THE NORTH RIDING PROJECT

Getting on a boat in New York when I was 18, going to France.  It was full of students.  It was a small Italian cruise ship.  We hit a hurricane the first day out.  Everybody was sick.  There were eight kids to a room.  We were all strangers.  There was a lot of drinking, lots of partying.  I met a girl from the University of New Hampshire.  We made-out a lot.  When we docked in Le Havre there was a head count.  We were one student short.  It was a girl.  She must have fallen overboard in the middle of the Atlantic.  It would have been easy to do, and she would have been easy to miss.  I still think of that girl, treading water, with her hand waving up in the air, her clothes and her hair all wet, helpless, and watching the boat go away from her.

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