I’ll laugh about Chloe’s personality shift from Mandela to Bezos at some point today, but now, I stand, picking up both my pillow and the missing woman’s. Holding one against my chest, the other dangling from my hand, I scan the surging water.
“Laiyla.”
I glance over my shoulder at Chloe, who’s giving me a what-are-you-waiting-for look.
“Come on.”
“Do you know where the other woman is? KT?” I ask. “Is she sick or something?”
Another gust tips me off-balance and rips the elastic band from my bun. My hair whips and spirals around my head like something out of The Exorcist. I hold both pillows to my chest and pull my hair from my face just as the sky opens up with a torrent of warm rain.
“She probably decided to join another group.” Chloe yells to be heard over the wind. I’m struck by how quickly the morning’s light breeze and blue skies have turned devilish, smothering the sun with thick charcoal clouds, and turning raindrops into blades.
I stare out at the ocean, yelling, “I saw her head down to the tidepools with scuba gear half an hour before our session started.”
This island, Nieu, is smack in the middle of the South Pacific, west of New Zealand. My pre-travel research exposed June as the beginning of cyclone season in the tropics, but this storm didn’t show up on experts’ radar until the retreat was underway a full day. Sketchy cell and internet service kept us from closely monitoring the path of the storm, but just this morning at our hippie-dippie, vegan, organic, wholly unsatisfying breakfast of chickpea flour mini frittatas—chickpea flour? Seriously?—the resort manager had assured everyone that this was a tropical storm that would not develop into a level one cyclone.
But, yeah—cyclone. It’s one of those words you can’t unhear.
Chloe appears at my side, one hand holding her pillow, the other grasping her now-loose, long, buttery blonde strands into a ponytail. For a moment, we take in the sight of the surf pounding the hell out of the tidepool shelf.
Chloe releases her hair and takes my hand. “Come on. We need to get inside.”
My stomach squeezes. I can’t bear the thought of the other woman somewhere under the ocean. I don’t know what happens underwater in a storm like this, but even if it’s relatively sedate down there, I can’t imagine how she will get through the violent surf to land.
“Have you ever been diving?” I ask Chloe. “How long will her air tank last? Long enough to ride out whatever this is?”
“I’ve been, but I can’t remember how long a tank of air lasts.”
A piercing alarm wails, making me jump and wedging my heart into my throat.
“This is a severe storm warning.” The tinny, mechanical voice comes between siren calls. “Return to the resort and shelter in place.”
Another round of siren wails drives into my ears, and I relent to Chloe’s insistence, feeling helpless.
Something catches the corner of my eye, and I’m three steps up the steep stairway toward the resort before I glance back. Despite my iron grip on the handrail at my side, the wind catches me like a kite, and I squeeze my eyes closed against the gust.
When I open my eyes again, I watch the sea lift a wall of water and dump it on the tide pools with as much care as someone bailing out a sinking boat. When the wave retreats, something dark is left behind. My stomach flips. It’s KT, still in her scuba gear, missing her mask.
“Chloe,” I yell to the woman a dozen steps ahead. “She’s here.”
I start back down the stairs. On the rock shelf, KT rips her fins from her feet, pushes up on her knees, and stays in a low crouch as she makes her way along the treacherous tide pools. Another giant wave crests behind her, and terror rises in my chest.
“Look out!” My scream is swallowed by the wind, and I can’t do anything but watch the impending horror of a furious Mother Nature against all of man and womankind on this little island.
My whole body tenses, my fingers bloodless around the railing. Just before the wave hits, KT tucks her head, covers it with both arms, and rolls into a ball. A scream vibrates in my throat, but I can’t hear anything above the wind and surf.
The wave swallows the woman and tosses her like a beach ball in a whiplash of seawater. She hits the rock shelf again, bouncing violently, tumbling a little closer to the resort. I assess her location in relation to mine. I want to haul her to safe ground the way I did with Brianna Asher six years before, after the girl took a hard fall waterskiing on Wildfire Lake. God, the mind could be a wicked thing, drawing the strangest parallels where none exist. This is an entirely different situation, one well outside my abilities.
I can’t imagine how KT could still be alive after this beating, but as soon as the wave recedes, the woman scrambles a little closer to the resort like a hermit crab scaling rock, veering toward the stairway. When I realize she has a chance to get within reach, I drop the pillows I didn’t realize I was still holding and make my way down the staircase, gripping onto the rail with both hands.
A millisecond before the next wave slams KT and drags her into the melee again, the woman lunges. I see her in slow motion, her wet suit-encased body sailing parallel to the tide pools, arms outstretched the way a baseball player dives for home plate. The sea carries her toward me, and without thinking, I reach for her, but she’s nowhere near my grasp. The wave crashes, thundering in my head and rattling my teeth. But this time, when I dare look again, the wave recedes, leaving KT clinging to the last metal stairway post.
I race down the steps separating us and grab hold of the pole with one hand and fist the shoulder of KT’s wet suit in the other. The woman is bloodied and battered and weak, but she looks up at me and screams, “Lock your arm around the post and brace.” When I do, she twines her arms through mine, then around the pole. “Hold on through the next wave, then run like hell.”
The last word is barely out of her mouth when the water hits. Even with the pole locked in the crook of my arm, I’m unprepared for the sheer, raw force of the ocean. It hits me like a cement wall, stealing my air and tossing my body. I become a terrorized flag, sailing behind the pole in the water.
I swear my brain lights up with snapshots of my childhood, and I wonder if this is what they mean by having your life flash before your eyes. Unable to hold my breath even one millisecond longer, I grapple with the concept of drowning. But before I can give up, the warm salty water slides back into the sea, and I gasp, greedy for air.
KT and I cling to each other, tripping up the stairs, clawing at the railing until we’re out of the sea’s reach. There, we drop to the cement steps and cleave to a vertical post, which is drilled into the surrounding rock and set with cement. Chloe appears, pulling me up by the arm. Behind me, KT fights to her feet, reaches for the strap across her chest, and releases the oxygen tank on her back.
Before the metal canister hits the ground, the wind howls past, spinning KT like a top. The tank comes at me like a missile, connecting with the side of my head.
I don’t remember blacking out, only know that when I return from darkness, KT’s on one side of me and Chloe’s on the other, all three of us struggling up the staircase. I couldn’t have been unconscious for long, because we’ve only made it a few steps closer to the resort. But my head is screaming so loud, I don’t even hear the ocean anymore.