Page 100 of Everything All at Once

We dove.

Or he dove. Fairly gracefully too. I kind of belly flopped.

And we were under.

It was hard to keep hold of his hand.

The surface light only reached ten feet or so, and then he clicked on the flashlight.

I could tell the beam was strong, but even so it distilled in the water. I could only see a few feet in front of me.

The water chilled noticeably the farther down wekicked. I followed Sam’s lead, squeezing his hand hard, kicking harder.

Down and down and down.

I needed to breathe.

What if my aunt had been wrong about him? What if Sam was actually a sociopath (an eternal sociopath) who’d felt shunned by her all those years ago and had come back now to take his revenge on me? What if he was like one of those clam divers who could hold their breath for twenty minutes? What if he was going to drag me to the ocean floor only to hold me down until I drowned?

I didn’t want to drown.

Drowning was on my list of deaths I most didn’t want. It was up there with being burned alive. It was up there with being drawn and quartered. It was up there with being covered in honey and left for fire ants.

My list was very specific.

We kept swimming.

I needed air now. My head was getting fuzzy, and my lungs were burning. Without meaning to, I slowed down. Sam swung the flashlight at his face so I could see him. He pointed frantically:almost there.

Then he swung the flashlight back down, and I followed its beam to see probably the scariest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.

The mouth of an underwater cave.

But I didn’t have a choice.

I needed air, and at this point I didn’t think I’d be able to make it to the surface. I’d either drown down here or find air in that cave.

Letting go of his hand, I pushed again, propelling myself through the water with a speed and urgency I didn’t know I had.

I wondered how long it would take them to find my body.

I wondered if Sam would cover my tracks, make it look like I’d never even been to Enders Island.

I wondered if my family would miss me or if they were maybe all mourned out.

And then I was through the cave.

And the short tunnel led up, up...

And air.

I pulled myself up on a rocky ledge, gasping like crazy, filling my lungs again and again with musty air that tasted sour and still and thin.

Sam followed just after me, breathing heavily but nowhere near as short on air as I was. He set the flashlight on the ledge next to me and pulled himself up to a sitting position.

“Made it,” he said.

“Yeah, I’m just not sure about the return trip.”