Vicious Deep (4 page)

Dad slaps the waiter on the arm like they're buddies and says, “Mike, no more pictures. You understand.”

“No problem, my man.” Mike puts away his phone, and they return to the kitchen.

“I really hope that's the last time that happens,” I say, laughing despite myself.

“At least you got kissed by an Italian guy,” Layla says. “How many guys do you know who have that street cred?”

“What about that time you and Angelo—” Maddy starts, but I cut her off.

“Whoa, hey. So anything else I need to know? As in, I don't have to go to class for the rest of the month?”

“You really
must've
hit your head on something,” Dad says.

“Great. Good, I'm glad we're laughing at my tragedy so soon.” More garlic knots. It's not like I'll be kissing anyone later, I think.

“Listen, you kids can hang out at the house, stay up all night.” Mom fidgets with her necklace. “Just don't touch my strawberry ice cream.”

“Oh, actually, I have to go home, if that's okay,” Maddy whispers. For a second I forgot she was there. “Do you care if I bring some friends to your party?” She looks at me with her big blue eyes and sort of reminds me of a lost kitten.

“What friends?”

She scoffs. “I have friends.”

“I didn't mean it like that.”

“Yes, you did. You just don't know it.”

“How can I do something without knowing it?”

She stands up from the table, her chair sliding back and falling with a thud. “You do everything without
knowing
, don't you?” She looks at my mom, her lips trembling, and I know she's going to cry and everyone is going to blame it on me. “I'm sorry,” she says, looking down at her feet because she can't seem to look at my parents. “Thank you for the pizza.”

“
Maddy
,” Layla and I call after her. But she's already out the jingling door.

Dad picks up the chair and sets it straight. “Am I to understand that you two are no longer
going
out
?” He says
going
out
in quotation marks.

“No, we're not
going
out
anymore.”

My parents trade sly glances.

“What?”

They shrug together, but they don't answer. They look at Layla, who makes a zipper motion over her lips.

“If we'd known, we wouldn't have invited her to the hospital. Poor girl.” Mom folds a napkin into an accordion.

“By we, your mom means
she
,” Dad says in a whisper that's meant to be heard.

“Yeah, well, I was kind of lost at sea.” I sit back and leave the piece of crust I was nibbling on alone.

Outside, the thunder breaks through the darkening sky. It starts to rain. I really do hope Maddy gets home safely. She only lives a few blocks away. I picture her answering my mom's call telling her I was alive. Maybe she was wishing I'd stay gone. I slump lower against my seat, feeling a little bit like the pieces of crust on my greasy plate.

No matter what they say on the news and in the papers, I'm not a hero. I didn't save the person I meant to save. I'm not even sure anyone was out there.

From the moment that wave crashed over me, I've felt different. I smell things differently. I hear differently. I know that there's something I can't remember. It's taking shape in my head, but it's like looking at a picture that's out of focus.

I throw the covers off and go to the living room. My mother has owned our apartment since before she met my dad. It is technically two apartments now with a few walls broken down to make one huge place. Two bathrooms, my room, my parents' room, Dad's office, a dining room, and a living room with huge windows looking out to the Coney Island shore. The walls are gray blue with white trim, except for the kitchen, which is yellow.

I lie across the chocolate leather sofa, and when I can't find a soft spot, I lie on the giant, furry sheepskin rug. I remember being little when my mother bought this rug. I thought she'd gone out hunting and killed the abominable snowman. I used to stretch out reading a book, picking out tortilla chips and popcorn from the hairs before my mother noticed.

I push myself up and stand in front of our entertainment center, which my dad built from pieces of an ancient shipwreck. We call it the public library because books cover the whole wall, from floor to ceiling. I run a finger along their spines, leather-bound books older than this apartment building and slick new paperbacks.

I feel like I'm looking for something but I don't know what. I shut my eyes and stop at a black leather-bound book with a worn spine.
Fairy
Tales
and
Other
Stories
by Hans Christian Andersen. We have everything he ever wrote and everything everyone has written about him. Mom's always wanted me to read fairy tales. Sometimes I'd tell her she and Dad should've tried for a daughter, and then I realized I was telling my parents to keep having sex. That's why I think she loves Layla so much. She's like the daughter Mom probably wanted me to be. Even though I never want to think of Layla as my sister, I never want her to go away either.

I flip through the black leather-bound book and notice something I never have before. It's signed. It says, “Maia, ever drifting, drifting, drifting.” Followed by a signature scrawl I can't quite make out.

I shut the book and put it back in place.

My head is throbbing. A steady dull pulse at my temples. I drink a cup of water and take it back into Dad's study, where electronic parts go to die. I step on a little silver rectangle with green wires sticking out and bite my tongue to keep from yelling out. Dad likes taking things apart to see how they work, and then he tries to put them back together.
Tries
.

The Apple desktop computer is on screen saver, a stream of pictures from our lives. Us on the Wonder Wheel, me eating a corn dog, Mom holding me on the beach, me and Layla at Six Flags, me holding my swimming trophies, my elementary-school graduation, Mom jumping in the air at the park.

It's like all these things happened to a different guy in a different life.

I wonder if something happened to me in the water. I trace the cuts on my neck, which are already scabbing over.
What happened to me?
I can keep asking myself that, but I might as well be asking the ocean itself. And maybe I have to snap out of it, because I might never know.

I give the mouse a little shake, and the pictures go away. I click on the Internet icon and type “near-death body changes” into Google. It's all a bunch of white lights and tunnels, angels and the voice of God, and waking up with the ability to get radio signals in your brain.

I don't have that. At least I
hope
I don't start getting radio signals in my head. Then again, that might make sitting through class more entertaining. But what if I only ever get one station?

My headache gets worse. The computer screen bothers my eyes. I finish my glass of water and go back to bed. My room spins around me like after riding roller coasters all day and then trying to lie down. I pull my covers tightly around me. I'm so tired, but I'm afraid to close my eyes.

The minute I do, I'm back in that water.

The first thing they tell you is not to panic.

Don't panic. Don't panic. Don't panic.

I wasn't panicking when my gut told me to ignore how the clouds turned from white to black, how the waves got higher with each crash, the fleeing screams around me. I didn't panic, and I dove into the middle of the water to save her.

But every time I surface, she isn't there, and I keep getting farther from land. I'm pulled under with so much pressure I can barely move my arms and legs. The one gulp before I'm truly under escapes in tiny bubbles. The suction of the undulating waves tosses me like a bit of driftwood. I can't tell which way is up or down, but as the water stills, I swim to where it lightens. The moon makes a streak of weak light through the water, like my personal lighthouse beam leading me home.

Something ice-cold touches my spine. When I turn around, nothing is there. There's a trail of foam in its place, and I pray to every god that has ever or will ever exist that it's not a shark.

In the lighter water, blood clouds around me. I don't think anything bit me, but my throat and ribs burn like nothing I've ever felt before, like the skin there is burned to a crisp. My feet ache the way they do when I run barefoot on hot sand for too long. The still water churns faster and faster and faster, and I don't know what to worry about first—the cuts on my neck, the burning in my muscles, or the whirlpool that's starting with me at its center.

When I try to kick, I keep sinking. The whirlpool pulls me farther and farther away from the surface. I can't see the bottom, just pitch-black and more pitch-black. The pressure around me feels as though my bones will turn to foam. I scream because that's what my mind tells me to do. A muffled sound and some bubbles is all I get, even though I know if I were on land, all of New York would be able to hear me.

Then, as fast as the whirlpool started, it stops spinning. The current changes to a gentle bob, and I swear—I swear on every trophy I've ever won—that the water is taking me somewhere.

I float over a cluster of giant black rocks that seem to be the beginning of an even bigger precipice. Bits of light start blooming. They're pinpricks around the rock at first, then blooms of seaweed that glow like the buzzing neon sign of a bodega. Starfish with beads of glowing lights. Fish in colors that live in between other colors. A long red fish with the longest golden fins spins around my head. It presses its face against my cheek.

Somewhere in the distance there's a deep wail—an angry guttural sound that echoes on the rocks until it becomes the tail end of a sigh. The fish scatter, and everything stops glowing.

I'm alone again.

I fight the numbness in my legs and use all my strength to push myself up. I've spent every day of my life swimming, but doing laps around a pool is different from pushing yourself up to the surface when you're in the middle of the ocean. The pressure down here is like a vise grip around my limbs, but I swim, harder than I ever thought I could, until the water looks lighter and I can see my hand in front of my face again.

A white shape comes into focus in the distance. The echo is back. This time it's a song-cry, a lullaby that feels like it's slithering into my heart and finding pieces to break. I let it calm me, pull me back down. I stop fighting to get to the surface and think about my mom and her shining red hair, her sad turquoise eyes when they find me. She always told me I was born to swim, but I don't think this is what she meant. I think of my dad fixing computers alone in his office. I think of Layla, despite myself, and wish I'd chosen her every time.

The song-cry is closer still. My leg muscles get that familiar twinge when I'm in the water too long, like muscle bending the wrong way. My eyes are getting blurry. I keep stroking, but there isn't any strength behind it. I'm sinking, and there's a shark coming at me. Its nose points upward, like it's always smelling. The unmistakable rows of jagged teeth, the red gums that always look bloody.

This guy has chains, like he just busted out of shark prison and he's happy to see me. He speeds up, fin flicking whippet fast. I push myself backward, as if that's going to do any good. I hit something cold, a wall. Something grabs me. The singing is right at my ear. I try to pull myself out of the grip. They're hands. Cold, slender hands with nails like crushed glass.

It still sings, whatever it is. No words, just a sad wail, the low notes of a violin being plucked with a tire iron. It's the only thing I want to listen to. I want to wrap myself in those notes and sleep forever. A hand moves from my chest to my neck. I've stopped struggling. I want to close my eyes. The shark charges at me like a silver bullet.

I shut my eyes and wait for the bite that never comes.

The nails cut into my chest as the arms let go. The shark flips around, magnificent, and slaps the creature with his great white fin. It pushes back a few yards, but it doesn't stop. It wails, screeches into the expanse of sea, stretching out so I can finally see her true form. I can see
her
. From head to fins. A mass of silvery-white hair spreads out around her face, so pale she's almost see-through. Her eyes radiate in the water, white as lightning with needle pinpricks in the center.

Her cheekbones are sharp and slope down to full blue lips that smirk at me. She's long and slender, so skinny her bones look like they're trying to poke out of her skin. Her breasts are covered with slick silver scales that fade out at the slopes of her waist and bloom out to form her tail. There's an impression of legs, like they're under there right up to the kneecaps and disappear down to long silvery fins.

She swims in circles, a figure eight, her silver silhouette like a flash of light dancing in the water. Like she's dancing for me. She stops inches away from me with that smirk still on her lips, telling me she knows everything I don't. She grabs my wrists softly, like she's going to pull me to her and kiss me. And I want her to. I've never wanted anything this badly before.

The silver mermaid smiles, and when she smiles there is nothing more terrifying than the rows of her razor-sharp teeth.