The boy speaks and Annie blinks. Not from surprise but the brief fluttering punctuation of frustration: the boy is someone who would drown a rescuer. He's too frightened, too panicked and desperate, to know how to let go and trust that he won't be left as the water's prize.

It is, Annie thinks, a good thing that she isn't in the water with him.

"Okay," she says. It is. She'll work with it. She's not letting him drown. "But I still need you to hook your arms over the edge like I said, yeah? So come in closer, and I'll help. We get your elbows over the edge, you're secure."

It's not a bucking, wild sea, after all. He's not trying to get into a boat. Nothing is moving except them.