Girl Underwater (4 page)

“Here okay?” Colin stops and looks up. The brush is tangled and thick, overgrown with moss and spidery vines. The trees beyond it seem to stretch toward an infinite sky. If it rains—or, worse, snows—we might at least avoid the brunt of the storm.

We assemble a few fallen branches and leaves and huddle together. The bark of these towering pines is roughly calloused, but the naturalness of it makes me feel better for some reason. Like it's us against the world, and these trees are our allies.

“I thought it would be colder,” I say.

He tosses a few pine needles, gauging the wind. “Strange for this time of year here.”

“Where?”

He looks down at his fingernails, caked with grit. His silence says it all: He doesn't want to tell me.

“What time did we crash?”

“A little after one
A.M.
, Pacific time.”

“So we're in the Rockies somewhere.”

His answer comes after some hesitation. “Most likely.”

I wrap my arms around my torso and rub my shoulders hard enough to bruise the skin. It's going to get colder. Snowier.

Worse.

Our clothes are soaked. No wind right now, but that could change. The boys may not survive a frigid night in an alpine wilderness. I start to suggest moving into the woods for shelter, but one glance in that direction makes me uneasy.

“We should build a fire,” I say.

“A fire?” Colin looks skeptical. “With what?”

“Aspen.” I clear my throat to summon some authority. “Rope, if we can find some. Shoelaces might work.”

“Have you done this before?”

Yes
, I'm embarrassed to admit. My father didn't take us camping for fun. He took us camping—and hiking, and climbing, and rafting—“to learn something.”

I nod.

“Wow,” he says.

“It's not easy,” I rush on. “Not like they do it in the movies.”

“It never is,” he says teasingly.

“We need something sharp, though. A knife would be ideal.”

“I'm guessing you didn't carry any contraband onto the flight?”

“Nope.”

“I have something,” the oldest boy says. He unfolds his fingers to reveal a sliver of his shattered iPad. “It's sharp.”

I don't want to take it from him—
Hasn't he lost enough?
—but he forces the shard of plastic into my hands.

“This is perfect,” I say, and he grins.

The forest is a haven for aspens, so finding a suitable spindle isn't a problem. The baseboard looks good, and thanks to dry weather, the kindling should work. No rope, but the boys are quick to surrender their shoelaces, and I use them to make a bow.

Colin and the boys look on, fascinated.
If this fails . . .

I try not to think about the consequences of failure. This will work. It
has
to work.

When I did this with my father, my brothers and I had a knife. We had daylight. And if we failed, if the fire didn't start, we got a lecture and then tried again. If we failed again, then someone whipped out a match and that was that.

In this case, our knife is a piece of plastic, and it doesn't take kindly to molding wood. Even after multiple attempts to sharpen the drill, it barely fits into the baseboard. It's a cumbersome task, even with the bow, which makes it easier to spin the drill. I force it back and forth, back and forth, thinking,
Friction, friction, friction,
as if the thought itself will ignite a spark.

Sweat pours off my nose onto the wood, which makes matters worse. The younger boys are whimpering. The older boy's excitement has faded to a palpable anxiety.

“Here,” Colin says, and puts his hands over mine. He doesn't take the bow away from me; he doesn't concede failure. He works
with
me, like a teammate on a relay, one relying on the other to win the race. If one gives up, or false starts, the whole effort is lost.

“Fire!” the boy in the baseball jersey squeals.

Fire.
A delicate orange flame, fragile as a dream. I coax it to life with deep, desperate breaths, feeding the flame with the oxygen in my lungs.

It catches. Thrives. The possibility of seeing daylight becomes reality.

Daylight.
Search planes.
Hope.

“Nice work,” Colin says, even though he generated the friction necessary to get the fire going. His arms are sheer muscle, strong and lean and perfectly coordinated. He worked that bow with the same talent he swims the butterfly.

“Thanks,” I say. As the boys drift to sleep around the fire, the silence turns awkward. “You think they'll be okay for tonight?”

Colin nods. “They'll be okay.”

“And her?” I glance at the pregnant woman, whose long brown hair has dried into tight curls. I don't look at her for very long.

He doesn't answer.

For a while, neither of us speaks. I have the sudden impulse to make conversation,
any
conversation. An hour ago, I was listening to sampler techno music to avoid unnecessary chatter with this guy. How things have changed.

“So,” I say, “you were going home to Boston for the holiday?”

“Dorchester, actually. That's where I'm from.”

It's the first time he's ever specified his hometown, which feels intensely personal for some reason. Or maybe he saw me staring at his book, and he knows his secret is out.

“Anyway, I didn't get there last year because the flight's so expensive, but this year . . .” He looks up. “I dunno. This year isn't last year, I guess.”

His vagueness doesn't surprise me. Colin blew off a major meet two weeks ago, putting our entire season in jeopardy. I decide to let this go.

“I'm sorry that you have to miss Thanksgiving,” I say.

He smiles softly. “You, too.”

“Is it just you and your immediate family? Or do you have a big dinner?”

“
Big
dinner,” he says. “Aunts, uncles, cousins. The black sheep kind of outnumber the other ones, but it's still a good time.”

I can't help but smile. “Sounds fun.”

“It is fun. I miss them.”

“It must be hard going to school across the country.”

He holds my gaze for a long moment. “I'm sure it is for everyone.”

“Yeah.” I think about my dad standing at baggage claim, waiting in a huge, tired throng of people. He works insane hours, but he's never missed an opportunity to pick me up at the airport. In a family as busy and dispersed as mine, the car ride home is often our only time to talk.

“How about you?” he asks. “Brookline, right?” The fact that he has to ask reinforces how little we've actually spoken despite spending so much time together.

“Born and raised,” I say.

“It's nice there.”

Nice
meaning ritzy. And it is, in a lot of ways: old, stately homes, manicured lawns. A few blocks from the Harvard hospitals, a short train ride to downtown Boston. Aside from the hardened folk who park on the street overnight (which is strictly prohibited), Brookline doesn't have a whole lot of urban crime.

As for Dorchester, I've only been there for pit stops on our way back from the Cape. My impression is that it's a proud neighborhood with a lot of history. The bars are mostly Irish, dark, and crowded. People speak with thick accents, and they're damn proud of it. I know Colin would laugh if he heard my quick-and-dirty summation, but every Boston neighborhood has a certain reputation. Brookline has one, too—rich, snobby, and boring. Sure, part of this is true, but it's also homey, quiet, and beautiful. I love the regal homes, the windy paths and roads that lead, seemingly, to nowhere. Biking is hell, but walking has its charms.

“Dorchester's nice, too,” I say.

He laughs. “So says the Brooklinian.”

My cheeks flush. “I mean it.”

“Dorchester's home,” he says. “Good people. Strong community. I was sorry to leave it.”

“I suppose I should have guessed from your accent.”

“It's faded a bit since I moved cross-country. A few days at home'll change that.”

He doesn't say what he must be thinking:
Not a hint of Boston in your voice.
Which is true. I spent the first two weeks of school beating it out of my vocal cords. Colin has no such self-image issues, which is strange, to say the least. He doesn't go to many parties; he resists the tide of popularity. I wonder why that is.

“You should sleep,” he says. “We've got about five hours till dawn.”

“I'm fine,” I say, feeling my eyelids droop. “Not tired at all . . .”

He laughs, and it's so easy, so natural, it almost makes me forget where we are.

Almost.

When sleep finally finds me, what follows is a restless, fitful slumber. My dreams bring me back to the plane—to the screams and fires and an ocean of night—and when I wake, it feels as though a piece of me has slipped away.

I
come to in the tattooed arms of a nurse named Burt. He lays me down in the pediatric ER's only open bed, its machines and gadgets all primed and ready to go. Burt is hooking up an EKG when my father takes him aside.

They share some words. Dad talks with his usual forceful brevity, while Burt nods along in gruff agreement. My mother stands on the periphery of their domain, wearing distress on her face like a second skin.

Another doctor comes into the room and joins the conversation. Meanwhile, I'm lying on a miniature hospital bed, staring at the ceiling while they decide what to do with me.

It's my father who ends the discussion and joins me at the bedside. His voice is one note past concerned but not quite grave. “How are you feeling?”

“Fine.”

“Fine?”

“I had a moment.”

“You syncopized.”

I shrug. “A fancy word for ‘a moment.'”

“Has this kind of thing happened before?” the other doctor asks. He wears sleek scrubs and Vibrams, which give him the appearance of going into battle—an unusual getup for a pediatrician, and all the more reason for me to run in the opposite direction.

“Many times,” I say. “Giving blood. Getting shots. Standing too long in the sun.” I glance at my mom and force a smile. “I get it from her.”

“You collapsed, Avery,” Mom says, sneaking a Kleenex back into her pocket. “It was awful.”

“I'm okay.” I grab her hand before she can reach for another tissue. “Really.”

The militaristic doctor frowns, but Dad seems satisfied. He lets Burt do the EKG, and they run a few more tests. Pediatrics is starting to feel like death row before they finally let me go.

Burt insists on a wheelchair, and for once, Dad gives in. As Burt wheels me out, I try to remember those final moments at the reception desk. Did that woman even see the envelopes? Or were they forgotten as soon as my knees hit the floor?

“Dad . . .”

He puts his hand on my shoulder. “Don't worry about it.”

“But—”

“I took care of it.”

I'm not sure what he means, but I don't ask. It's time to go home.

My second discharge of the day occurs without further incident, until a nurse announces the bad news that they lost my clothes. My mother, always prepared for the worst, runs out to the car and returns with the small bag of belongings I left behind at the other hospital. The inventory isn't much: just a gray XXL long-sleeve shirt and black sweatpants, which I must have been wearing the day we were rescued. Both things used to belong to someone else, someone who's dead now. I don't want to take them with me. I don't want to see anything that reminds me of Colorado ever again.

We go out the back, bypassing the news trucks and obsessed reporters that must have followed me from the other hospital. The fans, though, are inescapable. When someone with an IV drip asks me for an autograph, I can't exactly say no. It's a small price to pay for survival.

•

Planes are out of the question, so we drive the 1,968 miles back to Brookline in a rented Chevy Impala. I tell my parents I'm not ready to confront the rest of sophomore year, or the swim team, or California until next semester. This is only part of the truth. The other part—a huge part—is that I'm not ready to face my boyfriend.

Lee called the hospital the day we were rescued, but I don't remember much about that day except the steady whir of the helicopter blades. He called the next day, too, and Mom answered and told him I was still too weak to talk to anyone. On the third day, he called four more times, polite as ever but refusing to take no for an answer.

At that point, he decided to fly to Denver. Lee had seen the headlines. He had as many questions as anyone—more, actually. He wanted to make sure I was okay, but he also wanted to know what had happened out there. The media hadn't reported many details thanks to my standoff.

He was on his way to the airport when I finally called him. His flight from San Francisco to Denver was already boarding. He had to go; his mind was made up.

I don't know if it was the psychiatric mumbo jumbo or the (faked) heaving sobs, but somehow I talked him out of it. Lee is a classic “tough guy”—he's thrown up more than once after a hard workout, he measures progress in terms of pain, and he can drink more beer than all the freshmen put together. But that day, with me, maybe for the first time in his life, he just lost it. I could picture him wandering through the airport on his way to an empty seat at an empty gate, searching for a corner of privacy. Or maybe he didn't care. Maybe he cried right there in line, in front of everyone, not really giving a shit because his girlfriend had almost died. Should have died. For days, he thought I
was
dead.

I needed to hear it, but it didn't go down easily. Lee's experience was too much to process on top of my own. I needed days. Weeks, maybe. I suggested he fly out to Boston for New Year's. Maybe by then, I'd be in a better place to talk through everything.

He agreed to this only because he had to, although that hasn't stopped him from calling. We talk three times a day about stupid, meaningless things. Tracy Callahan broke her foot attempting a backflip off the starting blocks. Tom Roche partied a little too hard before the UCLA meet and threw up on his second lap of the 100 breaststroke (he finished the race with a personal record). McKellan screwed everyone over with a ridiculously hard chem final, but Lee passed thanks to a generous curve (probably set by the water polo team, in Lee's opinion). At first, our conversations felt awkward and stilted. Over time, they've become easy, routine. I tell him about my dad and the “acclimatization exercises” he imposes on me. About the books I'm reading thanks to a generous outpouring from elderly aunts. About the Christmas lights in Coolidge Corner, which shimmer when it snows.

But there are certain things we never talk about: The media. Newspapers. Ski trips. Natural disasters.

Plane crashes.

He doesn't talk about Colin or Phil, not even in vague terms. Like a seasoned pro, Lee steers the conversation away from the past in general. We talk, instead, about the future: My return to school. The team. The way it will feel to swim again, surrounded by the familiar sights and sounds of Naudler Natatorium, bathed in the white wash of the overhead lights. We talk about the season: the races we want to swim, the goals we hope to achieve. We focus on what's to come.

It's easier that way.

•

As the holiday season makes its final push, the comforts of home start to ebb. Arrangements are made. Dinner preparations finalized. Family and friends swing by like it's the most natural, polite thing in the world to do so. I dodge them all.

The day before Christmas Eve, when Lee calls, I'm hiding in my room, my bare legs folded in front of me—Indian style, the way Tim always liked to sit. I can't remember sitting like this since elementary school, but lately, it feels comfortable.

“Hey,” he says, in his slow Hawaiian drawl. People tell me Hawaiians don't have accents, but Lee does. I can hear it in the tempo of his sentences; the subtle blending of one word into the next, like a collective sigh. His first name, in the rare instances he uses it, sounds like poetry.
Kahale.

“Hey.” I crawl onto my stomach, propping myself up on my elbows. “How's life?”

“Great. Can't complain. Got my ass kicked in practice this morning.” He proceeds to tell me about the mindless agony of swimming eight thousand yards at the crack of dawn. This is something I can relate to, something that feels safe.

Then he pauses, and the easy cadence of his words disappears. “Hey, uh . . .” He swallows a lump in his throat. “So—”

I cut him off. “What is it, Lee?”

“Did you get that e-mail from Coach?”

E-mail?
My gaze drifts to the laptop on my desk and, beside it, a brand-new cell phone still in its box. They're like dams, bursting with information I have neither the desire nor strength to release. When Lee and I talk, it's on the landline preserved from my high school days. No Internet, no e-mail. Social media is a red zone.

“Um, no.”

“Look, I just—I didn't want you to be surprised by it, is all.”

“Surprised by what?”

He sits down on his bed, springs creaking over the line. “It's about Colin.” He inhales, long and slow. I'm not breathing at all. “Maybe you should read it.”

A flash of memory—blood, muscle, bone—flits across my mind. I blink hard, push it away. “What does it say?”

“Aves—”

“
What does it say?
”

The muffled chatter of the relatives infesting our house goes quiet. My shrieky voice has permeated the walls, poisoning the holiday air. A wayward sob escapes my throat.

“Aves . . .”

“I'll call you back,” I say.

“Wait,” he says; it sounds like a plea. “I'm coming out, okay? I booked my flight and everything.” He takes a breath. “I miss you so much.”

I know he does. I know because missing someone has become a part of me now.

Maybe all of me.

•

As the chatter downstairs resumes, the silence loses its fire. I lie on my bed and stare at the glow-in-the-dark stars that pepper the ceiling. In the daylight, they're a pale, putrid yellow, but when the sun goes down, they still twinkle. A two-dollar purchase that has withstood almost twenty years of dry winters and humid summers. How much does a commercial airliner cost? Two hundred million? And what about the part that broke? What's fair about
that
?

After hours of cycling these thoughts until my mind goes numb, I give up on sleep. The laptop sitting on my desk is an older model, my grade school “baby” that stayed behind when I moved to California. It wheezes as the opening screen comes on, like it's both excited and annoyed I've come to trouble it again.

The Internet is even slower than the processing system. The windows load in cumbersome sequence, and the hard drive is festering with viruses. When I got to college, my technical savvy multiplied by about a thousand; I bought what everyone else bought and installed when everyone else installed. I converted from IBM-ism to Apple worship. I ditched my BlackBerry and bought an iPhone. This was the price of fitting in, and I paid it willingly.

Finally, Internet Explorer flashes on-screen. I try to install Firefox and then Chrome, but both crash. It's thirty minutes before I'm even in my e-mail account.

801 new messages.

I archive five hundred of them in one fell swoop, careful to avoid anything from Coach Toll. It takes only a few seconds to find it, with its bleak subject heading and familiar list of recipients. It says, simply,
Update
.

My fingers tremble as they pass over the keys. I don't want to read it; I don't want to
know.
Anything. All those people. Crying. Screaming. Phil Markey's skull with its sunken look, blood draining from his left ear. Coach wouldn't mention those details in an e-mail, but
I
know them. I carry them with me. I'll carry them for the rest of my life.

I can't bear the thought of reading about Colin's fate. This is a fact of life, a simple acknowledgment of my physical and emotional limitations. For weeks, I wondered if time would change that, but it hasn't. Colin saved my life on that plane.

And for what?
Why?
So he could suffer in an intensive care unit for weeks afterward? I stopped asking the staff for updates after hearing the words “critical condition” for the twentieth time. I worried that one day, “critical” wouldn't suddenly be “stable,” or “fair,” or “good,” as I'd hoped—but “gone.”
Had that day finally come?

I close the laptop and sit in darkness for a long time. In addition to the antique computer, my desk is cluttered with remnants of high school: handwritten notes, chewed-up pencils, a jar of change. A stack of envelopes crowds the far corner, as if banished there by some subtle force.

There are fifteen of them, all sealed. All addressed to Avery Delacorte, but with different return addresses. Newton. Watertown. Lexington. All Boston suburbs, all within easy driving distance. I open the one dated three weeks ago.

The spelling is horrendous, but someone has made the necessary corrections in a neat, tiny print. The writing itself evokes a strong sense of character that comes through in the straight lines and looping vowels. I know immediately who this letter is from.

Dear Avery,

I got your ledder (letter). I love (loved) it. You shud (should) come to dinner at my house. Granddad liks (likes) you a lot.

Love, Tim

I read the others. Some are written in Tim's hand, but others provide colorful anecdotes of the boys' lives.

One letter.
I sent
one
letter to each boy, none more than three pathetic lines long. There were no personal details—no details at all, really. Just condolences and apologies and a vague sense of regret. In the aftermath of so much trauma and sickness and loss, I figured they would never remember me. The doctors assured me they probably wouldn't.

In return, their grandparents and aunts and other relatives sent me pages upon pages of updates. Their words yearned for a connection I couldn't give them. If Colin were able, he would have confronted me by now. He would have demanded,
Why?

With this thought, I open the laptop.

Dear Team,

As you all know by now, our small community suffered a terrible loss when Flight 149 crashed over the Colorado Rockies. We lost an incredible person and a great swimmer in Phil Markey, who perished in the tragedy. He was a real asset to this team and will be sorely missed.

Avery Delacorte is recuperating in Brookline. She informed me via her father that she will likely return to the team in January. We all look forward to her return.