The clogged drain smell returned, drifting on the ocean breeze. Candy groaned and pinched her nose closed. I tried breathing shallow and through my mouth, but then I could taste it. All those particles clinging to my tongue. The blue tarp, which the darkness made worse, lay only five feet away. So I kept my focus on the east and the moon that had appeared just after sunset, hovering far out to sea. I imagined all the people in the Bahamas, who were lying under the same moon, and wondered if they’d gotten any of the messages Matt had been sending out all day. I wondered about you, if you could see the moon through the little window in your cell.
I closed my eyes. I wouldn’t choose a flowered dress for my last outfit, which is exactly what Mom would pick for me. When I die, I want to be buried in neoprene, the O’Brien wetsuit you got me for Christmas.
I guess even then a part of me knew I wouldn’t be coming home. That something was happening to me, that I hadn’t come out of the USS Andrews the same as I had gone in.
ENTRY 6
I’VE BEEN AVOIDING THIS PART, because it’s so hard to write. But I promised you a full account. The nightmare I saw in the ship, the horrible thing that killed Marshall, the creature that now defines who I am and what I want in the darkest corners of myself . . .
It came for us at sunrise.
I woke from a half sleep, a few fragments of a dream about you and me and Grandmother still floating through my mind. Your faces faded, gave way to the sound of girls talking, voices drifting over from Matt’s charter. They were whispering about water. How much can we have? Should we say anything?
I lay on my back on the hard bench, trying not to listen and failing.
Are you thirsty? I’m thirsty. Do you want your ration?
Someone near the captain’s chair of Matt’s boat said she could have his if she shut up and let him sleep.
I watched the sky gray and tried to think of something happy. Family beach barbeques, like the time you cooked an entire freakin’ lamb on a spit and we shared it with half of Key Largo. Or the day the seas were too rough for the tourists, and Mom and I blew off cleaning equipment and hit the dollar theater. Or, even better, weekends with Grandmother in her little apartment back in Tarpon Springs, when we’d drink tea and watch the sailors unload the sponges from their boats.
But my head kept going dark.
Yiayia and me, sitting by her front window, waiting for the sunset. When she told me a secret, about what it was like when she was little, during the war. How all of Greece went to hell and stayed there for a while. How everyone on her little island got along at first. They shared. Gave each other comfort. Then the bombs kept falling, and the food ran out. My grandmother told me once that humans were great actors, putting on their civilization suits for everyday wear in the cities and for church functions. Put them under God’s thumb for a bit, and watch those suits come off.
She never gave me the same details she gave you. I mean, I was nine when she told me how the Germans took over Kalymnos, how the Allies bombed it for months and months, and I think she skipped the worst bits. But there was this look. A shiny sort of fear in her eyes, as if she’d pulled a big, ugly seed out of her brain, and it was sprouting in her as I watched, as it had been for the last sixty-four years.
So I thought of Yiayia’s stories about water and food and civilization suits. Oh God, I thought. Twenty-five people on our two boats. Enough water to last until noon. And no Coast Guard in sight. For a good five seconds, I thought about hiding a bottle or two for me and Felix and Mom. A hot wave of shame followed.
I got up. Wiped my eyes. The sun was gorgeous, laying its eggs all over the sunrise. Every egg bursting into flight just after it touched down. Orange, yellow, a slow burn of the sky-sea. Slosh. Slosh. Pop. I was restless, so I stood and straightened some gear, adjusted the bungees that kept the tanks in place, and folded a beach towel lying on the bench.
Ben sat by the engine, twirling a pencil over his knuckles as he watched a small flock of birds floating a little ways off. Candy lay curled up on one side, a burned-out cigarette between her index and middle finger. Phil hunched in the captain’s chair, holding court over nothing. I retied the string on my bikini top, tight. Phil was weird, and he was new, and as soon as I got home, I was going to ask Mom to fire him. That felt good, thinking about what I’d do when I got home rather than what I’d do if the Coast Guard didn’t show up. And for once I wasn’t thinking about what I saw yesterday in the USS Andrews. My fear had gone deep and quiet.
Mom was standing at the rear of the boat, her back to me, a silhouette against the rising run.
She swore quietly.
“What’s wrong?”
She gestured to the ocean in a throwaway motion. “I left a tank and a reg at a safety stop.”
Ben’s voice rose from just behind us. “What’s a safety stop?” He turned to me, still spinning the pencil, his eyes curious. I got the feeling that was his default setting: curious.
“Before a deep dive,” she told him, “we hook a tank and regulator on a rope fifteen feet under the surface. If someone screws up and stays down too long, they can hang out at the safety stop and decompress without worrying about running out of air.”
Ben mulled that over a second. “What happens if you don’t decompress?”
“Nitrogen bubbles in your brain.”
Ben turned his attention back to the birds, away from me. “Nice hobby you got there.”
I picked up my wet suit and put a foot in.
“No, Tasia,” Mom said. “I’ll go.”
“Mom, I can’t sleep. And I’m bored out of my mind. You stay with Felix.” I nodded to the roof, where he was still sleeping peacefully. “He’s scared.”
“He’s asleep.”
“No one really slept last night.”
“Have you met your brother? That boy snored through the last hurricane.”
“I’ll get it. No big deal.”
I tied my hair back, grabbed my tank, and suited up. Mom looked like she was going to stop me but instead turned and disappeared onto the roof deck. “Don’t be long,” she called over her shoulder.
Ben side-eyed me. “Aren’t you supposed to go with a buddy?”
I attached my regulator to the tank valve and screwed it on tight. “Sometimes it’s not practical. Besides, I’ve been diving three times a day, six days a week, since I was fifteen years old. I know what I’m doing.”
“No high school student has enough time to do all that. You’d die of exhaustion.”
“Mom pulled me out of school freshman year to help her on the boat after Dad . . .” I tightened a strap, even though it was already fine. “After he couldn’t help anymore. I do the homeschooling thing at night. Gives me plenty of time.”
“Is that even legal?” he asked.
I shrugged.
Understanding lit his eyes, or maybe it was pity. Ben followed me with his gaze as I made my way to the stern. “Anyway, it doesn’t sound safe, what you’re doing.”
“Somebody drops a fin over the side, and you want two people to suit up to get it?”
“Yeah, actually.”
I ignored him and slipped my mask over my eyes.
Three years ago, right before your big exit, you talked me into that midnight dive on the reef. It’ll be like floating in space, Peanut, but with our lights, we’ll become the stars. Maybe it’s why I love diving in the dark, or the near dark, the sun slowly staining the waters red. Every time I descend into the black water, with my body hanging over hundreds of feet of nothing like a girl drifting on the dark side of the moon, you’re there with me.