Page 43 of The Dead of Summer

I’m floating far below the surface now.

Above, light cascades through rippling waves. Below, a wide and infinite dark.

Bash? Elisa? I try to call my friends, but there’s no answer. I sink lower. I am aware that I have fallen into myself, but the illusion of the water around me does not alarm me. I can finally breathe. Still, even though I can’t quite recall why, I am scared.

Mom?

Now I do hear something. An answer, maybe. It sounds like singing, and even though it’s far above me, it reaches right through the crystal-clear water and catches me by the ears.

“Twenty-five years and my life is still

Tryin’ to get up that great big hill of hope

For a destination.”

I know this song. I heard it just a little while ago.

I picture Gracie singing it, at her piano in Singing House, surrounded by candlelit faces.

The memory echoes with the angry way I yelled at her.

This is what she sang with her friends after I stormed off.

It hurts to hear the pain I put into my mother’s voice, but I make myself listen.

“And I realized quickly when I knew I should

That the world was made up of this brotherhood of man.”

Her voice is no longer alone. I can hear Bash now, too. And a whole crowd behind him. They are trying to pull me back, pull me up, toward the surface. Am I strong enough to face the world above? Or do I let the darkness below finally take me away?

I turn toward the gloom below as it ripples apart, revealing the most stunning reef I have ever seen.

It’s dazzling, and huge, and terribly complex.

I sink past towers of coral as tall as skyscrapers and jellyfish the size of cars.

Alien fish flutter around my arms, nipping at me playfully.

Are they real? Their tiny bites tickle even as the water turns rosy.

Hello , I think as I face the radiant abyss.

The reef sings back. At first it just sounds like static simmering in the water around me, but gradually I realize I understand it. It’s like Gracie described. A song. It nearly drowns away the voices calling to me from the surface, but they sing louder.

“And I say, hey hey hey hey

I said hey, what’s going on?”

For a moment, the two songs compete. One below, one above.

The one above is a mess, though. I mean, they’re practically shouting!

But I get it. It’s a good chorus, the kind that needs to be shouted at full volume, in a car, on a sun-soaked back road, on the way home from the beach.

The best summer ever. Or hammered out on a piano warped by salt air as your mom hugs against you.

The best summer ever. Or hummed on a back porch in the middle of the night, as you look up at the stars and wait for a new day to rescue you from all the indignities of yesterday.

The best summer ever is yet to come.

I turn back to the voices calling me to shore. I understand my island better now, even as I sink into the reef shining beneath it. Everything finally feels clear.

My mother was right. It is beautiful , I think.

Then what’s left of my mind scatters into a million mouths of light.