Girl Underwater (11 page)

As we walk, I keep my head down, my gaze trained on the shoveled sidewalks. People in Uggs and heavy boots swarm around us, fading from my field of vision as they pass and disperse. The smell of carnitas and hot sauce makes my eyes water.

“Okay,” Lee announces. “We're here.”

I look up to see Anna's familiar yellow veneer. The line reaches almost to the door, and most of the tables are taken. Lee doesn't seem concerned.

He holds the door open for me. “Ladies first.”

“Thank you,” I say, and squeeze past. The line moves quickly, and we order like pros—me because I've been here a hundred times, and Lee because he's frequented a thousand taquerias in his lifetime. He knows the routine.

“Two burritos, huh?” I say, as he orders our drinks. “That gonna be enough?”

“It's a start.”

I start to pay, but Lee hurls his credit card onto the counter.

“Whole weekend's on me.” He points to the corner before I can argue or even thank him. “I see our table.”

While he heads in that direction with our food, I fill two cups with lemonade and grab five packets of salt, which would clog a horse's arteries, but Lee loves his salt. The tables are not just full but overflowing. Some people are standing. It's a wonder he managed to jump on one so fast—

No.

No no no.

The lemonades in my hands hit the floor as Colin Shea rises from his chair. His gaze never leaves mine, the kind of connection that smolders, then burns, as the possibility of each other becomes reality.

“Aves?” Lee has scrounged up some napkins. “Aves, we've got a situation here . . .”

“Sorry,” I mumble to the soaked teenager on my left. He starts to say something nasty, but Lee tames him with a stern look.

“Aves?”

I stumble backward, into the crowd and toward the door. An elderly gentleman catches me before I trip over his granddaughter's purse. There are shouts and taunts and then, horribly, the flash of someone's iPhone. Pictures. Video.

Hey, it's that girl from the plane crash!

I run hard—a dangerous, panicked sprint through the streets of Brookline. Twice, I slip on the ice. The third time, Lee catches me.

He looks on the verge of tears. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Him.” I can't bring myself to say Colin's name. “You just . . . Why didn't you tell me?”

“Why are you so angry?
Shea isn't some rando off the street.” He takes a breath, and his tone softens. “You of all people should understand that.”

“Fine. You're right. Go have dinner with him.”

“What's your problem?”

“
My
problem?” I bark out a laugh. “Oh, I've got problems you can't even imagine, Lee. Go ask Colin if you really want to know.”

“You're acting crazy.”

“Maybe because I
am
crazy.” The words lurch from my throat in a soundless sob. Lee watches this humiliating display for a moment, but only for a moment, because he's good like that. He wraps his arms around me until I can breathe again.

Lee walks me home. He doesn't leave me to talk to Colin; he doesn't even go back for the burritos. We walk side by side in a tight, desperate embrace. I hate that I need him like this. I hate that he knows that
normal
is just a dream.

When we get back to the house, we order takeout and talk about the safest, most mindless things: Zach Kincaid's crush on Marjorie Kline. Alice Lien's disqualification from the homecoming meet because she tried to rig the starting blocks. The padding in various individuals' swimsuits, guys and girls. These stories help me look forward to the future, but more than that, they help me forget the past.

Later that night, we rendezvous on the guest room's embroidered bedspread, but it's a lost cause because the mattress creaks so badly—at least, that's what I tell myself. In the end, I go back to my room, and he stays in his. He sleeps soundly, as he always does, his soft snores percolating through the walls.

Meanwhile, I dream . . . and dream . . .

And dream.

Colin.

Some time later, I awaken to a velvet sky, thin clouds teasing the Boston skyline. Icicles hanging from my window glimmer in the faint morning light. Last year, I would have described it as magical. Now, the word that comes to mind is
haunted
.

My parents are two doors down; Lee is a dozen feet away, separated by a thin wall my dad built during a costly (and pointless) renovation. Two of my brothers have gone back to their lives in Seattle and LA, but Edward is asleep in the basement, which has been his room for as long as I can remember. His yellow Lab peers up at me from the foot of my bed, his eyes somehow lost, like he's failed as a guard dog for reasons his brain can't quite process.

I have never felt so alone.

I
wake up with a start, sensing an absence that wasn't there before.

“Colin?” My mouth is like cotton. The air that finds its way into my lungs is cold,
so cold.
If only my father had taught us how to build indoor fires.

Without the penlight, the lean-to is steeped in darkness. I fumble around for it, careful to avoid the boys' tiny bodies. Their soft sighs and restless legs confirm their presence. At least they're all accounted for.

“Looking for this?”

Colin turns on the light, a feeble glow that nonetheless makes me feel better. He places the penlight in my hands, his calloused palm brushing mine.

“Have you been awake this whole time?” I ask.

“No,” he says. “I slept while you were awake.”

“Liar.”

He peels off his coat and hands it to me. “You're shivering.”

“I'm fine.”

“Please—”

“
No
, Colin.” I put the coat back in his lap.

We sit across from each other such that our legs are side by side, but not quite touching. Two inches is the most distance we can manage in these tight quarters.

“Tim saw a cabin,” I say.

He searches my face for clarification, but the word itself holds so much promise.
Cabin.
Food, shelter, supplies. It needs no further explanation.

“Why didn't you tell me earlier?”

“He saw it right before dark. There was nothing we could have done anyway.”

“We have a light.”

“A
pen
light.” I wait until he looks up. “Colin, don't even think about it. It's too far.”

“How far?”

“Across the lake.”

“Directly across?”

I nod.

“So a day's hike, or an hour's swim.”

“Less than an hour for you.”

“Not in these conditions,” he says. “In any case, you're the distance swimmer.”

So he remembers.
I stuff my hands in my lap.

“It's too cold,” I say, which is a fine, acceptable excuse. Except Colin doesn't believe it. He sensed my hesitation on the shore this afternoon; he senses it now.

“I think I should try,” he says.

“Colin,
no
.” It feels like an affront.

“I know you could make it, but you've already gone in the water twice. It's my turn.”

“What if you drown? What if you get there and can't make it back?”

“I'll make it back.”

“You don't have to go. We could just wait for more suitcases to wash up onshore. It's happened a few times already—”

“I have to go.”

He puts his coat at my feet, yet another offering that makes me feel weak and incapable. I know that later, when sleep takes hold of me again, he'll drape it over my shoulders. There is nothing I can do or say to change his mind about swimming for that cabin. About anything, really. He will do anything for those boys.

When I wake at dawn, the coat sits on my shoulders, and Colin is gone.

•

He scrawled a message on a two of hearts:

I have to try.

I rip the playing card off the paneling and stuff it in my pocket. My first instinct is rage; the second is terror. His conviction straddles the line between risk and insanity.

The fuselage dips and groans with every gust. The morning sky has gone a deep, angry gray, leaden with snow. Aayu navigates a restless sleep, while Liam dozes, oblivious to the storm raging inches from his body.

Tim watches me with sleepless eyes. “Tim, over here,” I say, trying to keep my voice down so the others won't wake up. “Come on.”

He crawls over, hands and feet padding a swath of towels we rescued from someone's shopping bag. I pull him into my side and adjust the makeshift ski mask on his head so his ears are covered.

“Where's Colin?” he asks.

“I don't know,” I lie.
Out there.

“His stick is gone.”

Colin told the boys the stick was like a sword, but Tim suspects its real purpose: fending off unwelcome creatures. Bears, wolves, mountain lions. I hope to never see or hear one. When we were sitting by the fire, I always faced the lake.

“I'm going to go out and see.” I check Tim's coat to make sure every button is fastened. “Stay here and be brave, okay?”

“No,” he cries, tugging on my shirt. His eyes are wet, his ski mask damp with snot.

“I won't go far. You'll be able to see me the whole time.”

His fingers grip the hem of my coat as I shuffle outside. At the door, I turn and take his hands, trying to warm them, even though his color is good. I do it because my mom used to do it for me, and it always made me feel better.

Tim's sobs turn to sniffles, and the tension in his little body slowly drains away. I blow on his hands a few more times to warm them.

“You're so brave, Tim,” I tell him. “Braver than me, that's for sure.”

The wind prickles the skin on the back of my neck. Tim pulls my hat down, careful to avoid tugging on my hair. “Don't go far,” he says. “Please.”

“I won't.”

My first step outside is a savage one. A blitz of arctic air drives straight to the core, like falling through ice. Snow lashes my skin. The lake is barely visible in the distance, the forest an alien dimension with a thousand entrances and no exit.

“Colin!” I call out, screaming from the depths of my lungs to generate volume. The wind drowns out my voice, reducing it to a dry wheeze.

I stumble toward the lake, slipping on snow-covered rocks and ice. Any hope of seeing Colin's red shirt in the distance vanishes with the onslaught of blowing snow.

A small voice calls to me from the lean-to. “I heard something!” Tim half shouts, half whispers.

He points toward the trees behind him and, beyond that, a gaping void of shadows. I don't see anything. Just trees and blowing snow. “Where?”

“Over there!” He points again, same direction. A shudder rolls through me, but I don't know why. The only thing there is wilderness.

Or is there?

When the wind eases for a moment, I put my fingers to my lips and try to whistle. A sharp pain rattles my rib cage, but it doesn't compare to the thought of losing Colin.
Nothing
compares to losing Colin. I should never have told him about the cabin.

Then, in the distance: a second whistle. At first it sounds like an echo, but this one goes on longer, like it originated from someone with twice my lung capacity. The strange thing is, Tim was pointing in the other direction.

I scramble toward the woods, remembering too late that Tim is watching. He pushes open the scrap of fuselage and crawls out, but he has the good sense to close it behind him.

“Go back inside, Tim! You'll freeze!”

He pauses, probably a knee-jerk reaction to a command from an adult. I turn back toward the trees. Snow hits me from every direction—above me, around me, even from below. The wind kicks it up, whips it into a frenzy. When I turn back around, Tim is gone.

“Tim!” I stumble back toward the lean-to, squinting into the haze. “Tim—”

He barrels into me, all elbows and knees and soft sobs. I scoop him up and hug him, even though he's tall for a six-year-old and his legs dangle almost to my shins. I wonder if he feels the desperation in my arms, the relief in my voice.

“Tim, you can't be out here.”

“I want to help.”

His nose is red and his lips a worrisome plum, but otherwise, his skin is covered with scarves, hats, gloves—anything I could find. Good. At least I did something right.

“I know you do. But I can't . . . We can't . . .”

The determined look in his eyes turns sympathetic. “We can do it,” he says. “I heard the whistle.”

“You did?”

“Out there.” He gestures vaguely toward the trees.

“I thought you said you heard something from over there,” I say, pointing south, using the lean-to as a landmark. He's looking north.

“I did . . .” He furrows his brow. “I thought I did.”

I whistle again. Tim counts to five. A second whistle carries through the stillness, and Tim claps his hands. “See? It's coming from over there!”

Over there
doesn't make me feel any better. The only thing in that direction is woods, an endless sprawl of woods.

We're only a few yards from the lean-to, but the blowing snow makes it feel like miles. I keep glancing at the door, waiting for Aayu or Liam to poke their heads out. If they do, I'll have to herd them inside and hope Colin finds his way back. I can't be out here with three little kids.

“Whistle again,” Tim says.

So I do. Every inhale hurts more than the last—a raw, splitting pain that grips my chest and shocks the bones all the way up in my shoulders.
Tough it out, Avery.

Every time I whistle, the answering whistle is a little louder. A little closer.

And then, suddenly, it stops.

My eyes well with freezing tears. Snow gathers in the wetness under my nose, melting with each breath. My ribs ache like I've been kicked.

Tim's desperate screams for Colin have faded to a whisper. I have to get him back inside, but my feet refuse to move. I have to find him. I
need
to find him.

“There!” Tim whirls around, tugging on my arm. “The noise I heard before.” He points dead ahead. The brush rustles underfoot, a deliberate shifting of branches and sticks.

The shadow is all wrong. Steady, constant, in a way that shadows shouldn't be. It hovers in the frail light of dawn, as if suspended there.

“Tim,” I say, surprised by the eerie calm in my voice. “Get back inside.”

“But I want—”

“Now, Tim.”

His innate response to adult authority wins out, but not before he reaches into his pocket and hands me his favorite toy: the avalanche transceiver. It feels heavier than before.
Batteries?

“Maybe this'll work,” he says.

“Tim, it's broken—”

“Just
try
.” He dashes back inside.

Clarity washes over me, through me. I bend over to retrieve the razor-sharp scrap of fuselage Colin had been using to cut bungee cords. The metal looked dull in the waning sunlight, but out here in this world of white, it shines. I tap it against a rock: tentative at first, then louder. Faster. I start talking. It's the same story I told hours earlier, the one about Ophelia and the mer-people and Holly-Sea. But the cadence is all wrong. Chillingly low. Steady. Controlled. This isn't a story for children.

It's for bears.