Prologue
THERE’S THIS THING ABOUT ME that I don’t tell anyone. I haven’t told my boyfriend or my stepdad, or any of my friends, but it’s important to the story, so I think I’d better put it out there right at the beginning.
Two or three nights a week, I drown in my sleep.
Here’s how it goes: I’m in the water, an oxygen tank strapped to my back, and I’m diving, my face pointed toward the ocean floor. The water is warm and a startling blue-green, but I hardly notice it because I’m too busy looking for something. Searching for something. I don’t know what it is that I’m trying to find, only that I want it more than I’ve ever wanted anything.
Finally, I see something down below—a glimmer of light. It’s bright and inviting, and without a second of hesitation, I kick harder, chasing it. The glow is centered around something, a small piece of metal that shines brighter the closer I get to it. But right as I reach my hand out to touch it, the light goes black, plunging me into thick, stunning darkness. And that’s when I realize the worst part. My oxygen has run out. I panic, trying to claw my way to the surface, but it’s so far away, and when I open my mouth to scream, water fills my throat and ears and—
You get it.
In my sleep I don’t know what I’m looking for, but once I’m awake, and my cheeks are salty and my throat feels raw, it’s all so obvious. Painfully obvious. I’m looking for the lost city of Atlantis. My dad’s world. And even though I know I’m safe, that I’m lying in my bed, not at the bottom of the Aegean Sea, I still have to get up and find my dad’s map.
The map is another one of my secrets. I keep it hidden in the top of my closet under the tower of sketchbooks I’ve been adding to since grade school, and though I’ve tried to throw it out at least a dozen times, I’ve never been able to. The map is hand drawn and overflowing with arrows and overlapping notes, some in Greek, some in English. There are even a few of my dad’s characteristically quirky drawings, like a sea serpent wearing an eye patch and Poseidon napping in a hammock with his trident.
It’s strange, though. When I open the map, I don’t really see any of that. I see my dad. We’re at our tiny kitchen table, his dark head bent over the map. His eyes are bright, because he’s talking about our shared love of Atlantis. Child Me is hanging on to his every word, because back then I wasn’t just Olive. I was Indiana Olive, the world-famous explorer.
Part scientist, part archaeologist, part deep-sea diver, Indiana Olive fought pirates and giant squids and greedy money mongers who wanted her treasure. She was brave and smart, and no matter what the ocean threw her way, she always had her dad next to her.
Until she didn’t.
When my dad left, he left twenty-six things behind. A lot of them were throwaways, but I kept them anyway—a pack of his favorite cinnamon gum, a faded T-shirt, scribbled-on papers. I gathered them up and hid them in an old shoebox under my bed, and while my mom was at work, I’d bring them out, trying to make sense of them. Why had he left these things behind?
A few of them were easy to figure out. The T-shirt was scratchy. The gum, too cinnamony. But why would he leave his favorite shaving soap? And what about our map? He’d left it folded on my nightstand. Wouldn’t he need that in Santorini—to help him find the lost city?
I made a careful list of all the items, and I looked at that list every single day for two years—which is how long it took me to figure out that my dad wasn’t coming back for me. I don’t like to say much about that time period, but let’s just say that sometimes I think I know exactly what it felt like for the Atlanteans to have their entire lives crumble and disappear.
After that, I stopped looking at the list. But it moved with us. From place to place, tagging along through all the school changes and apartment changes, all those lonely places that made up our post-Dad life. It was when we were living in Seattle, shortly after Mom married James, when she found the list: 26 Things My Dad Left Behind, by Indiana Olive. And she wanted to talk to me about the last item—number twenty-six.
But, of course, I didn’t want to talk about it. I wasn’t Indiana Olive anymore. I wasn’t even Olive anymore. I was Liv. And part of being Liv was never ever talking about my dad. I’d learned the hard way that telling people that your father left you for a mythical island that 99.9 percent of the world doesn’t believe ever existed is not a great idea. In fact, it’s best if you don’t even tell it to yourself that often.
So, “no,” I told her. I didn’t want to talk about my dad. I didn’t want to talk about my past. And I most definitely didn’t want anything to do with that list. It symbolized everything that had hurt me, and everything that I no longer wanted to be.
My mom told me that important things don’t like to stay buried, but then, thankfully, she let it go. It felt like a victory. We’d moved on, hadn’t we? I had no use for golden cities and broken promises. I was no longer interested in cryptic clues. I’d declared that part of my life over. Case closed.
And then Atlantis came looking for me.
Chapter One
#1. HALF A PACK OF BIG RED CHEWING GUM
My dad chewed this all the time. One foil-wrapped stick after another starting right after his morning cup of coffee. He said it was the first thing he bought when he arrived in the Chicago airport from Greece, and the second he popped it into his mouth, he knew he’d made the right decision: any country that made gum like this knew what it was doing. He emigrated with almost nothing. Just his passport, a ratty backpack, a few hundred dollars, and a Greek accent so strong he said it took three months before he could successfully order a cup of coffee.
His philosophy for navigating the US with zero connections, zero money, and zero friends? “Jump and a net will grow.”
He was always getting American idioms wrong like that.
I’M GASPING FOR AIR. MY lungs feel like two fiery balloons. The mailboxes and trees are starting to sway in my blurry vision. And according to the fitness watch my stepdad, James, gave me for Christmas, we’ve gone only 1.32 miles.
In the tradition of the great Master Yoda: a runner I am not. And today I couldn’t even fake it.
“I need another break,” I wheezed, doubling over to rest my hands on my bare knees.
My boyfriend, Dax, slowed his jaunty pace and sighed loudly, not because he needed the extra oxygen, but because this was our third break in less than fifteen minutes. I didn’t have to glance at him to know exactly what his face looked like. Disappointed. Well, disappointed and gorgeous in that sun-kissed, fauxhawked, blue-green eyes kind of way. Because, Dax.
He rested his hand on my back, but the weight of it felt more incriminating than supportive. “Liv, we already had a break. I still have three more miles if I’m going to hit my training goal, remember?”
I did remember. And honestly, I wanted to run those three miles with him. Not only does Dax hate running alone, but last night he also accompanied me to an art exhibit in downtown Seattle that was all about the history of the Polaroid. He’d even turned off his phone so we wouldn’t spend half the night being bombarded by texts from his legions of friends. So this morning, as a thank-you, I had planned to make it through his entire run without any complaining, which I can usually at least sort of do.