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sound.
Ssssssst.
    And I completely go apeshit.
    Chapter 8
    I BANG ON THE DOOR so hard I think I’m going to break the lock. “Open up this instant!” I yell. “Mark, open the door
now!
I’m not kidding, buster.”
    I hear the porthole window snapping shut and that telltale sound again.
Ssssssst.
Now all I can smell is the air freshener. It reeks of potpourri.
    Or should I say
pot-be-gone.
    Mark finally opens the door and tries to look innocent as a newborn, which is pretty hard to do with glazed-over eyes. I lay into him so hard and fast he doesn’t know what hit him. He’s just lucky it’s not my fist. That’s how pissed off I am at my oldest and most immature son.
    And when he tries to deny he was smoking, I yell even louder. I’ve taken way too much of his crap lately.
    “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I hear over my shoulder. “What’s going on?” asks Jake, who has Ernie in tow.
    I fold my arms and take a deep breath, trying mightily to reel in my anger. It’s a losing battle, though. “Why don’t you ask the little stoner here,” I say. “We’re barely under way and he gets high!”
    This finally brings a little half-smile from him. “Gee, I’m sorry, Mom. Should I have waited a whole day?”
    “Don’t be a wiseass, Mark. It doesn’t become you. You’re in enough trouble already,” warns Jake.
    “What, like you never smoked pot when you were younger?”
    There it is, the quintessential teenage gotcha question. As Mark lobs it into Jake’s court, he looks like the smuggest sixteen-year-old living on the planet.
    But Jake doesn’t buy any of it.
    “Yeah, I smoked weed, buddy, and you know what it did? It helped turn me into a huge asshole and idiot for a while, kind of like the one you’re being right now.”
    Game. Set. Match.
    Mark has no comeback, no return. He’s not used to Jake’s being angry at him and he’s speechless. The only sound is a stifled giggle from Ernie.
    “Rule number one of the boat,” says Jake.
“No getting stoned.”
He sticks out his palm, practically in Mark’s face. “Now hand it over. All of it.”
    With a defeated sigh Mark reaches into his pocket and surrenders a tin of Altoids. Needless to say, it’s no longer housing curiously strong mints.
    “Here,” Mark snarls. “Don’t smoke it all in one place.”
    Jake cracks the slightest of smiles as he stuffs the tin into his back pocket. Meanwhile, I can’t help thinking how lucky I am that he agreed to come with us.
    Then something dawns on me. “Who’s steering the boat?” I ask.
    “I gave the wheel to Carrie,” says Jake. “She’s fine. It’s like driving a car in an empty parking lot.”
    No sooner do the words leave his lips than the boat suddenly swerves hard right, tossing us like a salad!
    I go down, and my head hits the floor—
smack!
I nearly black out. My brain flickers on, off, on.
    “Carrie!” yells Jake, scrambling to his feet. “What are you doing up there?”
    She doesn’t answer.
    The boat rolls violently again, upending Jake for the second time. He falls hard on Mark, knocking the wind out of him.
    “Carrie!”
yells Jake again.
    No answer.
    The boat finally steadies and we quickly rise to our feet. What the hell’s going on? Jake leads the mad dash up to the deck.
    Frantically, we look around. Carrie’s not at the wheel.
    Carrie’s not anywhere.
    Chapter 9
    NEXT JAKE POINTS out to sea and screams at the top of his lungs,
“Man overboard!”
    My heart plummets as I turn and track his finger off the starboard side, where I see Carrie’s blond head bob, then slip beneath the water.
    For a split second of panic I lock eyes with Jake before his instincts take over. “Grab the wheel and come about!” he tells me.
    Then he grabs a life preserver and dives headlong off the boat.
    I watch him surface and begin to swim until Ernie reminds me, “The wheel, Mom!”
    Finally
my
instincts kick in, those gained from two summers of sailing Sunfish boats at the YWCA camp in Larchmont, New