Girl Underwater (15 page)

“Oh.” Tim thinks on this for a minute. “Why not?”

“Because we're just friends,” Colin says. “We go to school together.”

“But you're too old for school.”

“College.” I take a shaky breath. “He means college.”

Aayu climbs into my lap and pats my leg. Then he reaches over and pats Colin's. “Married,” he says.

“No,” I say, exasperated. “We're not married. We're just friends.”

Aayu grins. “Married!”

Liam starts chanting it, too. I want to dig a hole and crawl into it, maybe never come out. I never thought a pair of toddlers could embarrass me this badly.

Colin scoops up the boys with his good arm, which sends them into fits of laughter. I shake my head, relieved that the moment has passed but horrified that it even happened.
Did they think we were married this whole time?

Poor Tim. He lost both his parents and now probably feels like he's lost two more. I take him by the hand and lead him outside, casting Colin a quick glance on my way out.

Once we're safely out of earshot, I crouch down and tilt his head up to mine. “Tim, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to confuse you like that.”

He looks down at his boots. “It's okay.”

“We should have told you right away that we're just friends.”

“I still would've been confused.” He pauses. Says
confused
a second time, correcting the lisp that tends to sneak back in when he's not concentrating.

“Why?”

He gazes up at me with those pale green eyes, a mysterious blend of innocent and wise. “Because Colin loves you.”

I
love you.

It's the first time Lee has ever said those words to me. Becky Wilson, my best friend growing up, always believed this was the most important milestone in a relationship—more important than being exclusive or even having sex. And I suppose now she's right because those three words feel important. They feel huge. Like the axis I'm spinning on has suddenly shifted.

The waitress comes by to check on my progress. She
pfts
and looks at Colin. “How 'bout you, honey? You hungry?”

“I'd love an orange juice,” he says. “Thanks.”

“That all? Come on, you look like you could eat a goddamn cow and still be hungry.” She appraises his towering frame and smirks.

“All right.” He hands her the menu. “I'll have bacon and eggs. Bacon crisp, eggs over easy. Wheat toast.”

The waitress grins—at least as close to a grin as this curmudgeon probably gets. “See,” she says, glaring at me, “here's a man who knows what he wants.”

She makes a note and clops back toward the kitchen. The interruption has eased the tension, or maybe that's just the alcohol making its way through my liver. I reach for my coffee.

“Sorry,” he says. “I'm just used to this place.”

“I think she likes you.”

He sips his glass of water. “Nah.”

When he puts it down again, I find myself bracing for a lecture, but there is nothing hard about his expression, nothing remotely judgmental in the way he looks at me. “So,” he says, “Happy New Year.”

Relief sweeps through me. “Happy New Year.”

He loosens his tie, which strikes me as a nervous habit. Well, good. That makes two of us.

“Food's good here.” He nods at my plate. “Great pancakes.”

“You come here often?”

“Used to. I grew up a few streets over.”

The waitress takes another order behind us, and the conversation stalls. I don't know what to say to him, or even where to begin. So I sip my coffee, hating myself for having to self-medicate with caffeine. Colin isn't even tipsy, despite the formal attire and the lateness of the hour. He smells delicious, too, like he just stepped out of the shower.

“Did you go out?” I ask.

“Just to dinner,” he says.

“Dinner with who?”

He arches an eyebrow. “Why do you ask?”

“Because you . . .” I put my mug down to get a decent look at him. Still bald, but with a freshly shaven jaw. Lovely eyes, even bluer than usual in the muted lights. I must be making him uncomfortable because he loosens his tie again and reaches for the orange juice that hasn't yet arrived.

“Because I what?” he asks.

“Because you look like a million bucks.”

A faint blush creeps up his neck. “Try a couple hundred.”

“The suit?”

He nods. “I only own one. Fortunately my next-door neighbor's a tailor. Best in the city, you ask me.”

Best in the city, best on the block—doesn't matter. Colin would look good in a bedsheet.
Or is that the booze talking?

“You're blushing,” he says.

“So are you.”

He smirks. “Well, thanks for the compliment on the suit. My sisters would be pleased.”

“Your sisters?”

“My dinner companions.” The waitress comes by with his orange juice, and he reaches for it like a lifeline. “A very generous neighbor insisted on it, said we deserved a fancy night out.”

“You do, Colin.”

He shrugs, forces a smile. “So, what brings you all the way out here?”

“Gruder had a party.”

At the sound of Gruder's name, his smile vanishes, and his eyes go dark. “Who tried to hurt you?”

“No one.” My face flushes. “I exaggerated what happened.”

“You said you ‘got away from him.'”

“I don't need a hero, okay? You've already got that box checked.” He sighs as he stares into his orange juice. Guilt swims through me. “Sorry.”

“No, you're right.” He looks up. “It's none of my business.”

I sip my coffee to wash things down. “I didn't even get his first name. He's Gruder's older brother.”

“And he lives in Southie?”

“Colin, I'm serious. Don't go all vigilante on me. Gruder's your teammate—”

“Was.”

That word lands in the air, smoldering. “What?”

“I'm not coming back.”

“Ever?”

He turns toward the window, and for a long moment, he just watches the empty street. “I can't swim anymore.”

“That's bullshit!” A few old men crane their necks to glare at me, but I'm unmoved. “Get a surgeon who can fix your shoulder.”

The waitress brings his bacon and eggs. Colin thanks her, then proceeds to shower his eggs in salt and pepper. He eats with painful deliberation, studying his food like it holds the secrets to the universe.

“Colin—”

“It's not that easy, Avery.” He shoves his plate aside. “My rotator cuff was destroyed—nerves, tendons, everything. I can barely lift my arm, much less swim.” He tries to maneuver his right hand out of his lap, grimacing as he fails to reach the table. He's not wearing a sling, but he probably should be. “Impressive, isn't it?” he says bitterly.

“Look, my dad knows tons of orthopedists. He can help you.”

“No.”

“No?”

“I'm not spending the next year of my life in operating rooms.” He sighs, resuming his usual volume. “I have other priorities.”

“I know you do, but—”

“I should have stopped swimming a long time ago.” He looks me in the eye as he says this, his irises dark as ink. “This is where I need to be.”

I stare at the tabletop, counting the little nicks and scratches that have accumulated over the years. How many difficult conversations have taken place here? How many first dates, how many good-byes? Maybe we aren't so unique after all.

Colin's gaze drifts once more to the window. A group of revelers in wool coats and dress shoes amble past, stumbling over chunky piles of shoveled snow. One of them tosses a beer into a bush. We both watch them for a while, afraid to look at anything else—especially each other.

When they disappear around the corner, Colin reaches for his fork. The eggs have gone cold, but he doesn't seem to notice. The waitress swings by and tops off his orange juice, saying, with a wink, “Free refills on New Year's.”

“Thanks,” he says with a smile, but it fades as soon as she's gone.

When he finishes his meal, it suddenly feels very late. I fumble for Lee's wallet, but of course the pockets are empty because he keeps everything on him. Colin pays the bill before I can cough up an excuse. “I'm a mess.” I look up hopelessly. “I'm sorry. I'll pay you back.”

“On me,” he says, even though the implications always feel tremendous when a guy pays for a meal. Colin slides out of the booth and reaches for my coat. Thanks to a full liter of caffeine, I'm nimble enough to get there first. I zip it up and pull on the hood. “Nice coat,” he teases.

“It's a little big.”

“Lee's?”

“My dad's. Long story.”

“I bet.”

His car is a nineties-era Honda, but the paint still shines and the interior smells like fresh lemons, as if he's got a box of them under the seat. Like the diner, his car has a sense of pride about it, older but well cared for. Colin's legs barely fit under the wheel, but he's never had a problem with tight spaces. He releases the clutch like it's a natural extension of his left foot.

“So,” he says, “where to?”

I crack the window to taste the air, though it isn't the cold that invigorates me. Even my mind feels clearer. Not just clear but alive. Like the air itself is humming.

“Is your house close to here?” I ask.

He glances over at me as he shifts into second gear. The engine purrs despite the cold, or maybe it's just because Colin knows how to handle her. “Pretty close.”

“Can we go there?”

He grips the wheel a little harder, the muscles tensing from shoulders to hands. But the look on his face isn't indignation or even surprise; it's more like curiosity. “Do you want to?”

I don't know where the words come from, or why it feels so right to say them. “I want to meet your mom.”

W
hile Colin minds the boys, I sit at the water's edge, recording events and emotions and mistakes that will forever haunt me. But the truth has become my duty. This is their story; if we survive, this is part of who they will become.

I hope—
pray
—that this is the most trying chapter of their lives. Their parents are gone, their way of life lost with them. No wonder Tim misconstrued Colin's survival instincts as love. These little boys need a family, and they're mine now. Mine, and I'm only nineteen, with no experience in child-rearing. No sense of what's right, what's wrong, and what we need to do to give them hope.

My gaze settles on Tim's Tree and, to its left, the slanting roof of the cabin. I will never know how he even saw it; the woods are endlessly thick, an army of sameness. The cabin itself roosts in shadow.

“Mind if I join you?”

Colin stumbles as he wades through the snow but rights himself before I can intervene.

“Are you crazy? You can't be out here.”

“A little stir-crazy, yeah.”

“I'm serious.”

He grimaces as he kneels in the snow, holding his right arm close to his chest. The T-shirt bandages and socks have held up well, but nowhere close to well enough.

“I think we should talk about what happened,” he says.

“We can talk inside, where it's warmer.”

“No.” He adds, “Not around the boys.”

He dips his left hand into the water, and flakes of dried blood turn the lake a filmy red.

“My plan was to swim it,” he says.

I wait for him to go on, to explain. A rush of resentment and shame fogs my thoughts. Unlike me, at least Colin was willing to try.

He would have made it, too. Now he never will.
No one
will because I simply can't swim that far in these conditions.

“So what happened?” I ask, though a part of me doesn't want an answer. The deep gashes in his skin, the trail of blood through the snow—these can only mean an encounter with something awful.

He shifts his weight and skims his wet hand over his head. “I heard a noise,” he says.

“What kind of noise?”

“Sounded angry. Large. I'm a city kid, and I've never seen a wild animal in my life unless you count Jimmy Ricks, the nastiest kid on the block back home.” He pauses at the memory. “In any case, it was a bear. Huge, too. Smelled like rotting meat.”

“So you
attacked
it?”

“Hardly.” He sighs, like he's ashamed to admit this. “I tried to run it off. Scare it a little. The lean-to was only, what, a couple hundred yards away? I couldn't just stand there and wait for it to find you.”

It already had,
I thought, but waited for him to continue.

“Anyway, it snuck up on me. I wasn't fast enough to dodge the first hit.”

“And then you . . .” I struggle to form the words without summoning a bizarre image of man versus bear in my mind. “You used your stick to fight him off?”

“I tried. I got a few good blows in, but I dunno. I worry . . .”

I worry, too. I worry about the boys, and creatures tearing us limb from limb, and endless nights in an endless wood. I worry about the trail of blood Colin left for whatever's out there. I worry about the bodies we buried.

“Avery?” His voice tightens.
He knows.
He knows because he reads my silences as well as my words, just like he did the day we met.

He waits for me to meet his gaze. When I finally do, he asks, almost desperately, “Was anyone hurt?”

“We're all fine.” I want to lean into him, but maintaining a certain distance feels more necessary now than ever. “My dad taught me how to deal with bears.”

“How?”

“Talk a lot. Let them know you're there. Don't run. If a bear confronts you, show it you're not afraid.”

“Well, I failed in that regard,” he says.

“So does everyone.”

He rubs the stubble on his jaw until the skin reddens under his fingertips. His beard is coming in sandy blond, a shade lighter than the fuzz on his head. “Maybe I'll get the chance to redeem myself to you and the boys.”

“Redeem yourself? Colin, you've done everything for us.”

“I just . . .” He breathes out—long, slow, anguished. “Are you sure you're okay?”

“Are
you
okay? Because we're fine.”

“Yes,” he says, which I know is a lie in some ways, the truth in others.

I submerge my hands in the water, a kind of baptism on the shores of nowhere. He must know what I'm thinking: We have to find some other way to survive. Some other twist of nature, or fate, or luck to pin our hopes on.

Instead, we hear a scream.

•

Colin can't run, so he lets me go on ahead. The twenty paces to the lean-to feel like a million miles.

I nudge open the door, careful not to knock anyone out in the process. “What's wrong?” I scan the cramped interior. Aayu clutches a pink glove as he cries in the corner. Liam points to Tim.

No.

“I'm sick,” Tim says.

The dirt at his feet is covered in bile. As he starts to apologize, he vomits again, his thin body contorting in pain as he tries to catch his breath between retches. While Colin distracts the other boys, I scoop Tim up and carry him outside.

I hold his hand and wipe his chin, but beyond that, all I can do is watch. His eyes are red and watery, his skin a deathly white. His muscles quiver with the effort it takes to reject whatever it is he ate, or has.

After a while, the retching stops. He sags into my arms, but now he's shivering and his skin feels hot. He tries to smile.

“I feel better.”

I want to cry, but my father would have forbidden it. When you see people at their worst, you need to be at your best—or at least better than them.

“Tim, what happened?” I tuck his bare hands in a pair of gloves. “Did you eat something from the woods? It's okay if you did—”

“No.” He frowns. “I think it's 'cause I don't have my needles.”

Needles?
“What needles?”

He shrugs helplessly. “My mom knows.”

But she's not here.

I pull him close, close enough to discern the scent of something sweet on his clothes.

Sweet as sugar.

•

The boys are all back inside, including Tim, who felt better after four cups of melted snow. We had no choice but to remove one of the side panels to cycle the air, but I'm not convinced it will do much. With five people cramped in such a small space, the air was bound to go bad, and it has. It's only a matter of time before someone else gets sick.

“How long can a diabetic go without insulin?” Colin asks.

“Depends,” I say. “Maybe a week, if you do everything right.”

“And if you don't?”

I shake my head. “I don't know.” And it's true, I don't. I've seen these kids in my dad's ER, and they turn right around with IV fluids and insulin. Unfortunately, we don't have either.

“What happens now?” he asks.

“We hydrate him as best we can. That's all we can do.”

“That's not enough.”

“
Of course
it's not enough. He needs a hospital, just like you.”

Colin steels his features into tight, controlled lines, smothering a pent-up frustration that has nowhere to go. He stares at the snowy haze for a long time.

“He'll be fine,” he finally says.

“Colin—”

“He will, Avery.” The hard intensity in his eyes is enough to silence me, but not quite enough to convince me. I wish it were. I wish I had his conviction, even though it should have wavered by now; it should have failed him.

I follow him into the lean-to. The boys look like snowmen, every surface of their bodies covered except the whites of their eyes. Aayu looks snug. Liam's cheeks are red, and Tim's hair is beaded with sweat. The little ones run into Colin's arms.

“Here,” I say, reaching for Tim's coat. “Take this off for now.” I pull his arms through the oversized holes, inhaling the sugary sweetness that clings to him like a disease. It
is
a disease, of course. A dangerous one. I lay the coat at his feet.

“How do you feel?” I ask.

“Okay.”

“Drinking water?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Good.”

“I have to go to the bathroom a lot.”

“I know. That's okay. Don't try to hold it.”

He dips his chin to his chest, shamed by this small theft of dignity.

“I'm sorry I lost my needles,” he says. “My mom told me never to do that.”

“It's okay, sweetie.”

Sweetie.
My own mother used to call me that; then I grew up.
I want you to grow up, Tim. I want you to have it all.
I rub his hands until the skin goes pink again. His skin is on fire—wet, slick, feverish. I wish it were me instead of him.

As Colin distracts the other boys, I slip a hand under their hats, feeling their foreheads to get a sense of body temperature. It's an imprecise test, one my father loathes, but the only thermometer we found was snapped in half.

Colin manipulates the holes in the ski mask so it's one big hole instead of three. He slips it over his head so his eyes, nose, and mouth are still visible. Liam laughs. “You look funny,” he says.

Colin makes a face. Aayu and Liam giggle.

“Okay, time for dinner,” I say. As before, Colin and I distribute snacks and cups of melted snow.

Liam frowns. “Do you have milk?” he asks.

“No, Liam. I'm sorry.”

He nods, seems to accept this. Colin makes sure Aayu gets enough food, while Liam eats like a champ. Tim gives his pile away.

“I'm not hungry,” he says, so I pour him more water instead.

As the other boys devour their meager meals, Colin reaches over their heads and touches my shoulder. He doesn't say anything but instead just leaves his hand there, a steady, calming presence. A gesture of solidarity, an acknowledgment of all we've been through. We've lost so much: the plane, those people. So many people. And yet here we are, fighting for another day, another hour.

Unconsciously, I find myself leaning into Colin's touch. Liam and Aayu crawl into Colin's lap, and Tim nestles into mine, and with a repositioning that feels insignificant and huge all at once, our bodies are touching like they were right before we crashed.

Colin is so
warm
. Even through all the layers of shirts and coats, a furious heat rolls off him in waves. It isn't malignant or worrisome—not like the fever Tim has. No, it's simpler than that. It's
life.
Raw, resilient. Pulsing in his blood like a flame.

“I'm not strong like you,” I whisper.

His thumb traces the curve of my jaw, his touch softening with each pass. “You're stronger,” he says.

I try to look away, but the intensity of his gaze holds me there.

“I'm terrified.”

His fingers linger on the span of my neck. “Why do you think I held your hand when we went down?”

“Because I was on the verge of a breakdown.”

“No. Because
I
was on the verge of a breakdown.”

Without the penlight, it's impossible to see if his eyes reflect the same desperate vulnerability that colors his voice. It makes me ache, for some reason. Makes me want to know him better, to know
all
of him—who he is, who he wants to be. A thousand thoughts pinwheel through my mind, but one in particular overshadows them all:
I'm glad it was you.

He lets his hand fall, but my skin still smolders with his touch.

“You built us a strong shelter,” I tell him.

“Well, it's not pretty, but it'll do.”

“Build a lot of teepees as a kid?”

He smiles. “My dad used to take me to all kinds of construction sites.”

“Oh. Right. Your dad's a roofer.” It wasn't meant to sound patronizing, but despite the best of intentions, it does. “I mean, I've always admired people who build things.”

“He loves his work. On clear days, he says it's like being on top of the world.” He seems to ponder something. “What do your folks do?”

“My dad's a doctor, and my mom's a tax attorney—or something like that. I once asked her to explain it to me and literally dozed off as she was talking.”

He laughs at this. For a moment, I think he might volunteer something about his own mother, but he doesn't.

“They're good parents,” I say. “I'm lucky.”

“I'm sure they feel the same.”

My belly warms with the compliment. I
am
lucky. I
was
lucky. My dad never treated me like his dainty daughter; he raised me to be strong and capable. My mom balanced his no-nonsense mentality with gentle words and constant reassurances. They established a path for me, but it was always mine to take. And it brought me here, to a mountainside in the middle of nowhere, with nothing but my wits and Colin Shea to sustain me.

“Do you ever cry?” I ask him.

He shifts his weight but keeps his left arm wrapped around my shoulders. I hope he keeps it there, even though he's probably losing circulation to his fingers. “Sometimes,” he says.

“I only ask because . . . I dunno, this feels like the perfect time.”

He looks at the boys as they scramble for real estate in his arms. Aayu wears multiple layers of T-shirts, undershirts, onesies, sweatshirts, and on top a pink parka. Liam was reluctant to give it up at first, but he's developed an unlikely little friendship with Aayu. He looks like a little grape in his purple coat, purple hood, purple pants. Even his boots are purple. And Tim . . . Tim looks just like Colin. Same colors, same black pants and green jacket—even a hat with a single, mangled hole, which he poked his face through.