know it is time to dart away, to direct the armed posse elsewhere, like a mother bird with a faked limp.

  Crack! Crack! Heart flipping and ears ringing with the noise of bullets whizzing over my head, I leap onto the deck of a docked yacht and scurry to the far side. They won’t risk damaging it by shooting at me now.

  I grab a life ring and toss it, hoping the splash will make the men think I have leapt into the bay. But when I lift my head, I’m blinded by lights flaring inside the yacht. Shit.

  A shadow stomping up the companionway turns into a large man who grabs me by an ear. The searing pain drops me to my knees. He’s going to tear it right off.

  “That’s him!” a voice on shore behind a spotlight shouts as my captor pulls me into view.

  “The rest are in the Dumpster!” comes a victorious cry farther back. “Fish in a barrel, boys!”

  Heart-piercing screams make me sink the rest of the way to the deck. As I lie limp and numb, the faces of the kids I have been protecting for months swim before me.

  “Don’t know who you’re chasing.” The big man’s deep voice addresses the guard on shore. “But this here boy is with me. My first mate. Nothing to do with whoever you just got. But good on you for keeping the street-kid population down. Have a nice evening.”

  CHAPTER ONE

  Horton Island, British Columbia, Canada

  Three Years Later

  OWEN

  I sit on our dock, the tips of my shoes in the frigid May water, forty-nine kinds of bored. Nothing ever happens around here. It’s Dullsville without the ville.

  I’ve devised a punishment for parents who move to an island so small that it doesn’t even have a school. For starters, they should be wrapped in seaweed and left at low tide for jellyfish to sting and seagulls to guano-bomb.

  There’s no one close to my age on this entire three-mile-long, sea-locked lump of dirt and trees. I have to catch a water taxi (named The Scholarship, ha ha) to the nearest island with a high school, where I get treated like a redneck just ’cause the kids on that island are thirty-nine kinds of bored.

  Since today is Saturday and the local Coast Guard officer is away, I leap up and move along the dock, scanning the dozen boats in our marina for one to joyride later this afternoon. Then I can cruise around, swipe cans of beer from locked-up summer cabins, and shoot fish with my air gun. Or step into Charlie Aitkens’s bull pasture and play chicken with Ruffian, his two-thousand-pound be
ast with a bony head and a neck thick like a mobster’s.

  One day I’m going to leave this rain-soaked smidgen of sod and really see the world. Have adventures. Cruise out of one of the Coast Guard academies with honours. Save dinghies in distress. Till then, all I can do to keep myself from going brain-dead is train my binoculars on passing ships and dream I’m escaping on them. Or play ring toss with life ring buoys, which I’m actually pretty good at.

  Just as I’m selecting a twenty-five-foot cabin cruiser on our dock as my getaway vehicle, my mother’s bullhorn voice sounds from above.

  “Owen! Ohhhhh-wen!” Her call is all but drowned out by the noise she’s making clanging the ship’s bell fastened to our house on the cliff above. “Luuuunch!”

  My runners squeak to a halt on a slimy board. Perfect. After lunch she and Dad have to catch a ferry to a plane. Which means I’ve got a Get Out of Jail Free card.

  “Coming, Mom!”

  I sprint along the dock and count all 120 steps up to our house for the 1,120th time, not pausing on any of them. I savour the burning in my calves ’cause I’m all about fitness, as all future Coast Guard officers should be.

  “So, Owen,” my dad says, tugging on his beard as he clicks his suitcase shut, “you’ve read the list of stuff you need to do while we’re away?”

  “Replace those two rotting steps, shovel up the otter poop, swab the slime off the dock, change the oil on the two ketches, and fuel up any customers who stop in.”

  My parents own Steward Marina. It’s one of only four fine business establishments on this West Coast islet, along with the hardware store, bakery, and general store. My current occupation is marina maintenance slave and sometime spy, and my goal is to be captain of a very large ship elsewhere. At the very least, I aspire to escape this worthless wart of woodland and become a wayward wanderer. Soon.

  “That’s my boy,” Dad says, like I’m ten instead of sixteen. Usually I’m mistaken for even older than I am, given my height and stylin’ soul patch. But parents have a way of shrinking you.

  Dad pushes the day’s newspaper at me. “Another ghost ship story. A condemned cattle freighter they bought from a scrapyard.” He shakes his head and frowns. “What’s this world coming to?”

  “In Europe?” I ask as I take the paper from him and scan the story. Illegal immigrants from the Middle East and Africa have been washing up on Europe’s shores for a while, dead or alive depending on their ships, the weather that week, and local rescue efforts. But the ghost ship stories are the most haunting: immigrants paying for a berth on a boat that their handlers abandon mid-channel.

  “Yeah, they locked up the passengers in the freighter’s animal pens, jammed the controls, and took off in motorized lifeboats. So there was no pilot aboard as it tore across the Mediterranean at nine knots. Would’ve shipwrecked if the Coast Guard hadn’t eventually managed to board and evacuate it.”

  “Twisted,” I say. “And it must’ve been a complicated job for the rescuers.”

  “Yeah,” Dad says grimly. “Be glad we live in Canada.”

  “Boats of illegals come to Canada too, sometimes.”

  “Not often, and we’ve never had a ghost ship incident,” Dad replies.

  “Stop being all doom and gloom, you two,” Mom speaks up. “So, Owen, chores, as we were discussing.”

  “Chores,” Dad echoes as he snatches the paper back with a smirk.

  “Yes, ma’am.” I sit up straight.

  “Water the houseplants and don’t have any wild parties.” She sets plates and a carafe of hot coffee on the table.

  “Aw, but I’ve invited all my friends over to drink and do drugs.” If I had any friends on the island, that would worry her. It pains me that she knows it’s not even a possibility. They kind of made sure of that by moving here three years ago. Snatched me away from friends they didn’t like.

  “You’re certain you’ll be okay for an entire week?” she asks, leaning over to kiss my head as I duck. “We’ve never left you this long before. I feel kind of bad going with your dad and leaving you all on your own. Mrs. Aitkens isn’t far if you need anything, and I’ve frozen two casseroles —”

  “Mom, I’m fine. Enjoy the marina managers’ conference and bring me back some pictures of Miami.”

  “You’re sure?” She glances at her suitcase by the door like she’s ready to unpack it and stay.

  I lift a sandwich from the platter and pour coffee into my mug. “You remembered cream and sugar! You’re the best!”

  I’m laying it on so they’ll chill, but the truth is, I really do have a thing for coffee with cream and sugar.

  “One more thing, Owen,” Dad says as he helps himself to a sandwich.

  “Yeah?”

  “Weather forecast is a big storm tomorrow. So take extra care —”

  “Securing all the boats for the clients who park ’em with us. Especially the boats I like,” I tease.

  He tries to smile. So does Mom. But the word storm always conjures up unwelcome memories. It prompts all three of us to look out to the bay at the same time. We see patches of darkness in the shifting water. Shadows whose shapes differ for each of us. Just as quickly, we turn our gazes elsewhere — anywhere but in one another’s eyes.

  We came all the way across the country to escape it. But the memory is still with us.

  • • •

  ARTURO

  The stray slap of a wave against the yacht’s hull wakes me with a start. I twist around fast in the captain’s seat, bracing for the bite of Captain Carlos Maldave’s lashing belt, and I let my breath out only when I see my boss asleep, his drooping belly draped over the cushions of the two-seat unit behind the captain’s seat.

  I sit up straighter and look ahead, stroking my cricked neck. Falling asleep on watch is the most serious offence on board, and I’m furious with myself. Rubbing my eyes and peering east, I watch a pool of blood-red seep across the bottom of the indigo sky until dawn converts it to pink and spews it over the surface of the Pacific Ocean.

  “Red sky at night, sailor’s delight. Red sky at morning, sailor’s warning.” Captain’s deep, gruff voice instantly jerks my body to attention. “What does it mean, Arturo?” he continues in Spanish.

  I know it is a challenge; a test I had better pass. And I will. “Red sky at morning means a low-pressure system moving east, Captain,” I reply in Spanish. “It means a storm is on the way.” I stop myself from adding, “Right?” because Captain hates uncertainty.

  “Smart kid for a shoeshine boy,” Captain responds with a chuckle.

  I wince at the reference to my former job and recall the night he saved my life.

  After the guards had left us, the captain leaned down and helped me to my feet. “My first mate just ran off, so I’m offering you the job.”

  I knew it was not a choice; clearly he would turn me in if I turned him down. But the gentle touch of his hand on my shoulder fooled me. I interpreted it as a trace of kindness. I believed he understood the pain flooding my chest and the crushing guilt of losing the pack of street kids I had trained and protected with everything I had.

  It was barely a tap, and almost never since repeated. But the touch felt warm, a balm of relief applied to my shattered self, and it ignited in me a desperate need for someone who cared, someone who might take care of me — a father, like in the movies.

  “When opportunity presents itself, take it,” he continued.

  “Yes,” I agreed.

  And look at what I’ve been able to do since then, thanks to the captain: travel the West Coast from Central America to Canada and back several times, learn to manage the customers, and best of all, get handy at running Archimedes, the forty-five-foot luxury yacht ploughing north under our direction right now.

  “You learn fast,” he said once. Translation: I have learned to anticipate his orders and act before getting belted more often than not. My ready-for-anything survival instincts continue to serve me well.

  “Keep it up and I’
ll give you a raise,” Captain mumbles now with a half yawn as he sits up and scratches his barrel chest through his worn undershirt.

  I brighten a little. A raise. It’s a promise that keeps me going, allows me sometimes to imagine a future beyond Captain and Archimedes. I am building a stash of cash in a tin can hidden under a floorboard in the broom closet for the day I decide to escape — or the day Captain turns on me. Whichever comes first.

  With that money and the English I’m working hard to pick up, sometimes I dare to dream. I imagine myself running a little breakfast cafe in Guatemala City, serving both locals and tourists. I imagine getting hired for my cooking skills and the fact that I can get by in English. I’ll have to speak slowly, of course, because of my accent, so I’ve been told. I’m working on that.

  Born in Los Angeles to San Salvadorian parents, Captain is fluent in Spanish, yet also speaks English without an accent, which comes in handy in his profession. And sometimes he or a sympathetic client gives me English lessons.

  “How old are you now, anyway?” Captain asks, breaking into my thoughts.

  “Sixteen, Captain.” Truth is, I am not sure exactly how old I am, having been on my own for so long. But I overheard some of the private-school boys who boarded Archimedes two weeks ago telling Captain they were sixteen, and they seemed the same age as me.

  Captain and the customers think I don’t understand much English, but over the years working on the yacht, I’ve picked up way more than they think, and I understand it better than I speak it.

  “Coffee, Captain? Breakfast?”

  “Pronto, boy.”

  I exit the captain’s seat and take the companionway steps down to the galley kitchen. I lift the black metal frying pan from its rack, drop in the refried beans, cheese, and bananas, and start the coffee maker. Then I bend down to breathe in the magical aroma of the fresh grounds. Same breakfast every day. But I am lucky he lets me eat any leftovers. Way better than having to search dumpsters for half-rotten food and getting shot at for it.