Read Online Seabound (Seabound Chronicles Book 1) by Jordan Rivet - Free Book Online Page B

table early and left the chatter of the
dining hall behind her. She walked down the quiet passageway toward their cabin
amidships, planning to catch a few hours of sleep and then go back down to the
desal room later that night to see what she could salvage while everyone was in
bed.
    There was a
strange, muffled sound coming from the door. Her father must be doing push-ups,
as he sometimes did for a few weeks at a time before giving up and getting lost
in his books. She pushed open the door. A pale white backside greeted her, bobbing
up and down on her father’s bed. A mess of mud-brown curls whirled around,
revealing a pair of wide eyes in a face more shocked than a halibut on a hook.
She didn’t have time to process what she was seeing before the strangled yelps
of two voices—one high, one low—pushed her back out of the room.
    Esther stood still
in the passageway, frozen with shock. Before she had time to move, Mrs. Noah
stumbled from the cabin, wrapped only in her father’s blanket, and darted to
her own room. The slam of the door echoed through the hall.
    After a moment,
her father’s voice called softly from the room. “Esther?”
    She turned and
raced back up the passageway, not stopping until she’d pounded down the grand
staircase. She pushed blindly through the double doors in front of her and
ended up in the old theater. It was dark and empty. She sat heavily in one of
the faded velvet seats.
    Old curtains
formed an eerie backdrop to the room. An empty chandelier shaped like an
octopus hung from the ceiling. The private boxes, lined with peeling gilt,
gaped like gills in the walls. Seats had been removed in patches for use
elsewhere on the ship. The theater had always been garish, but it’s derelict
state made it all the more grotesque. Keeping it maintained had not been a
priority. But it was quiet and empty, and far away from her father’s room.
    Esther looked at
the shadows cutting shapes into the old theater seats and thought about her
mother. She’d had a strong nose and deep brown eyes. Esther used to love
sitting on her lap and playing with the clattering collection of bracelets her
mother wore on her wrists. Her sister, Naomi, reading in an armchair nearby,
would tell her to stop making noise, but her mother would smile and wrap her in
a tight hug that smelled like apples. Esther had once found a nearly empty
bottle of apple blossom perfume in a waterlogged suitcase. She’d held on to it,
sniffing it whenever she wanted to summon her mother’s face. But the smell of salt
and fish had overwhelmed it long ago.
    For years she
secretly hoped that her mother and sister had survived the descent of the ash
cloud. She imagined that they’d taken a spontaneous trip to Mexico instead of
going to the dentist that morning. She liked to think of them driving through
the desert, far from the treacherous shoreline, eventually making their way to
Brazil to live in the rainforest. Once, she’d shared her theory with Simon.
He’d looked at her sadly and shaken his head. Others on board, like Penelope
Newton, held out hope for their loved ones, but Simon had forced Esther to
admit early on that they were gone forever.
    The door behind
her creaked open. A ray of light changed the shapes on the seats like a gear
shifting a notch. Esther knew it was her father by the sound of his uneven
footsteps, the result of a limp acquired long ago. He sat in the row of seats
behind her, the chair squeaking softly. For a long time, neither of them spoke.
    “I’m lonely,
Esther,” he said softly. She closed her eyes. “And so is Penelope.”
    Esther searched
through the questions she wanted to ask, not at all sure she wanted to know the
answers. Finally, she settled on the one burning thought in her mind: “Why
her?”
    “Esther . . .”
    “She’s so
different from Mom. You don’t even respect her.”
    “You’re the one
who doesn’t respect her, Esther. I understand a little bit of what she’s trying
to do for her