The water stretched out forever, calm and blue. The sky was perfectly flat and clear - not even a wisp of a cloud anywhere.
"Dehydration? Sunstroke? Dehydration? Sunstroke?" Seth was repeating to himself under his breath. His head felt heavy, and there was a bass beat in there that any lowrider would envy. His lips were cracked and dry so he tried not to move them too much when he talked to himself.
"Water, water everywhere. Salty water everywhere. Ini mini miny mo. Sunstroke? Dehydration?" he recited to himself hardly knowing what he was saying. It didn't matter. He could ramble as much as he wanted – no one could hear him. No one was going to think he was weird.
The sun was bright, and Seth had covered his head with a t-shirt. He sat with his legs stretched out, his back against the mast, too tired to move. Then it was nighttime, and he was lying down. He didn't remember when it got dark or how he got horizontal, but that happened a lot. One minute awake the next minute passed out. Just as long as he wasn't horizontal face down in the water.
"Nice try, sunstroke, but dehydration wins this round," he said as he sat up. The air was still warm but the feeling of being broiled alive in his own skin was mostly gone. The sky was sort of beautiful, clear and black with lots of stars. It would have been nice, if it didn't hurt to swallow and to move, and if his eyes weren't so dry that both opening and closing them was equally painful.
It all started with a storm. There was water hitting him from every side. He hung on and passed the time berating himself. He repeated a way belated "bad idea, bad idea, bad idea" into the wind until the waves started hitting him in the face. Then he decided that shutting up was in order and a salt water gargle was not.
Taking inventory afterward, he counted one boat in working order, one Seth in working order, and no supplies or water. And worst of all, his compass and maps were flotsam somewhere out there on the nice big ocean. And because the storm had had its way with him and his tiny boat, Seth had no idea where he was.
After he got through with the pressing and unavoidable task of getting panicked and hysterical for a few hours, he made a plan. "Go east, young man." That was the plan. It was foolproof. Even better, it was Sethproof. Even he couldn't miss a ginormous continent the size of North America. And really, he wasn't picky, he would have settled for South America.
It was easy at the beginning. He would play chicken with the sun for half a day, then watch it sail over him and drop behind his back. "Coward!"
Later it got harder to hold his course. As he started to lose it, he would head west or south or north or one of the directions in-between without even realizing it. Sometimes he would wake up and the sun would be on the wrong side or gone. At night, he would become convinced that he knew which way was east and turn only to find the sun rising in the wrong place.
"East is that way." he tried to tell it, pointing helpfully even. But the sun wouldn't listen.
And it wasn't just the sun. The other stars were doing it too. If he tried to orient himself at night, the stars sneaked around, making new, weird constellations, talking behind his back, snubbing him.
Seth lay back down. He watched the waves on the water turned dark with the sky. The waves glimmered a little when they rose up, carrying him somewhere. Probably in the wrong direction again.
"Nice warm night full of stars on a beautiful calm sea, and I'm going to die," he said to himself.
"Ready to say goodbye now?" Ryan asked and Seth could hardly see him. Ryan was leaning over him and he was backed by Seth's old enemy, the sun - the scorching sun, which was killing Seth.
"Did you come bearing maps? Cool, refreshing beverages maybe?" Seth asked Ryan.
Ryan shook his head.
"I thought it was night," Seth said while the sun just laughed at him behind Ryan's back.
"You passed out again, you wimp," Ryan said with an uncharacteristic smile.
"I'm not a wimp. OK, I am. It's in the genes. But I'm also dehydrated and sunstroked and entitled to pass out at my convenience," Seth countered.
"Entitled. Right. Entitled to run off and sail around the world because things don't go your way," Ryan said as he sat down by Seth's feet.
"This is your fault. You ran off first. And you gave me the map. What were you thinking? I was in a vulnerable emotional state of extremely impaired judgement after I lost my best friend." Seth's throat was sore and not happy to have to produce so many words at once. But there was all that anger that needed to be let out, anger and self pity.
"Am I dead?" Ryan asked and Seth shrugged. How was Seth supposed to know? He didn't even know which way was east. But Ryan didn't expect an answer - he just wanted his goodbye.
"Goodbye, Ryan," Seth said and turned away.
"Don't be such a kid. People have responsibilities. Not you, but real people who don't have mommy and daddy to give them everything."
"Hey, you're mean. Real Ryan isn't mean," Seth said turning back to him. Then he reconsidered.
"He's a little mean," Seth said as he remembered a few dry and cutting words. And more often dry and cutting looks. At the moment Ryan looked a little vague, like the sun was wrapping around him, blurring him around the edges.
"Wait!" Seth raised a finger in the air and squinted trying to focus his poor, poached brain on something Ryan just said. "Maybe I heard wrong. You didn't just use the words kid, mommy, daddy, and responsibility with not even a trace of irony?"
Ryan shrugged.
"Learn to use a condom, Teen Dad! Practice on a vegetable if you need to," Seth told him.
"Shut up, Seth."
"And see, not the real Ryan. The real Ryan might have wanted to say 'Shut up, Seth' - many, many times - but he didn't. 'Cause he's not mean!" Seth shouted and NotRyan was gone.
"Hey, no fair just because I yelled. Come back."
"I see it's back to playing with plastic horses and imaginary friends for you?" Summer said from behind him.
Seth turned around with difficulty and saw that the sun was behind him now. He ignored what Summer said. He was trying to figure out how the sun sneaked by him and who had stuffed his head with cement and put it in the oven to bake at 500.
"Guess I passed out some more. The passing out is nice - I'm not nearly as tempted to kill myself by drinking saltwater when I'm unconscious. You have any water, Summer? Gatorade? I'll even drink a Shasta."
"Yeah, I'm hiding a cooler full of frosty drinks in my tiny purse."
"Ryan didn't have anything either, you hallucinations need to quit dropping by empty-handed."
"Don't you have enough social obstacles. What are you thinking getting the hots for another guy?" Summer asked while shaking her head with disapproval.
"Hots. Funny. I may die laughing as my brains boil right out of my skull," Seth said as he closed his eyes to the sun. He saw bright red through his eyelids. He opened his eyes again and saw Summer in a red dress.
"Were you wearing that before?"
"You should be picturing me naked not changing my outfits. You are doing this all wrong. And if you're going to hallucinate the guy you're mooning over, you should get some action going. Get his shirt off at least," Summer said as she turned and looked straight into the sun like it wasn't even there.
"I'm not action guy. And shirtless is not a good idea. Do you see this sunburn? I don't have any skin left. Except for the blisters. Do blisters count as skin? And I'm not mooning. I'm sailing. Right now it's more drifting than sailing. But as soon as the wind picks up..."
"You're babbling," Summer pointed out and Seth motioned with his hand as if to say, 'Well duh. I am Seth Cohen.' But Seth did feel a little breathless and like he might pass out again.
"You know, people don't run off to the middle of the ocean because their best friends move an hour away," Summer told him as she leaned over him and fanned his face, though he couldn't feel it.
"You're acting like a lovesick girl," she said to him.
"Can't a guy care and have feelings without being called a girl?" Seth asked.
"No," she said flatly.
Thinking about it, this wouldn't be as bad if Ryan was really drifting there with him. Except the slowly dying of heat part and the slowly dying of thirst part. Seth didn't know exactly how Ryan would make things better. The guy didn't have a large repertoire – he might get into a fight, or he might get arrested. But throw in one volatile, slightly criminal element and somehow there is an improvement in the quality of life in Sethland. Except the Ryan element might also get a girl pregnant and ditch Seth to play house with his baby momma. Here Seth, here's a taste of what you can't have. Bye now.
"Try thinking Coast Guard not Ryan," Summer pointed out helpfully as she crouched so she was closer to Seth's eye level. "Ryan isn't some St Bernard coming to the rescue with a drink under his chin."
"He isn't? Thanks for the image, though," Seth said while shading his eyes from the blinding, hot sun that made it hard for him to see Summer. She looked hazy and almost disappeared into the sunlight.
"Are you regressing? You want your blanky?" Summer said as she snapped her fingers in front of Seth's face. "Ryan is just a messed up kid with his own set of problems. Stop daydreaming."
"Stop reading my mind, Summer."
"Oh, right. No girls allowed."
It was still hot. Seth's brain was bashing around inside his scull trying to escape to somewhere cooler. Seth watched the water. It looked almost metallic sometimes as it reflected the sun into his drooping eyes. He covered his head with a t-shirt. Looking at the water just gave him crazy and dangerous ideas anyway.
The first few days after the storm, Seth had jumped in the water to cool off. As he was swimming around tethered to his boat like a lure, he saw them – sharks. Not the fins sticking out of the water Jaws style, and Jaws 2 style, and Jaws 3 style, and Jaws: The Revenge aka The Franchise Is Dead style. They were underneath the water, pale, almost blending into the water. He held his breath. They went away. And he got the hell out of the water and stayed the hell out. He figured heatstroke was more pleasant than interlocking jaws biting down at a pressure of a thousand pounds per square inch.
Seth had good reason to wonder if they were even real especially after other hallucinations dropped by to say hi. There was NotRyan of course. And Summer complaining about the heat.
"The view is kind of pretty though," she said then she looked at him. She started to look kind of mad.
"This is what you get for dumping me and then sailing away on a boat with my name on it, chum. Get it, chum?" Summer said.
"Yes, Summer, funny. But not as funny when you are the chum in question."
The water lapped up against the boat, making pleasant, sloshing water noises. So inviting, it said, 'drink me, swim in me. I'm not full of sharks'. Lying water, full of sharks and salt. Trying to kill him. Just like the sun and the stars. And him all alone in a tiny little boat.
"Come on, Ryan, I'm dying here."
The end