The Living

When morning comes, it becomes clear that the lifeboat has started taking on water again. Shy and Addison manage to bail the water out and patch the hole in the hull, but Shy has become so weak that he can barely remain conscious. Still delirious, Shy once again considers how unlikely their friendship is, noting “how strange that the two of them had ended up here together. They were from opposite worlds. In real life they wouldn’t have been friends in a million years, but out here they were all each other had” (217). At Addison’s request, Shy tells her that he was given the nickname “Shy” as a shorthand for a way his father used to tease him, saying: “‘Any time I fell or knocked something over my dad would be like, ‘Damn, this kid doesn’t know shit from Shinola.’ It happened a lot, I guess, so he started calling me Shinola. By the time I started school he’d shortened it to plain old Shy.’” He avoids talking about his father’s abuse, however, brushing off Addison’s sympathy. The two grow closer as they talk, bonding over the fact that neither of them believes they have ever been in love.