Red Sea Read Online Free PDF

“J” for Janine. Duncan labels everything on this boat. I put away the glass. “You want me to fight off the pirates?”
    Duncan sighs. “Your mother is entitled to be nervous.” He takes a long time cleaning a plastic lasagna tub. “She has you to think about.”
    I barely hold in a snort. If Mom were thinking about me, I’d be home with Dad right now, watching big-screen TV and burning every light in the house. If Mom were thinking about me, she’d have let me stay at home too. But Mom isn’t thinking about me. I say to Duncan, “Maybe you should stay up with her.”
    His hands pause in the sink. “I can’t be awake all night, Lib.”
    I shrug. “Yeah, well, I was going to catch up on my novel study.”
    Clench. Unclench. Clench. If I’d tried that line on my mother, she would have launched a very long argument about how I should have used my time in port to get the assignment done, that I’m not managing my correspondence courses, that if I want to repeat ninth grade whenwe get back, then that’s fine with her. When he speaks, Duncan is firm. “Just while we’re in the southern Red Sea, Lib, I expect you on deck with your mother.” He wrings out the sponge and leans on the sink. “Tomorrow or the next day, hopefully, we’ll catch up with Emma and Mac and the others, and that will make your mother feel better. Right now we’re not even in radio range.” He looks at me, hard. “I don’t expect any problems, but if you see anything, and I mean anything, out of the ordinary, you’re to come and wake me.”

FOUR
    I POUR A CUP OF TEA from the Thermos in the cockpit, choosing the warmth of the drink over the real threat of having to pee while wearing nineteen layers of foul weather gear. Night watches are always cold, even in warm climates. I offer Mom the Thermos. She’s standing at the wheel, nibbling a cracker with one gloved hand. The wind is light, and we’re motoring with the mainsail. The engine is revved about as high as Duncan will allow for fuel conservation. Mom isn’t wasting any time. She’s tethered to the wheel post. I’m clipped on at the companionway, which means I can huddle on the cockpit seat under the canvas spray hoodand stay out of the worst of the weather. Mom waves away the tea with a “no thanks.”
    â€œOf all of us,” she says, “you’re the one best suited to sailing. You never get seasick.”
    I slurp my tea and tip my face to the night sky. “I can’t think of a place I’d rather be.” In the dim light of the compass binnacle I watch my mother’s face grow hopeful. The furrows in her forehead smooth out, a strand of brownish gold hair wafts against her cheek. When she was young, her hair was red, like mine. Her eyes brighten, hazel eyes that change from green to gray. My eyes. Mom smiles at me, and it reminds me of when I was younger, before Duncan, when it was just us. I start to smile back. But she should never have agreed to this trip. I say, “Unless that place was with my friends. Or my father. Or in an orphanage, if it meant I wasn’t here.”
    Her smile disappears and she shakes her head. “You’re not giving this trip a chance, Lib. When I was fourteen I would have done anything for this opportunity: a trip to Australia, then a one-year sailing journey to the Mediterranean.”
    â€œThrough some of the most pirate-infested waters on the planet.” I look pointedly at the handheld two-way radio dangling from her wrist and the arsenal of distress flares beside her in the cockpit.
    She seems to ignore my comment, but I see her shoulders tighten and she scans the blackness behind the boat. “If you just let yourself, I think you’d enjoy this trip. You could learn so much. You could pick up your marks...”
    â€œDon’t start.”
    That stops her, briefly. “What I