and then at the Municipool in Mary Grove, Ohio.
Underwater, there is no more bottom, no more floor. I open my eyes and imagine what it would be like to live here, in the sea. I swim, and it feels good to move like this. The waves grow choppier, but I keep going. When I get tired, I float on my back, letting the current carry me. Part of me is terrified and part of me is thrilled and part of me doesn’t care at all. I pretend I’m dead and let my body go limp. The water holds me up, and this is always surprising because I feel so heavy, I should sink like a stone.
I tread water, looking all around me, and there is nothing but open ocean.
Which is why I open my mouth and scream. I scream and yell and shout, throwing everything I can—everything I’ve been holding in since that day my dad came into my room, every bit of the anger and fury I’m feeling at both my parents—at the ocean and the sky. I hurl words and sound as far as I can, until they disappear into all that blue.
A wave hits me in the face like a slap. I sputter, snorting in water, snorting it out, and when I catch my breath again, I am quiet. I float on my stomach and open my eyes, staring downward into nothing because it is too deep and dark. My body drifts. I am being tossed back and forth like a ball.
I come up for air, and the current is strong here and the island seems far away. How did it get so far away? I picture myself drifting over the waves, all the way to Africa, where I will wash up on shore and begin again. New name. New continent. Maybe my dad will worry. Maybe he’ll realize he made a mistake and that he actually does want a family.
I go facedown again and float.
I am thinking I should turn back soon because I’ve lost track of how long I’ve been out here. My stomach growls and I feel the hollow ache of hunger.
Suddenly, something grabs me around the middle, and my head jerks up and I am breathing and coughing because I’ve just inhaled half the ocean. My first thought is, Shark. But there are arms around me, carrying me through the water, and the arms are attached to a boy.
I manage to cough out, “Let me go.”
“No.”
“I don’t need saving. I grew up on the ocean.”
“I don’t care if you’re part dolphin.”
It’s the boy from the bar, the boy from our luggage, and now, I guess, he will also be the boy from the beach. I start pummeling him, and he just tightens his grip and drags me toward shore.
“I need you to chill the fuck out, Ariel.” He is gold from the sun. “You know this is the largest breeding ground for sharks on the East Coast.”
And all at once I’m thinking about my cousin Danny, Addy’s son, and the rip current, and I see how far out we are, and I don’t know anything about these particular waters here, off the coast of Georgia, or what lives in them. I don’t know the currents, and I don’t know anything. And what if something happened to me? My mom would be completely alone.
I put my arm around his neck and now I’m holding on, and there’s a tattoo there on his shoulder blade. A compass. Of course. So beautifully, stupidly, perfectly ironic. I’m facing him, my back to the island, and I’m watching all that ocean. I turn my head and there’s the island growing steadily closer and closer, but it’s still a long way away. I keep an eye out for fins.
In the time it takes us to reach the shallows, I think about how stupid I am, how I can’t afford to be reckless, even as part of me is picturing my dad’s face when he gets the call. Neil Henry? There’s been an accident. If only you hadn’t sent them away.
We’re close to shore when I let go and break away from him, and now I’m swimming harder and faster than I ever have. I am racing him because I suddenly have to get back to land and feel it underneath me, and because I won’t be outdone by a boy, and no man is going to save me, and he needs to see what he is