Flutter (My Blood Approves #3)(74)

I assumed he was trying to seem smarter in some way. He had on thick black glasses that I had never seen him wear before. On closer inspection, I saw a fairly nasty black eye from the fight the other day, and he tried to mask it with fashion glasses and side bangs. He had another smaller bruise on his chin, but the worst of them were hidden under his shirt on his chest and abdomen.

“What are you watching?” I flopped back on the couch. The news wasn’t my favorite thing, but it had to be better than watching the re-imagining of Steel Magnolias going on in the dining room.

“Anderson 360,” Bobby replied absently. “It’s for school.”

“How is it for school?” I raised an eyebrow. “And I didn’t think you still went to school.”

“I go to school during the day, when you’re sleeping. A whole lot of things happen during the day that you don’t even know about,” Bobby said. Still staring at the TV, he sketched furtively on the pad. A box of charcoals lay next to him on the floor, and he had the sleeves pushed up in his shirt, so he was getting black smudge marks all over his tattoos. “I’m supposed to watch the news for an hour and draw how it makes me feel.”

“How does it make you feel?” I asked.

“Like the whole world is coming to an end.” He didn’t sound that upset by it. I sat up straighter, trying to see what he drew, but I was at the wrong angle to really see his sketch pad, so I flopped back on the couch.

The TV, I could see, so I watched it to see what had Bobby worrying. The screen had been divided into two boxes. The smaller one had news correspondent Anderson Cooper explaining the story, which took place in the big box. It showed a giant boat, like an ocean liner or a tanker, that appeared to have crashed into the shore. The boat tilted to the side as helicopters and smaller boats swarmed around it. The bottom of the screen said “Cape Spear, Newfoundland,” but other than that, I didn’t really understand what I was looking at.

“So what’s going on?” I asked Bobby.

“An oil tanker crashed into Canada,” Bobby nodded to the screen. “The hull was ruptured, but hardly any of the oil leaked out. They’re saying it’s a miracle, because if it had, it would’ve been like four times as bad as the Exxon Valdez cause this boat is much bigger.”

“I don’t know what that is.” It sounded familiar to me, and considering the context of the conversation, I should’ve gotten it.

“It was an oil tanker that crashed by Alaska in 1989.” Bobby glanced back at me. “I didn’t really know that off the top of my head. They were just talking about it a lot.”

“But there isn’t an oil spill, is there? Not really?” I squinted at the TV, trying to see a sheen on the water around the tanker. “So what’s the big deal? How does that make you feel like the end of the world?”

“Because of why the tanker crashed.” He stopped sketching and stared at the TV in kind of amazement. “The whole crew died.”

“What do you mean?” I sat up more. “Like when they the hit land?”

“No, they were all dead before that. Nobody was driving it, and they just crashed. The radio transmissions coming from them weren’t right, and they sent boats out to check up on them, but nobody knows what happened. Finally, two days ago, they lost all contact with them, and then boom! It drove right into the island,” Bobby nodded at the screen. “It’s the creepiest, most bizarre thing I ever heard of, like in Aliens when they go to rescue that deserted ship or whatever. But real.”

“What are you talking about? How did the crew all die? Did they run out of food or oxygen or something?”

“They didn’t run out of oxygen. They’re on Earth. You don’t run out of oxygen,” Bobby rolled his eyes at me. “But nobody knows why they’re dead. Some of the crew is still unaccounted for, but both the lifeboats are still attached, so they don’t know how they could’ve gotten off.

“Officials are trying to keep it under wraps, but rumor has it that they were all mutilated. Like really gory, horror movie stuff. Throats ripped out and all that. Anderson was talking to a guy that had been there, and he was just about puking talking about it.”

“Holy hell. Really?” I leaned forward, staring more intently at the TV. “No way. That kind of thing doesn’t happen in real life. Do they think the crew had something to do with it?”

“Maybe, but they’re not counting on having any survivors at this point,” Bobby said. “They had a crew of thirty, but only twenty-four bodies.”

“That’s pretty messed up.” A chill ran down my spine, and I shook my head. “It’s really creepy.”

“Yeah, I know,” Bobby agreed somberly.

“Where was the tanker coming from?”

“I don’t know,” Bobby shrugged. “I think like Europe or Russia or something.”

“Okay, so be honest,” Milo said, walking into the living room and breaking up our intense fascination with the television. “How does my hair look?” He ran a hand through his dark brown hair and did a little twirl, but it didn’t look that much different than before. Mae had mostly just done a trim.

“Sexy, as always,” Bobby grinned at him. He set his sketch pad aside, momentarily forgetting about his homework assignment. Milo sat down on the floor next to him, and in between kissing and flirting, they started talking about the tanker crash on the television.