I took a giant stride off the platform. The world shifted, became a rush of bubbles. The cold slipped into my wet suit and soaked my rash guard and bikini.
I made the okay sign. Mom waved from the roof deck. Her skin glowed rosy in the dawn light, her shoulders back and proud, her gaze set west, toward land. It’s one of my last, best memories of her.
I swam for the white buoy that marked the descent line. The surface of the ocean slapped the side of my head, rippled over my faceplate. And when the sense of unease hit me, the one I’d had the day before in the USS Andrews, I brushed it away. Mom was right, I thought. I’d seen nothing but a dream in that ship, a floating, horrific dream that leapt out of my unconscious like a slippery fish. Narced. Imagining things.
I reached the buoy. Purged my BC. The air burbled out of the valves and I sank.
Immediate relief. Nobody tells you how boring it is, being stranded.
Above my head, the early morning light skimmed the surface of the waves. Beneath my fins, the world inked out. I pointed my dive light down, past my feet into the blackness, and sank slowly. Like floating in space.
Fifteen feet down on the ship line, the safety stop gear came into view; a bright pink tank, the reg out of its bungee and hanging loose, pulled sideways by the current. I slipped off my gloves and tucked them into a pocket on my BC. If I could have, I would’ve lip synced to the Vanessa Peters song playing in my head. That’s how much I wasn’t thinking about what swam just outside my circle of light.
Untying the knot was awkward while holding the dive light in one hand and kicking against the drag of the current. The light kept falling from my fingers. Dangling from my wrist. Sweeping the depths like a crazy searchlight. I finally took out my reg, held my breath, and stuck the end of my light into my mouth. I’ve been practicing since you went away, and I can hold my breath for almost two minutes, a few seconds shy of my grandmother’s record.
As soon as I pulled the last of the knot free, I should’ve been satisfied. Headed to the surface. Instead I froze, hanging on the rope like a barnacle.
A prickle on my neck, a brush of current. A sixth sense just outside the poor reach of my dive light. Something was watching me.
I shoved my reg back into my mouth. Then I swam in a circle around the ship line, forgetting about the gear in my hand. My light showed nothing but particles. They glowed under the beam, and then the current swept them away.
I pointed the light down and waited, fins limp. My body adrift. The cold air dried out my throat. I knew it was dangerous, Dad, I did. I should’ve surfaced and swam like Michael Phelps to the boat. But like you, I always feel a little pulse inside me that says, Look.
Better to be eaten head first, Peanut.
The dive light sliced the dark open. Then a gray torpedo slid through the beam.
I dropped the tank. It plummeted into the depths. My hand caught the rope out of instinct and the tank jerked to a stop. Pulled me off center. The dive light swung in an arc, scanning the depths. My eyes widened until they felt stretched behind my mask.
Gray skin. I checked below again and replayed your lessons. You’re more likely to be struck by lightning on your way to Starbucks than you are to be eaten in the big blue. But I was alone. It was dark. There was a lot of water beyond the reach of a dive light.
I stayed a moment longer, moving my fins slowly against the current, forcing myself to take stock. Sharks don’t want to eat people, I reminded myself. It’s always a mistake when they bite. This one wouldn’t want 120 pounds of girl covered in a neoprene casing. No way. I fire hosed my dive light around below.
I barely registered the next flash of gray before it hit me. Right in my shoulder. The world flipped on its side, filled with bubbles. I dropped the tank line. The regulator fell from my mouth. A tail as big as my torso swished past.
I shoved the reg back in and bolted for the surface, a panicked bubble in my chest spreading out into my legs, my fins. My head broke the top of a wave. The Last Chance came into view thirty feet away. Mom waved at me. Out of habit, I okayed with a fist on my head.
But I wasn’t okay.
I swam in a rush for the boat. So exposed, dangling down into the water, closest to whatever was under me. My flesh covered with next to nothing.
A wave splashed across my mask. The world blurred, the boat tipped. The ladder bobbed in the waves twenty feet away. Too far. I was small, weak.
I was food.
ENTRY 7
I DON’T REMEMBER MUCH from that swim. At least I don’t remember moving my legs and arms. I only remember the boat. Fifteen feet away. Then ten. Five. The waves pushing it up like a kid on a seesaw. The red lettering of the Last Chance tilting, crashing down.
I reached for the ladder, and something brushed my leg. I cried out, the regulator tumbling from my mouth. A three-foot swell drew the boat up and out of my grip.
I finally grabbed the first rung. Fumbled my fins off and let them fall. A final burst of adrenaline pushed me up the rungs, and I tumbled onto the dive platform and coughed on a lungful of real air.
“You okay?”
I turned to find Mom looking at me as if I’d lost my mind. She raised a bunch of grapes to her mouth and bit one off.
I pulled off my mask and tossed it onto the bench with a clatter. “I dropped the safety stop gear. And my fins.”
She stopped chewing. “All of it?”
“It was all tethered together.”
“What were you thinking, Tasia?”
I started to tell her what happened. And then I realized I had an audience. Candy stood a few feet behind Mom, wrapped in a beach towel, and Ben lay on his side on the scuba bench, propped up on one elbow. Teague, the Bermuda Triangle theory guy, was sprawled out in the captain’s chair, one leg over the arm, craning his neck to get a better look. A crowd had formed on the roof deck.
I felt stupid as I said it but did anyway.
“There’s something in the water.”
Mom turned her back to me, leaning over to peer into the waves, but I’d already caught the shift in her expression, the disappointment. “There’s always something in the water. It’s why we dive.” She took a deep breath, trying to control her temper. “You lost seven hundred dollars worth of gear.”
A murmur rose from the boat next to ours.
“Shark!” a girl on the roof deck shouted, and the others laughed.
But she wasn’t kidding. There it was, that gorgeous dorsal fin cutting the water like a hot knife.
Mom rushed to the port side. I pulled myself up to a bench to undo my gear, but my numb fingers wouldn’t work the release. So I just sat there with my tank growing heavier by the minute and tried to calm down. And you know how Mom is. How she’s changed in the last few years. She wasn’t about to take it back, not even after seeing what circled our boat. Because I’d dropped the gear. Seven hundred dollars of Mom’s—my—hard-earned money, flushed down the big ocean toilet.
Candy held her hand over her mouth, her eyes wide. “That was in the water with you?”
“He was just being a little friendly,” I said. “I shouldn’t have freaked out.”
Ben, Teague, and Candy crowded the bench, their eyes lighting up with wonder and fear. “Whoa,” Teague said. “This is so much better than Shark Week.”
Our morning visitor swam an arm’s reach from me, measuring us. Dorsal fin to tail, it had to be at least twelve feet long. It circled the bow and made its way down the narrow alley between the Last Chance and the Ruby Pelican.