The Living

“The bank sponsor came out to half-court and presented Shy with an oversized check. Two Gs. Shy held it up, almost laughing. Because nothing like this was supposed to happen to some anonymous kid like him. He was just a dude from down by the border. Didn’t they know?” 

After winning $2,000 for making a series of free throws at a basketball game, Shy feels out of place. This moment reflects the way he sees himself—as “some anonymous kid” who doesn’t belong. Shy later tells his mother to give the money to his sister for Miguel’s medical treatments.

“Shy pictured the last few hours of his grandma’s life. How she started clawing at her own skin in the hospital bed. His mom crying from outside the quarantine room. Pounding her fists against the thick glass and screaming at the nurses. Shy unable to move or speak or even breathe.” 

Shy remembers his grandmother’s agonizing death from Romero Disease. This is the first death he has witnessed, and he carries the memory with him from this point on. This scene also introduces Romero Disease as a lethal, frightening virus.

“The ocean stretching out endlessly in front of him. Far as the eye could see. Nothing but water and more water. It made Shy feel incredibly alone. A tiny, insignificant human. This sudden awareness crushed down on him and stole his breath, and for a split second he understood how someone could be moved to jump

After his nightmare-induced insomnia drives him out of his cabin to wander the ship, Shy stands at the spot where he watched David Williamson fall to his death. He is wracked with existential dread, and for a moment he sympathizes with David’s decision to jump to his death.

“I think on one of those faraway planets there’s a space version of me and there’s a space version of you. And I bet our space versions met earlier in life. In junior high. On the swings at the park or something. And they probably hit it off in about two point five. Like love at first sight or whatever. And since that day they’ve been all about each other.” 

Shy, drunk, waxes poetic to Carmen about alternate versions of themselves who might be in love with each other somewhere out in space. This conversation leads to their kiss in the hallway outside her bedroom, which they both soon come to regret.

“Names have no meaning out here, young fella. I’m just an old man passing through.” 

Shoeshine responds to Shy when Shy asks for his real name. Here, Shoeshine is commenting both on the transient nature of their jobs as cruise ship staff—names aren’t important if they’ll never see each other again—and on the low value their employers and the passengers place on them.

“The man’s face grew cold and he pointed at Shy. ‘Don’t walk away from me, Shy.’” 

Bill, the man in the black coat, threatens Shy after interrogating him about David Williamson’s suicide. Although Bill is already a sinister figure before Shy is introduced to him properly, this is where the first signs of his true ruthless nature begin to show.

“Shy shook his head. He was starting to understand that some people’s lives mattered more than others.” 

Shy comes to this conclusion after learning that scientists have begun research on a Romero Disease vaccine—only after it has begun to affect wealthy American lives. Thousands of Mexicans and many Americans along the border have already died of Romero at this point, a fact that makes Shy feel as though those lives are given less value by society.

“He saw in her terrified eyes that this was something serious, and he knew immediately his life would be forever changed.” 

The moment the first earthquake jolts the ship and the alarms go off, Shy and Carmen instinctively recognize that something terrible is happening. This scene precedes the news that a series of earthquakes have destroyed the west coast of the United States. This line also foreshadows the trials that will soon alter the path of Shy’s life forever.

“A tall passenger fought his way up to the front of the line with his wife and kid. He grabbed the shoulder of a crew member, said: ‘You need to get premier class off this ship first! We paid for that right!’ This sparked a new debate, about who should be loaded onto the lifeboats first: women and children or premier class.”

A premier class passenger demands that his family—and the other higher-paying passengers—be given priority when evacuating the ship. This moment crystalizes the unhealthy power dynamic aboard the cruise ship that allows privileged passengers to feel as though their lives are more valuable than those of the crew.

“It was the man who’d been following him all around the ship. The man in the black suit, Bill. ‘Help me,’ he pleaded. ‘Please.’” 

While searching the ruined cruise ship for survivors, Shy finds Bill trapped under a fallen chandelier. Although Bill has threatened him, broken into his room, and stalked him for days, Shy refuses to leave him to die and drags him to safety. This scene also highlights the fact that, although he may be heartless, Bill is still a human being.

“He did nothing more than tread water in the dark for several minutes, battling his own thoughts. What if he was stranded for good? Nothing to eat or drink, no one there when he died? What if he never saw anything but water again? He felt like he’d been shown the truth of the world. The absolute power it held. People just meaningless specks that came and went as easily as flipping a switch.” 

Stranded in the ocean with nothing but his life jacket, Shy panics at the thought of dying a lonely, meaningless death. This is one of the first instances of Shy’s fear that his single human life is insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

“There were five or six sharks circling beneath his sinking boat. Jaws partly open and full of teeth. Eyes black.” 

This moment introduces the sharks that circle Shy’s lifeboat for days. Sharks, which his grandmother was afraid of before he left for the cruise, represent the ever-present danger posed by the ocean Shy is stranded in, as well as Shy’s own mortality.

“Shy’s body was shaking uncontrollably. He’d done nothing to help.” 

Toni has just been ripped from Shy’s arms by a shark and dragged into the ocean to her death. Afterward, Shy is struck with the same guilt he felt when he wasn’t strong enough to keep David Williamson from falling to his death in a similar manner.

“The man shrugged. ‘But I saw the look in her eyes when I left her cabin that afternoon. She wasn’t ever coming to dinner.’” 

William Henry admits to Shy that he knew his girlfriend would never accept his marriage proposal. This is a significant moment, as it shows that William’s enormous wealth and his seven-carat diamond ring were not enough to make a woman love him, as nothing could change the fact that he was not the right person for her.

“‘You probably don’t even have a dad,’ Addison fired back. ‘Doesn’t everyone like you grow up with a single mom?’” 

Addison is insulting Shy using a derogatory stereotype. This line is a strong example of the kind of person Addison was before being stranded with Shy forced her to grow and change. Addison recognizes that she has gone too far and apologizes, but Shy ignores her apology.

“He stared up at the glowing moon again, and he listened to the whispering ocean. His thoughts were more staticky than before, but for the first time since the summer started, he felt like he understood the ocean’s whispering. It all came down to this. The darkness. The loneliness. The mystery. The fact that everyone’s days were numbered, and it didn’t matter if you were in premier class or worked in housekeeping. Those were only costumes people wore. And once you stripped them away you saw the truth. This giant ocean and this dark pressing sky. We only have a few minutes, but the unexplainable world is constant and forever marching forward.”

Shy is beginning to understand that, beneath all the layers of wealth, class, social standing, and race, everyone is essentially equal at their core. Every human life is brief compared to the age of the Earth itself, and no amount of money or fame can change that.

“Addie surprised him when she reached down suddenly, removed the fish from the hook and then used the hook and her bare hands to split it down the middle, blood dripping through her fingers. She held out the bigger half to Shy, who looked at her like she was crazy. ‘What?’ she said.” 

After Shy catches and kills their first fish, Addison surprises him by tearing it apart with her bare hands when she realizes he can’t bring himself to do it. This scene contrasts with her rich-kid background and displays Addison’s increasing level of self-reliance as time passes on the lifeboat.

“The world itself was alive, too. It swirled around you and sped past your eyes and ears, so fast you could never see it, but slow at the same time, like a tree growing taller in a park. And all the sounds you heard—the wind whipping past your ears and the ocean’s whispering and the trickle of whitecaps against your boat—that was the earth’s blood pumping through imperceptible veins, and some of those veins were nothing more than people like Shy or Carmen or Addie.” 

As Shy grows closer and closer to death, he is finally able to come to terms with his own mortality. He accepts his place as part of a larger, interconnected world, finding some amount of beauty and peace in what he believes are his last moments alive.

“I think I was going to love you, Shy.”

Addison, believing she is about to die, tells Shy that she has started to develop feelings for him. She asks him not to say anything back and places her hands on his face to keep him from looking at her. This scene connects to an earlier conversation when Addison was upset at the idea that neither of them would have the chance to fall in love.

“‘The moral of the story,’ the bearded man said, ‘never underestimate the resilience of the American people.’”

One of the researchers is telling the gathered survivors that the state of the United States after the earthquakes isn’t as bad as they might have thought, implying that everything is going to be all right. Shy recognizes that the man is sugarcoating the truth but isn’t sure why.

“Everyone in the penthouse was infected with Romero Disease. And some, like Rodney, were already dead. And they’d been left there to rot.” 

Shy and Carmen, attempting to visit Rodney in the penthouse quarantine room, discover that dozens of survivors are infected with Romero Disease and realize that the researchers have left all of them to die. This means that the vaccine they received was the Romero vaccine, which isn’t supposed to exist yet.

“Instead of developing a drug to treat a disease, they set out to develop a disease that would need a drug. And that’s exactly what they did.” 

Bill explains the truth behind the origin of Romero Disease to Shy—that it was designed in a LasoTech lab to turn a profit. This is the moment when the entire conspiracy is finally unearthed and Shy realizes who is responsible for the deaths of his friends and family.

“That’s where Mr. Miller came in—your friend’s father. According to the letter, Mr. Miller opened a free clinic in Mexico—under a different name, of course. For two years they treated poor border communities for everything from the common cold to breast cancer. But they also secretly infected the first few patients with their deadly disease.” 

Bill explains that Jim Miller purposefully infected Mexicans in poor border towns with Romero Disease so that it would spread across the border into the United States, allowing thousands of Mexicans to die just to increase demand for the vaccine when Americans eventually began to pay attention.