and scrambled back up to the surface.
Afterwards, he had to catch his breath for a whole minute. Waves lapped against the buoy. If he could touch the bottom, then he could definitely recover the vial.
Aaron dived again. Three more times. He scoured the seafloor with his flashlight, and the dive sticks lit up in its beam. All eight of them.
But he never found the vial.
It should have been easy, like finding a glow stick at night. The vial held bright red fluid—or was it buried in the sand? Aaron clung to the buoy and caught his breath for the sixth time, and a gust of wind made him shiver.
He simply had to find the vial.
On his next dive, he swept his flashlight around a larger radius. For a split-second, just inside the farthest dive stick, the sand glinted. He flicked the beam back to the spot but saw nothing.
Aaron swam through flakes of dead kelp and brushed his hand along the bottom. He had to check now or risk losing the spot.
His lungs heaved, pulling at nothing. He already should have surfaced. Aaron raked his fingers through the muck, which billowed up in his face. He watched it settle. Bits of silica, grains of iridescent shells. In the flashlight’s beam, it all glinted—he hadn’t seen a damn thing.
Furious, he shoved off the bottom, and his hand struck something invisible. Then he saw it, skittering across the seafloor. The outline of the vial.
But Aaron’s stiff fingers hardly obeyed him. The vial vanished against the sand. He lunged for it, but only knocked it farther away.
He needed air. The sea swarmed with black spots. His lungs convulsed, tore at his chest. Aaron squirmed after the vial, but his fingers lost their grip on the flashlight and it nosedived into the sand—and the vial tumbled into the shadows.
Aaron stared at the narrow cone of light, the particles as they swirled like snow in front of headlights. The vial was gone. He couldn’t hold the air in any longer, and bubbles exploded from his nose.
***
But light behaves differently underwater. The index of refraction of fused quartz is lower than glass. If the vial had been made of glass, he would have seen it. But it wasn’t glass.
In salt water, a vial made of fused quartz was nearly invisible. At the bottom of the ocean, through a foggy pair of goggles, it would be like finding a poppy seed on a beach.
Yet right there, an inch from the flashlight and twinkling in its yellow beam, the vial had come to rest.
Aaron grabbed the vial, kicked off the bottom, and swam for the surface. Without the air in his lungs he was denser. He thrashed at the water, but it resisted him like syrup and he sank back after each thrust. The surface shimmered, miles above him.
But he kept going, willing the blood through his limp muscles. More air escaped his nostrils, deflating him further. His body was on the verge of collapsing in on itself.
Then he felt warmth on his cheeks, fresh air in his lungs, but by then he realized what was wrong.
His swim to the buoy, the dive sticks, the underwater flashlight—none of that mattered.
Aaron pried his fingers off the vial and looked straight through it. Of course he hadn’t seen it underwater.
It was empty.
***
The vial was Aaron’s last hope. There was nothing else to do, nowhere to go. In a world where everyone was paired with their half, he was alone.
Aaron drove home ten miles per hour under the speed limit, took a shower, and charged his cell phone.
Sunday passed. Absurdly, the digits on his clock continued to change. Around five in the afternoon, when yellow-orange light slanted in through the windows, Aaron laid the vial on his nightstand and sat with his back propped against his bedframe.
Amber’s perfume floated over him still. He wanted to feel her hair on his neck. He wanted to hold her, whisper in her ear. He wanted to see her green eyes sparkle.
Before they sparkled for the last time.
Aaron stared at the empty vial. Waiting. Just as he’d been waiting for his entire life.
Only there was nothing to wait for. His birthday had come and gone. He wasn’t seventeen anymore. Now, for as long as he lived, nobody would ever break the silence between his ears.
But he would always be waiting.
***
Aaron opened his eyes suddenly. He lay curled in a pool of sweat, still unable to sleep at three in the morning. Yellow haze trickled through