**I've added more in the last two posts and bits and pieces to the other posts as well. So if anyone does take the time to read this (Parchy??) consider taking the time to read the whole thing since there are several edits and additions**

Splintered planks of wood. That was all that Jessica saw. They sat peacefully on the surface gently bobbing in the waves. Fading red paint from years of barnacle scraping covering the pattern of wavy lines dotted with knots that reminded her of the tree house her father had built for her.
Next came the smell. A powerful odor of burning oil with a hint of wood and some other unique refuse. The smell was nothing new, Jessica was just becoming aware of it.
Next came the touch. Jessica felt a hairy adult forearm with a slight muscular build reach across her life vest and pull her away from the wood that seemed to be her only friend in the world. Jessica noticed she was moving away from the wood now as she lied there on her back staring up at the bright August sun that made her squint. She felt the hair on the man's arm rub gently against her chin as she slowly came out of shock and reality began to set in.
Jessica did not care that she did not know who was pulling her away. She did not care that the man had not even asked if she was alright. As she stared up at the clear blue sky, she was still wondering if her mom would surface any minute. Would her dad find scuba gear at the bottom of the ocean and swim back up to rescue her? She had seen that in a movie once. . .
Why hadn't the man said anything to her? It would've been polite of him to ask her if it was okay to move her. What happened to the boat? Where was her family again?
"WHERE ARE YOU TAKING ME?" Jessica screamed, surprised at the tone in her voice. She was usually very respectful of adults.
"The only place we can go…land," the man calmly replied while he continued to swim.
"How do you know where we're going?" Jessica inquired, this time more curious than accusatory.
"The ship left port about two hours ago. At the rate we were traveling, we are probably about twenty knots from the coast," the man replied without hesitation. "It's past mid day, so we follow the setting sun west…toward land."
Jessica thought that the man seemed very knowledgeable and confident in his plan. He reminded Jessica of her dad. Dad always had the answers no matter what questions she asked. Jessica felt comfort in knowing she was with someone as smart as her dad.
Jessica became aware of something bumping against the toes on her left foot. The shock was starting to wear off on her legs now. Something with a rough texture ran along the back of her thigh. If Jessica had been older, she might have panicked and assumed a shark was near. Instead, naïveté kept Jessica calm as she looked down toward her toes. She saw a life vest, only there was something on top of it. It looked like a bright red canister with a black cap on it. A rope secured the canister's handle and life vest together through a complex web of loops and knots. Jessica then realized that the rough object she felt on her back was the other end of the rope.
She rolled over in the water to look at the man who was pulling her and saw the rope tied around his chest. He stopped swimming and started treading water when he felt her move and looked at her. He had a short-trimmed beard, deep blue eyes, a pinkish hue on his cheeks from the sun, messy black hair and a warm smile. He did look a lot like Jessica's dad.
"Do you think you can swim on your own for a while?" the man asked with a smile that didn't quite reveal his teeth but did reveal a sense of serenity in him.
"What's that thing on the life vest?" Jessica shot back, not even thinking about his question. Jessica was now treading in the water too, as her swim instructor had taught her last summer.
"The rope allows me to swim with both arms so I don't have to hold the canister. The canister is about fourteen times lighter and much easier to pull when on an object that floats. . . like the life vest."
Jessica like how he made things easy to understand.
"But what's in the canister?" she asked.
"Gasoline."
"What for?"
"I'll tell you when we need it."
Suddenly Jessica felt overwhelmed with anxiety and panic. It began in the pit of her stomach quickly spread up to her forehead and made her dizzy. Her vision darkened with black vignettes quickly closing in. It was like waking up from a dream, or going into one; she couldn't quite tell. The panic of losing her family, being lost at sea, being saved by some stranger, and the impending fear of death set in.
How did she get here? It must have been an hour since the passengers on board knew something was wrong. It all happened so fast.
***
Jessica looked down at her hot cocoa and smiled. At home, mom and dad never kept marshmallows in the house and now she had two big ones floating in her cup. Jessica was sitting on her knees in the booth inside of the ship's cabin because the table was so high and yet she was still shorter than her sister.
The ship's kitchen, or galley as her father called it, was well equipped to serve its clientele and not much else. Everyone was ordering coffee to cure their hangover or beer to start working on one. Jessica's request for hot cocoa caused the cook to groan as he began to dig around the cabinets.
Jessica peered up at her sister Allison who made a funny face as she slowly sipped her coffee. This was a new phase for Allison, trying to appear more like an adult even if she was only thirteen and, deep down inside of her, really hated the taste of coffee. Allison's high cheek bones, bright green eyes, and fair skin contrasted beautifully with her natural jet black hair. Her looks took after he mother. Jessica was quite content with her sandy brown hair but really admired her sisters beautiful skin. The sun only seemed to bring out more of Jessica's freckles which she was beginning to despise.
"What are you looking at?" Allison snapped at her sister.
"Mom said you can't be mean to me on this trip because you were the one who wanted to go out on a boat."
"Yeah, but I didn't say I wanted to go on a fishing boat. This is so stupid."
"Are you guys almost finished with those?" Jessica's dad asked as he peeked his head into the cabin. "I paid for your two poles and you're not even using them."
"Coming daddy," Jessica said as she hopped out of her booth.
"And you?" Jessica's dad asked as he nodded toward Allison who replied with an over-the-top thumbs up and a fake smile.
Jessica followed her dad out to the deck and held carelessly onto the large fishing pole her dad had cast out for her. Because the top rail was right at her eye level, she had to crouch slightly to look out over the water. The waves looked bigger out here than from the beach. The reflection of the sun on the water's surface looked like a thousand tiny dancing fairies. The smell of the salt water was something new to Jessica and she wasn't yet sure if she liked it or not.
"But why do I have to wear one?" rang out Allison's shrill voice.
"It's the policy of the boat, honey. And I don't want anything to happen to you," Jessica's mom stated.
"I'm not a kid. I know how to swim. Me and Jes will be the only ones wearing them and I will look stupid."
Jessica looked down at the bright orange life vest on her. It was a little tight, but she didn't see the big deal about it.
KABOOM!
Suddenly an explosion came from the back of the ship. The boat shook a little, but everything seemed okay for the moment. Jessica watch the men in the bright yellow cover-alls who worked on the boat go running to the back where small wisps of black smoke rose into the air and all seemed to disappear at a the same height.
"Hose! Bring the hose!" she heard someone shout a moment later.
One of the men in yellow who had just run past came running back to the front of the boat and knocked Allison over as she was adjusting the strap on her life vest still in her hands.
"Hey!" she shouted at the man, not seeming to care that there was panic in the air.
Another explosion. This one was bigger and Jessica saw one of the men in yellow fly backwards from the blast and land in the water. There were too many people on the deck for her to see exactly where he landed or if he was still alive. People began screaming and running to the front of the boat.
Jessica's dad swiftly picked her up and now she could see that the back of the boat was clouded with a thick black smoke and penetrating flames from a fire that emitted an intense heat.
She saw Allison drop her life vest as her mom picked her up. A third blast came from the front of the boat and knocked Jessica and her dad off of the boat as everything went black.
***
"I can't do it! I can't do it! I don't even know how to swim," Jessica screamed.
"Easy now. Easy now. Everything's gonna be alright," the man assured her.
"How will we make it back? How will we be saved?"
"Simple. We swim until we find land or become rescued. I'll even teach you how."
Jessica started to feel calmer but was still scared. The man did seem to know what he was talking about.
"We're gonna lie on our backs and kick our legs the way frogs do. Do you know how a frog kicks his legs?"
Jessica nodded.
"We kick our legs like this and push the water past us with our arms," the man said as he showed her.
It looked simple enough to Jessica.
"But what if I get tired?"
"If we get tired, we rest."
"How?"
"We lie on our stomachs like star fish. Do you know what a star fish is?"
Jessica nodded.
"You tilt your head to the side and breathe in. Then, put your face in the water and blow out bubbles. As long as you do this, your body will float and you can get back your energy."
The man showed her.
"Now you try."
Jessica rolled onto her stomach and spread out her arms and legs as the man had instructed. She took a deep breathe and blew bubbles into the water. It was actually easier than she thought. Jessica was beginning to like the man with the beard.
"Now it's important that we synchronize our breaths with each stroke."
"Like how?" Jessica asked.
"We breath in through our noses and push and we breath out at the same time. Pay close attention to your breath. Forget that about the swimming. Forget that your in water. Forget that you're even you. . . just breath," the man spoke slowly with a small smile.
"So we swim. If we get tired, we rest. Then we swim some more. Got it?"
"Got it," Jessica said.
***

It's pretty good.

One of the best bits of advice I ever got from my journo profs was to be an evocative writer. In everything you put on paper (or in Word, as it were), strive to show, not tell your readers these scenes. Make it pop off the page. You've got me interested in this boat scene, but I didn't really feel like I was there... I only had a framework of the situation... it just kind of felt like I was reading an after-action report rather than putting me on the boat with the characters, in the story. Explain what the blasts smelled like, the texture of the water, the briny shockwave from the boat. Cram as many adjectives into these sentences as you can without being verbose.

It's a good start. Keep writing and these things come naturally.

Good advice, thank you.

And for what it's worth, your conversational pieces are by far the strongest parts of your narrative. While you work on your story-telling ability, lean on dialogue. You do it well.

It's funny you should mention that, because I haven't written anything since high school and then I used to shy away from dialogue. I guess I have progressed a lot since then, I do write for work, but it's journalistic.
Haven't had a chance to work on it more because when the school year starts, my wife is constantly on the computer preparing lessons but I will get back to it when I can.

Alright, here's the second part
***
"I don't like these waves," Jessica stated.
They had been swimming for about forty-five minutes and just finished their third break where Jessica got to float like a starfish and blow bubbles. That was her favorite part.
"What's wrong with these waves?" the man asked. He was now behind her swimming the breast stroke so that they could talk as they swam.
"They're not like the waves at the beach. Those waves come in real low and then crash real fast and you can ride them like a surfer," Jessica explained. "These waves are real long and high and they never crash. They just make it hard to swim."
"But aren't all waves are the same," the man replied.
"No they're not!" Jessica answered. "Some are big and some are wide. Some seem to build up forever. . . until they are as tall as a building. Some are so small they don't even look like waves. They are not all the same. They're like people; all very different."
The same half smile that didn't quite show his teeth came across the man's face. He relaxed his squint from the hard sun and Jessica could not tell if his eyes were reflecting the ocean or if they really were that blue.
"What I mean is, maybe all waves are a part of the same thing."
Jessica gave him a confused look.
"Waves are caused when the tide, pulled by the moon's gravitational force, runs across a levy on the ocean floor that sends a ripple up through the water that grows and gains momentum."
This time Jessica looked even more confused.
"But that's not important. What's important is what the wave actually is."
"And what is it?" Jessica asked.
"It's water, just water. It takes on the form of a wave and it may come in different shapes and sizes but eventually they all crash on the shore. They all lose their shape. And they all return back to the ocean."
Jessica stopped swimming for a moment as she thought about it. The man's story seemed to make sense.
"So why do we compare ourselves to others?" the man asked.
"What do you mean?"
"It is in our nature to compare ourselves to others when, in fact, we are all just waves too. We look at others who seem taller, smarter and more popular than ourselves. But that is just their outside form. They, like us, are just a wave in the great big ocean that is the universe. They are a form of the saw ocean that we are and when they crash they will return back to the same ocean as us."
***
Jessica looked down at her shoes as she swung her legs back and forth on the wooden bench with a wrought iron frame and a small plaque centered on one of the wooden boards. A large horn sounded behind her indicating that a boat was leaving the dock or some tugboat was trying to signal to the drawbridge that it was pulling a larger ship into the bay. It was early and there was still a lot of fog covering the ocean and most of the pier. Faces and voices seemed to be created by the fog itself, like apparitions in a weird dream.
Jessica had her favorite navy blue hooded sweatshirt on. Even though it was AWhen she got bored swinging her feet, Jessica looked ahead and observed her sister Allison talking to a boy through a counter window. She was wearing her low-rider blue jeans that her parents disapproved of but allowed anyway since they were purchased with Allison's own money. While Jessica's parents were in line to buy tickets and fishing poles Allison was supposed to be watching her little sister. Instead she was buying a latte from the only other open store on the pier at this hour, Rao's Cafe. The latte would go cold before even a third of it was consumed.
Even though Jessica did not like boys, she admired the confidence Allison showed when talking to them. Last year was the first time Jessica can remember answering the house phone and hearing a boy on the other line asking to speak to Allison. For some reason, Allison always hated it when Jessica answered. It seemed that she didn't want people to know she had a younger sister—like it linked her to a childhood she was trying to get away from.
More than the boy's awkward voice, Jessica remembered Allison berating her for answering the phone. Jessica would always love and look up to her sister, but no one in the world made her feel smaller than Allison.
"Did you get me anything?" Jessica anxiously asked as Allison walked back blowing through the small hole on the lid of her latte to cool it.
"No. I'm not spending my money on you," Allison snapped.
After much debate this past school year, Allison convinced her parents to pay her for babysitting Jessica. She had convinced her parents that her "work" was worth five dollars an hour. Her work consisted of relegating Jessica to the basement with the smaller television while sitting in front of the bigger television upstairs, even though she spent the whole time on her cell phone.
Jessica did not seem to care. She was more impressed with the way Allison successfully persuaded her parents to be paid for these afternoons. Allison had a confidence and persuasive ability that Jessica always wanted. Jessica thought, being Allison's sister, she would just obtain these qualities with age. Now Jessica was starting to realize she just did not have these abilities. She will never be like Allison, and this made her sad but even more adoring of her sister.
Jessica's parents were returning from the ticket booth. Her dad hat his ball cap on that he only wore on summer vacation's. The black cap featured a black brim with green underneath , angled at 45 degrees toward the sky, and so straight and free from wear that, if not for the sweat stains, one would think was brand new. In fact, the only words on the hat gave away its approximate age. It read: USS Doyle. The ship Jessica's dad served on 18 years ago when he was in the U.S. Navy and had been inactive shortly after he left.
Jessica's mom wore a turquoise long-sleeve t-shirt that read Outer Banks that she bought on their summer vacation last year. Underneath she had a tube top she would reveal when the weather warmed to show off her slim figure she was proud to have after giving birth to two children. Jessica's dad never seemed to take extra notice but other men sure did.
"We board the Patriot in twenty minutes," Jessica's dad exclaimed excitedly. Her mom would have simply referred to the vessel as "the boat" but her father liked to personalize enterprises such as theses. Perhaps it was his experience in the Navy that caused him to grow so close to boats.
A loud obnoxious horn sounded behind Jessica alerting everyone of another boat's departure.
***

Part Three
"This is taking forever. My arms are getting sore." Jessica stated.
"Are they?"
"No. I'm just bored. And tired. And how are we ever going to make it anywhere?"
The man sighed. He was now swimming on his back so that he could talk to Jessica and continue moving. His black hair had dried in the sun and clumped together in thick stiff strands that hung just above his eyebrows. After a moment he began to speak.
"A man is being chased by a tiger in the jungle and the tiger is slowly gaining on him."
"What are you doing?" Jessica asked. There was that tone again, she was beginning to sound like Allison.
"I'm telling you a story."
"But why?"
"Do you want to hear the story or not?"
Jessica was now treading water. She shrugged her shoulders as much as a person can while still keeping their head above the water.
"I'll take that as a 'yes.' Now if you'll please let me continue?" The man spoke slowly and calmly.
"Yes. I won't butt in anymore," Jessica promised feeling bad about being rude earlier and she began swimming again.
"Now the man comes to a cliff. It's too far down to jump and there is now way around. He looks back and sees the tiger heading towards him. So he does the only thing he can do."
"He shoots the tiger?" Jessica asked.
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because he doesn't have a gun."
"Oh."
"He spots a vine and begins to climb down the cliff. After several minutes of climbing he looks down to see how close he is to the ground. Much to his chagrin, he sees another tiger at the bottom waiting for him."
"What is chagrin?"
The man gave Jessica a warm half smile before responding.
"It means he was disappointed."
"Oh," Jessica replied and wondered why she felt slightly embarrassed. After internal deliberation, she decided that she felt that way because Allison would have known the answer and teased her for not knowing. Jessica often held herself to Allison's standard even though Jessica was several years younger. She decided it was silly to continue thinking this way.
"The man looked up and saw the original tiger was perched on the ledge staring down at him. Then he saw two mice on the ledge as well; one black and one white. They were crawling on the very same vine he was holding onto, nibbling away at it. The man knew that he could only hang on for so long and eventually the vine would break and he would fall."
"What did he do?" Jessica had stopped swimming at this point and was treading water. The man graciously stopped swimming too when he recognized that she could not swim and listen to his story at the same time.
"Well, he looked off to his right and noticed something beautiful."
"A gun to shoot the tigers?"
"No," the man replied with a laugh. "What's beautiful about that?"
"Well it would be beautiful to be able to get off that vine," Jessica said back to the man.
"Would it?"
Jessica gave him a confused look and after a moment he continued.
"No, it was not a gun. It was a ripe strawberry growing from another vine. The man reached out, plucked it, and took a big bite. It was delicious!"
The man looked at Jessica with a sort of satisfied half smile like he was the one eating the strawberry.
"And then what happened?" she asked.
"That's it."
"That's it?"
"Yes"
"What about the tigers? Did they go away?" Jessica anxiously asked.
"No, the tigers never go away."
"I don't like this story," Jessica said as she began to swim again.
"Do you know what a metaphor is?" the man asked swimming alongside her.
Jessica said that she did not and, this time, felt no shame in not knowing.
"This is an old Japanese tale. Each character in the story represents something else. The tiger at the top of the cliff represents the past, the tiger at the bottom is the future, and the vine is the man's life. The black and white mice represent day and night, slowly eating away at our life line."
"Now I really don't like this story," Jessica stated becoming increasingly less interested.
"But it's important, and I'll tell you why. When we focus too much on the past or future, we feel the pain of the tiger's claw swiping at us. However, when we learn to loosen our grip on our own life lines, and focus on the present moment rather than worrying about the future or grieving about the past, we will notice our beautiful surroundings that we have been overlooking."
"Like the strawberry?" Jessica asked as her interest perked up.
"Exactly. But what is most important, is to only focus on the present. Don't think about getting to land or being back on the boat or you will feel the tiger's claw. You are right here, right now. And no matter how much you think about the past or future can change that. So instead, focus on every stroke of every swim. Because this moment is all we've got."
***
David's dad laid on the fog horn to signal to the drawbridge operators that he wished to come into the back bay. When David was a boy the horn used to startle him but that was a long time ago. He remembered leaning against the stanchions on the bow, looking into the control deck where his father would be operating the boat and trying to see when he would be reaching for the horn so that he could cover his ears. It never worked. It was either too bright out and the sun's reflection on the window prevented David from seeing in or it was too dark and his father would turn on the fog lights that blinded anyone looking into their direction. From the outside, there was just no looking in and David's father always kept him on the outside.
Today was David's seventeenth birthday but it was really no different than any other day. He would wake up at four o'clock and spend the day scrubbing the deck and the hull, working on the engine, securing lines to the larger ships they would be towing and whatever else his dad asked of him. It was all David ever did, it was all he knew. The government was under the impression that David was being home schooled but all David knew was how to run a tug boat. He had never been in a school and hadn't been home schooled since his mom died when he was seven.
"Danny, did you fix that block and tackle yet?" asked one of the deckhands who could never seem to remember David's name and never seemed to care. Most of the deckhands his dad hired did not last long enough to get to know him. They were either drunks, drifters, or not cut out for the work David's dad put them through.
"Yeah, I fixed it this morning," David replied without taking his deep blue eyes off the drawbridge. Coming into the bay was his favorite place to be, even though he did it several times a day. He liked the open water and going into town well enough, but the bay was like the ultimate compromise. A perfect shore line of restaurants, bars, marinas, condos, deep sea fishing boats and other cruise boats on various piers being gently lapped by the waves of the ocean; swallowing the erosion, culture, and memories into its belly. The water filtered through the various islands, peninsulas, pilings and moorings of the bay. The smell of the salty sea, dead fish, and fried seafood were all present here as well.
"Well, it's not working genius," the older man replied. David had gotten used to being treated like dirt on his dad's boat. In fact, most of the deckhands did not even know he was the captain's son.
David walked aft to the stern and observed the block and tackle he had set up that morning.
"That's because you ran the cable through it wrong," David exclaimed almost instantly after looking at it. He had also gotten used to always being correct in the face of these supposedly more experienced deckhands and never felt tempted to gloat.
"Oh. . . well. . . fix it," the man stated as he walked away. David had planned on fixing it anyway since he would rather have it done correctly then have to listen to his dad complain about it.

Jessica breathed calmly as the man had taught her. She focused on the air coming in through her nose, filling up her lungs, and exiting her body. "One breath" she counted, "Two breaths." Whenever she lost count or her mind wandered she would start over. Pretty soon her breaths began to coincide with each stroke in perfect harmony. Then it seemed as if each wave harmonized with her breathing and swimming. It was like she was one with the ocean. She began to think about what the man said about waves being related to the moon's gravitational pull and how she was really in touch with the entire cosmos as well.
Jessica realized she was no longer anxious about being saved. She didn't even worry about her family anymore. She felt so safe with the man, like he could fix anything.
Something protruding from the water's surface caught Jessica's attention and struck fear into the pit of her stomach. No longer was she thinking about the moon and the ocean and her breath. Her legs froze in a stiff and extended position. Her whole body felt heavy. Jessica was going into shock again. She struggled her hardest to fight it and managed a few syllables.
"Shh. . . shh. . . sharks."
The man rolled over onto his back to look at where Jessica was looking. Six or seven shark fins began to form a circle around them. The warm smile and kind blue eyes were gone but he did not look panicked either. Instead his face hardened like a statue; cold, hard, and unmovable. He began treading water and pulled Jessica close to him.
"Jessica, I need you to start swimming in place. . . please," the man pleaded as his voice penetrated through Jessica's state of shock and melted her fears. Seconds later she began treading water as the man had instructed.
The man grabbed a hold of the rope tied around his waste and began pulling the life vest with the red canister toward him. When it reached him he pulled out a knife and cut the rope and untangled the complicated knot. He quickly pulled on the life vest and twisted off the black screw on the red canister.
Hugging Jessica close to his body with his left arm and extending the red canister with the other arm, the man whispered into Jessica's ear.
"Now we need to be very still until I say it's okay. Do you understand?"
Jessica nodded.
The man began to rotate them in a circle as he poured the gasoline from the red canister. They made about two and a half revolutions before the canister was empty and the man promptly threw it away from them.
Jessica was scared but remained still. She tried to count her breaths as the man had taught her but it was hard to breath with the strong smell of gasoline all around them. After what seemed like an hour, the man whispered in her ear again.
"Okay, let's go."
As the man let go of her and began to swim she looked around. The sharks were all gone.
***
Red bulbous blisters covered the corners of Jessica's once smooth and innocent lips. The center of her upper lip sported a large crack down the center caked with blood that had opened and healed several times over.
Jesssica kept her hair back in a ponytail and it exposed most of her face. A series of light brown and red-orange blisters covered her forehead where the unkind August sun asserted its all-powerful presence. The sun did not care that Jessica's life was in peril. It did not care that she had no sunscreen on her skin. It did not distinguish between her face and the face of the ocean and the face of a fig leaf. It just burned; bright and true.
With every stoke, Jessica fought the urge to dip her lips into the cool salty water, but she dared not. The man had warned her that any salt water that got into her system would dehydrate her even faster. Jessica wasn't even certain what that meant but it didn't matter anymore. No longer did she question the man. He was the authority of these open waters. His path was the way out of these waters and his words were the truth.
The man's face had changed as well. The pink hue on his high cheek bones had turned into large sun blisters. The sun blisters had popped and released pus, dried up in the sun, and become blisters once again. Cyclical, or so it seemed. His matted down thick bangs covered host of his forehead and his beard provided some protection but the rest of his face was a grotesque map of blisters. Yet, somehow, his blue eyes and peaceful demeanor seemed more powerful than ever. Jessica found strength in his peace.
***