Page 1 of Into the Deep Blue

They say if you stand on the peak of Mt. Pissis and shout into the void, your echo will ring out for one minute. It’s not recordbreaking—to do that, you have to go to Burma—but it’s top five, I think.

Sometimes, I imagine myself standing there, thinking maybe if the words echo long enough, she’ll hear them. That I’ll cast some kind of spell over the valley and bring her back in a swirl of stardust. I mean, it happens in the movies, right? Like magic.

I like to think she survived the crash. That her eyes were open, and as she sat strapped in her seat with the roof of the plane ripped off, she looked up and locked eyes with some majestic creature like a monkey or a parrot. I don’t really know what they have in South America, but I hope her last moments were filled with a divine connection to something greater—that my mom died with a smile.

But let’s be real; I’m not on a mountain. I’m in my room, staring into the soulless pit of YouTube, and what I’m about to do feels so dirty that I get up and close my door.

In the search bar, I type South American Airlines flight 501. The page fills with videos. It doesn’t matter which one I choose—they’re all the same. I know because I’ve watched them all.

I randomly click on one in the middle and slide on my headphones. My finger hovers over the volume key, and I tap, tap, tap until it’s all the way up because I need to hear every gut-wrenching second of this. The image on my screen shakes. Brown hiking boots come into the frame, sliding down a dirt trail. A breathless voice say.

“Oh my god”

more times than I can count, and the camera pans up.

Plumes of smoke rise from a pocket of newly demolished trees in a dense jade-green jungle. The smoke grows thicker, blacker, as it gushes from the shell of a plane engulfed in a giant ball of fire. The plane explodes and the fire rages against a soundtrack of the hiker’s helpless breaths.

There’s nothing magical about it.

The clip stops, and so does my breath for so long that my lungs ache for air like I’m the one in the fire.

It’s dramatic shit. Prime time news special kind of stuff, except plane crashes are no longer considered important enough for a full hour of coverage unless they contain presidents, athletes, or A- through C-list celebrities. Moms are nowhere near that list even though they should be, because mine was really important to me.

The top comments under the video are news stations asking for permission to air the footage so the entire world can consume the spectacle. Cue the popcorn emojis. It hurts every time I watch, but I can’t help myself. I’m afraid if I stop, I’ll forget her.

It used to take about an hour before it would hit me—the reality behind the YouTube drama. Then, I’d close my laptop and cry. A few months ago, the crying stopped, and I’m not sure what that means.

“?”

Dad’s muffled voice calls out from behind my door.

At least he knocked.

“Uh, yeah, just a sec.”

I close YouTube and maximize the ever-present Spotify window so it fills the screen. My Dead Mom playlist is already cued up and with my headphones on this looks totally normal. “Come in,”

I say, swiveling my chair around.

He pushes open the door, but he doesn’t come in. He just leans against the frame and scans my room. This is always the extent of his commitment to our conversations—on the periphery looking in.

I slide my headphones down.

“What’s up?”

He draws in a breath like he’s an actor about to break into the defining monologue of his stage career.

“What the hell, ?”

What the hell could encompass any number of things concerning me, so I wait for more details. Why didn’t I show up for work last week? Did I drink the rest of his bourbon? Did I swipe twenty bucks from his wallet? I leave a decent trail of what the hell behind me, so I have no idea what he’s talking about.

“What’s up with the plane crashes?”

Oh. That. This is getting off easy. I play dumb.

“What do you mean?”

“They fill the search history for weeks on end! Brooklyn grilled me about it for an hour.”

So, it was his girlfriend who found them. Not Dad. That makes more sense. She must have been trying to bust him on porn and found my searches instead. All because I was too lazy to go upstairs for my laptop. But there couldn’t be weeks’ worth. I didn’t watch that many. I don’t think. And Brooklyn should stay the hell off our computer if she can’t handle the dark burning embers that fuel this family.

“I dunno. Wanted to see how it works, I guess.”

I mean, what the hell, Dad. Mom died in a plane crash. What’s up with the plane crashes, seems pretty obvious, but I’m not about to spell it out for him. It’s like we speak different languages.

Dad looks away. Now he’s thinking about plane crashes.

“It’s a little morbid. Maybe, give it a rest. Why don’t you search some . . . you know . . . God stuff or something?”

That’s it? This is all he has in the Dad-advice arsenal? I lean back in my chair and interlock my fingers behind my head the way he does. It’s his trademark I’m-not-listening pose.

“God stuff?”

“Or yoga or whatever the hell people search for to find peace. No more plane crashes.”

This is the part where I’m supposed to have a revelation about the error of my ways. “Okay.”

He nods, satisfied like he’s done some solid parenting—way to draw that line in the sand, Dad. “Okay,”

he says, then taps the door frame twice as if to say we’re done.

And while it might seem like he’s trying, what he’s really done is add another tally mark under the column labeled: Things that are ’s fault.

The time on my screensaver reads seven, and holy shit I’m so late. I promised Fiona I wouldn’t be, and now she’ll give me that squinty-eyed you’re late stare the second I walk in.

I close my laptop. He’ll find the password screen if he opens it, not that he will.

“Good talk, Dad. No more plane crashes.”

I say it with a grin, so he can tell how effective this chat was and clap him on the shoulder on my way out.

“Gotta run.”

“Remember, I’m in Sacramento for a few days,”

he calls out after me.

As I fly out the door, I try to recall the reason he gave me for this, but I wasn’t listening when he told me last week. It’s hard to feel anything but pure rage when he talks to me.

It’s kind of cold outside for June, so I pull on my hoodie before wheeling my bike from the side of the house and pedal down our never-ending driveway. It takes longer to bike out of this yard than it does to get into town. Okay, that’s not true, but I hate it—the interlocking brick, the bushes trimmed into perfect globes—nothing but the best for the home of Salem’s number one landscaper. Dad landscaped the shit out of our yard, which brings me to my theory that the more landscaped the yard, the worse the lives are inside. I’m ninety-nine percent positive about this.

Now that I’m outside, any urgency evaporates. It’s tough to be in a rush when you count on a bike to get you anywhere. It’s like being in slo-mo no matter how fast you go, but I actually like the ride into town. It feels good biking hands-free down our deserted side road, to pedal until my lungs burn. It helps to show up to a meeting exhausted. Somehow, it’s easier when you’re empty going in.

When I finally turn into the community center, the parking lot is quiet, which means I’m later than usual. I shove my bike into a rack out front, but don’t have a lock and wonder if tonight’s the night someone will steal it. It hasn’t happened yet. The universe is on my side with this one. Fi’s car is parked where it always is, under a streetlight one row back from the entrance, becaus.

“it’s the safest spot.”

Inside, the halls are empty. It’s the upside of coming late—no annoying people. I turn down the first hall and walk until I reach an army-green door with a tiny rectangular slot for a window. Places like these must have the same architects as prisons. Maybe there’s a one-stop shop: Architects available for prisons, community centers, and schools. Drop by today for our classic floor plans. Then they hire people like my dad to landscape the shit out of them.

A tattered paper that says Sharing After Death is taped to the window. It used to read S. A. D. Support Group, but random strangers kept interrupting in the winter, thinking it was for the seasonal affective disorder thing. Sorry folks, we are full-time fucked up here, so move along. Some kid drew a sad face on the sign with a tear falling from the tiny dots penciled in for eyes. I kind of love it, and I’m surprised that our counselor, Grace, hasn’t taken it down or at least tried to erase it.

My hand hovers over the handle. Before every meeting, I hope I’ll walk into an empty room and the world will feel a little lighter, but it never happens.

I open the door and instantly regret it. Someone inside is crying.