Not Without Hope Read Online Free Page B

Not Without Hope
Book: Not Without Hope Read Online Free
Author: Nick Schuyler and Jeré Longman
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running a 5K race Saturday morning and had driven up from Fort Myers. She took Will’s room, and Will took a sofa in the living room. She got up at two in the morning to go to the bathroom, and Will still had the TV on.
    “You should go to bed,” Kristen told him.
    “I can’t,” Will said. “I’m so excited.”
     
    W E AWOKE AT four—I had cereal and a protein bar—and we headed out the door fifteen or twenty minutes later. We loaded Will’s truck with our gear, a cooler, grocery bags, and beer, and headed out for Marquis’s house a half hour away.
    Kristen got up at about the same time for her race. As we headed out the door, Kristen said, “Have fun, see you later. Love you.” She told me that if she did well in her race, I’d have to go see her run the next one.
    Corey arrived at Marquis’s house five minutes before we did. I introduced Will to everyone. We were all tired, pretty quiet. Marquis had already hitched the boat and trailer to his Chevy Silverado pickup with its lifted suspension and oversize tires.
    Marquis must have had fifty fishing rods, and from his garage he chose ten of them as carefully as a chef chooses his carving knives. He stood in the boat as we handed him the beer, food, and drinks. There was a pair of twenty-gallon coolers aboard, one in front of the center console, which held mostly beer, drinking water, and ice. A second cooler, located under the bench-shaped captain’s chair, was filled with water, Gatorade, sandwiches, and protein bars. Both coolers were secured by bungee cords.
    Into a storage area in the center console, we loaded a case of beer, paper towels, toilet paper, chips, and pretzels. Will handed me his cell phone and his wallet. I placed them in my backpack along with my phone and wallet, and tossed the backpack into the storage compartment where the life jackets were kept.
    Before six, we were on our way. Marquis played rap music in his truck, not too loud, but loud enough that we had to talk over it. We stopped to gas up the boat. Marquis got a breakfast burrito, or something just as nasty, took a couple bites, and threw it away. By six twenty-one, we were at the Seminole Boat Ramp in Clearwater.
    The weather was cool, and we were bundled up. I had my jacket, sweatshirt, and sweatpants on. Will wore a green wind jacket and wind pants from USF’s appearance in the PapaJohns.com Bowl in 2006. Corey had on a black wind jacket and wind pants. Marquis wore purple wind pants from the University of Washington and a heavier black winter jacket.
    Marquis had been monitoring the weather. A couple days earlier he had said that a cold front was approaching and that the water might get rough. If it did, we might cut our trip short. He said it again this morning: “I’m not sure if we’ll go all the way out.”
    Everyone went to the bathroom at the marina. Will asked what we would do if we felt the urge while at sea. I told him what Marquis had told me a week earlier: “Hang over the side and hope the sharks don’t bite your ass.”
    Corey and Marquis put their wallets, cell phones, and keys into a Ziploc bag. Marquis stored the bag in a compartment in the roof of the canopy, near the radio. He had a digital camera in the bag, too, which contained pictures from our previous trip. I showed them to Will and told Marquis for a second time to send me the pictures. We had become good friends, but I had no photos of him and me together.
    A couple of minutes after we set off, Marquis, Will, and I cracked the first beer of the day. “Let’s get this party rolling,” I said.

 
    Stu Schuyler, Nick’s father, had awakened early in nearby Tarpon Springs, where he owned a painting business. He had gone back to sleep, then climbed out of bed again at seven. He turned on the television and saw that a forceful upper air disturbance was approaching the southeastern United States from the northwest. He had seen Corey and Nick two days earlier at the gym and they told him they were
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