Fractured Tide

by Leslie Lutz

  “Sia! Get down here!”

  “Little busy right now.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  She paused a hair too long. “I need my clothes.”

  I took one more look at that dark spot in the jungle before I slithered down the trunk into the dim quiet below. When I finally put my bare feet on land again, I untied my knee guards and handed Steph her tank top and shorts.

  “Happy now?”

  She took the clothes without looking me in the eyes. “Felix is missing.”

  My mouth went dry. When I turned to check behind the nearest trunks, my head swam. The same thing I’d felt inside the USS Andrews when Marshall went missing. But this time it was Felix.

  I ran through the trees, calling his name, then looped back to Steph, who stood in the clearing, her face in her hands.

  “Don’t just stand there. Look for him!”

  I ran in the other direction, leaping over tree roots and looking behind every bush and trunk. Mom’s harsh lesson on the boat sounded in my head.

  You sure you didn’t leave him behind, Tasia? I’ve seen you do this kind of thing before.

  I ran faster, so fast I tripped over a root, my shoulder smashing into the ground, but I got up and kept searching, calling out his name, the sound of Steph’s cries and mine echoing in the trees. The panic swelled like a bubble in my lungs. Then I rounded a thick trunk and found him curled up in a hollow in the roots, sobbing.

  He threw himself into my arms and squeezed me tight. I can’t remember the last time he clung to me so hard. Maybe the day you left, when you didn’t show up for dinner. He stared at the empty chair and wouldn’t eat, then hung on to me and cried until bedtime.

  I kissed the top of his head and rubbed his arms, which felt cold, as if he’d been sleeping on the ground a long time. “I would never leave you behind.”

  “Where did you go?” he asked.

  “Just looking for coconuts.”

  “All night?” he asked, his face still buried in my neck.

  “No, it only felt that way.” I couldn’t get any sense out of him and figured he was still shell-shocked from the boat, so I didn’t put two and two together. I still had no idea what the island really was.

  “Sia, I’m hungry,” he said.

  “I know, little man. Me too.”

  Over Felix’s shoulder, I met Steph’s eyes. We were both thinking the same thing. No coconuts. No wildlife except for birds, which were too fast to catch. Until I had a weapon to deal with the man-boy, I wasn’t heading to the clearing. The forest held nothing for us but shadows.

  A breeze moved past me, bringing the briny scent of the ocean with it. And at that moment, I knew what I had to do.

  Thirty minutes later, I stood on the beach, in the sunlight, the water lapping my ankles. Steph had taken Felix down the beach so he wouldn’t see. Ben stood a few feet from the water, staring at me like I’d lost my mind.

  “You don’t have to do this.”

  “Unless you want to start in on each other’s fingers, I’m getting us some grub.” I fit my mask over my face.

  “Come sit with me and we’ll work this out. I’ve got a plan.”

  “No, you don’t.” I waded into the waves.

  “You’re gonna catch a whole lot of nothing with no fishing gear,” Ben said.

  A wave slapped my waist. “If I’m not back in ten minutes, order pizza.”

  “Would you please get out of the water?”

  I dove under the next breaker.

  Waves moved above my head. Froth, chaos. Below, clarity. It’s the way it’s always been for me, and you. Get away from the world of light and air and enter the world of light and water, and suddenly we’re home.

  The slope of the sand was gradual, and beautiful, like brown sugar spilled in a clear glass bowl. With sunlight beating down directly overhead, the underwater world felt safe, because I could see for a hundred feet. Tourists would pay double for this kind of visibility. I had to remind myself the safe feeling was an illusion, my search for food a gamble. I had to get what I needed fast and get out.

  The sugar sand slowly gave way to shallow rock formations, and soon I was swimming over the healthiest reef I’ve ever seen. Bubble coral and fire coral, all in brilliant shades of red and orange. White brain coral as big as a beanbag. Sea grass sprouted in clumps between the black rock, swaying in the current. And then the fish. The fish! Yellow butterflies, silver-striped jack, snapper, all swimming in thick schools that blocked out the sun. Long gray trumpetfish and the wildly colored parrots. A huge grouper hunkered down under a shelf of rock, opening and closing its mouth, waiting for dinner to pass too close.

  But as I swam above the labyrinth of the reef, looking down on the show, my nerves started firing. The fish were beautiful and healthy, but a little strange, all of them. I recognized the shapes and the species, but the colors were off, the stripes on the bannerfish too close together. And then I swam above a school of snapper that looked just—well, wrong. The island, I thought. It’s not what we think it is.

  My stomach growled and I brushed my thought away. Figured the low blood sugar was messing with my head. I needed food. I didn’t care what color it was.

  It didn’t take long for me to find what I was looking for. Lobster. A big fat slow one, a kind I’d never seen before in the Haystacks or around the sunken ships in the Keys, scuttling just underneath a rocky shelf. Its flat tail dragged along the bottom, spindly legs tapping a rhythm on the ocean floor as it searched for bits of dead fish. Under its spotted shell was a whole lot of white flesh. If I hadn’t already been wet through and through, my mouth would’ve watered.

  One deep breath and I went under, scissoring my way down into the avenues of reef city. My body felt stronger than it did on the island—fast and agile. And you’ll think it strange, considering everything that had happened in the last two days, but gratitude swelled in me. How much better life is underwater, I thought, even now. Away from the annoying feel of solid land under my feet. Here I get to slip through the currents like an eel, spin and twist and laugh at gravity.

  The lobster hadn’t gotten far since I’d first spotted it, and I hovered a few feet behind the tail, reminding myself of your lessons about where to hold it without getting sliced. I grabbed it by the back, getting a good hold near the antennae. The lobster convulsed, the tail curling violently and straightening out again. Strong little monster. It was not about to go quietly.

  I swam back to shore and surfaced ten feet away from Ben and Steph. Deep in conversation, their heads close together, neither of them saw me in the waves, so I threw dinner onto the beach next to them. Both jumped and yelled out, scrambling back from the water.

  “Good God, Sia!”

  “Son of a . . .” Ben winced, his hand on his leg. “Mind giving us a little more warning next time?”

  Felix’s giggle drifted over the waves, and I saw him, head peeking out from around the bow of the Last Chance. “I knew she was there.”

  I laughed, and the sound of it surprised me more than it did them. I don’t think I’d allowed myself to unclench the fist around my heart for even a second since I’d arrived on this island. But seeing Felix relaxed and unworried, and knowing there was baked lobster in our future, had my hopes soaring. And after what Ben had said to me last night, I was determined to give him a hard time.

  Ben settled himself back on the sand, trapped the lobster with his heel before it scuttled into the surf.

  Steph gave me an accusing look. “Two minutes ago he was bawling his head off for his sister, and now it’s all hilarious.”

  Felix looked away from Steph, his smile fading as he pushed his toes into the wet sand. “She came back. She’s okay.”

  I thought about leaving the water then, and I should’ve. A little voice warned me it was time to get dry, that inner mother who says, “Get out of the rain!” when the lightning starts up, or declared to “Stop at two beers!” at that kegg
er I went to last year, the one I never told you about. But the voice was soft, and the waves were loud and beautiful. I was doing something other than waiting, and it made the worry fly right out of me.

  No way I’m sharing one lobster with three other people, I thought. And Felix needed more food. I turned to swim out again.

  “T!” Felix’s voice followed me, his panic thick, all good humor gone.

  “Be right back,” I called over my shoulder, and dove under the next breaker before I had to hear him freak out.

  Near shore the pickings were slim, mostly fish darting out of my way, so I swam back into the reef, skirting a large black rock encrusted with glorious coral in reds and yellows, and another brain coral the size of a farmer’s prize pumpkin. The sand under me had that undisturbed quality you find at hidden beaches in the middle of nowhere, white and rippled to catch the patterns in a perfect shot. A part of me wished I had my camera. The other part of me prodded my stomach again.

  I swam out a little farther, looking for lobster and crab, telling myself the thing that attacked us was asleep in the hold of the USS Andrews. Logic told me it was too big to come into the shallows. I surfaced for a breath and dove again. Movement, on the sand farther out, as the shelf deepened and the water beneath took on a darker hue of blue. A huge crab. The thought of it cooked over flames overruled my caution, and I swam for it.

  Still too shallow for the big creatures, I told myself, as I rounded a rocky cluster of coral and reached for the sweet spot on its back. The crab scuttled away deep under a shelf and disappeared. So close, I thought, to a hot crab diner.

  I paused at the bottom, looking one last time into the crevice, and contemplated what would happen if I reached my hand in there.

  And that’s when it happened.

  A slow buzz of electricity in the water, through my toes, my fingers, down in my spine. I’d felt the same thing before I led Marshall down into the USS Andrews.

  Too cold, too dark, too deep.

  I backed away from the crevice’s dark maw, pulling myself hand over hand in a zigzag pattern up the rock face, avoiding the sharp coral. As clear water gave way to a haze in the distance, more mountains of color and shadow rose from the pale ocean floor. The USS Andrews was out there. That thing was out there too, nesting somewhere inside.

  My lungs burned and I surfaced for a breath. Looked toward the buoy, where the wreck lay. Still far. I tread water and looked out to sea, adrenaline’s rush rising in my blood—fuel that would get me home. It’s usually a comfortable place for me, nuzzled in that little pocket of risk, buzzing on the thrill of what if. But this time it was too much. Something swam beneath. Something would rise and swallow me whole.

  I tread water for two more strokes and turned 180 degrees, putting my back to the buoy, to the wreck, and whatever was living inside of it. And my breath caught in my throat.

  The island was gone.

  ENTRY 13

  GONE. I rubbed the salt water out of my eyes. My face had gone numb, along with my hands. The island couldn’t be gone.

  I swam in a circle, kicking at the great nothing underneath. I searched west again. Was that the way I came? Was that even west? I tipped my head back and squinted. The sun hung at high noon. The buoy bobbed not that far off. When my body rose with the ocean swell, I scanned the distance for a glimpse of a low-lying island.

  Your navigation lessons came back to me then, thank God, because otherwise I would’ve started screaming at the sky, begging for a rescue that would never come. I dipped my mask underwater and checked the slope of the sand, observed the ripples to see which way the current moved. Then I swam toward an island I could no longer see.

  Strange thoughts came with my panic. The ocean behind me was an open wound. The world was bleeding, she wasn’t going to stop, and I was caught in the current. That thing surfaced in my mind, slipping through the waves, defying the laws of gravity better than I ever have. Faster. Stronger. Hungrier. And then I thought of Felix on the shore, crying for his sister. Of the sun setting and him standing at the edge of the surf for hours, waiting for me to come back. And it was that last thought, of him forever waiting, with no one but strangers to take care of him, that pulled me apart. Took the lid off all the panic I was feeling, until a sob caught in my throat and I couldn’t breathe.

  A thousand years later, I found the shallows again. The reef thickened beneath me, and my heart felt light and empty, my arms weak and useless. But the island wasn’t there. Just open ocean. I would never find it. I would tread water out here for hours until I drowned.

  Two more panicked strokes later, I crossed a threshold, an invisible line in the sea. My stomach buckled, and a razor moved across my mind. I gasped and stopped swimming.

  In an instant, the island appeared only thirty yards ahead. The beach. The trees. The Last Chance, broken and lolling in the rising tide.

  Voices burst into life. Ben and Steph and Felix, all standing on the beach, screaming. Ben’s face was a mask of panic as he waved me in. Felix’s mouth an open O of shock. Steph’s gaze was on something behind me, her eyes wide, her hand over her mouth.

  The wind took the words from Ben’s mouth, but I made out the shape of his lips moving as he said the same word over and over.

  Swim.

  I didn’t look. I just swam. Churned the water in a full-out sprint for the beach.

  Your voice came to me, what you said when you threw me into the pool for the first time, before I knew what to do.

  Swim to shore, little fish.

  It tore my lungs apart, crawling through the water. My feet. I couldn’t stop feeling them back there, closer to it, whatever it was. My calves; one bite and it would have me, slice through the muscles and tendons until I couldn’t kick anymore.

  My hands hit sand. Too shallow to swim, and Ben was there, knee-deep, grabbing my arms and dragging me out of the surf and across shells and gravel and up onto the beach. He stopped ten feet from the waterline and dropped me, then fell beside me with a cry of pain, holding his leg. I looked back, panicked we hadn’t made it far enough, out of its reach.

  But behind me the ocean was calm, waves and whitecaps moving underneath a cloudless sky.

  Steph stood behind the Last Chance holding Felix by the upper arm in a vise grip. Ben glared at her.

  “What? You think I was going to lose him again?” she said. “He was trying to go in after her!”

  I looked at Felix’s stricken face, and then hers. Then I turned on my side and threw up.

  Cooking that lobster was the longest ten minutes of my life. And hunger has a way of putting its heel on other thoughts, grinding them into nothing. That rubber band pop in my stomach when I crossed that invisible line suddenly seemed like my imagination. Just a hunger pang. The disappearing island was a mirage. It had to be.

  Ben and Steph couldn’t stop staring at the smoking shell, and Felix kept asking when dinner would be ready. To distract ourselves, we discussed our dilemma. We needed food. None of the coconuts were edible, and the only food was in the ocean. That thing was in the ocean too, hunting.

  Steph contemplated the waves as if trying to solve a math problem. “It took a while to sense you were there. Smell you or whatever. Maybe we can set a time limit, and make sure you get back before that.”

  I noted her use of pronoun. You. “I can teach you how to catch them,” I said, turning the lobster on the coals. “Where they hide in the reef.”

  “Maybe I can make a fishing net with stuff from the charter,” Steph said, a tremor in her voice. She quickly cleared her throat to cover. I pretended not to notice.

  “I hope so.” Ben shifted in the sand, grimacing. “I don’t want either of you going into the water every day with that thing.”

  “I doubt we have enough good scraps to make a net,” I said.

  Steph looked down at her shirt and held the bottom out. A moment later she eyed mine and Ben’s.

  “Uh-uh,” I said. “I’m not walking around this island naked s
o you can make a net that probably won’t work.”

  “Oh, so it was okay to ask me to strip down to nothing, but you get to keep your rash guard on?”

  Ben gave each of us a curious glance, and we both waved him off at the same time.

  He shrugged and shifted his leg, wincing. “God, I hate being benched like this.” He turned to Steph, who gave him a desperate, pleading glance. Then he turned to me. “It’s a lot of risk, Sia. And finding that lobster was probably pure luck.”

  “Nuh-uh. It wasn’t luck,” Felix said. “My sister’s, like, a really, really good free diver.”

  “Still,” Ben said, “it’s—”

  “No, really. The best. Just like our grandmother. Back in Kalymnos, when Yiayia was a kid like me, she could hold her breath for ten minutes—”

  I poked at our lunch, which was red and smoking. “More like two.”

  “She used to free dive down to a thousand feet—”

  “Eighty. It’s eighty, Felix.”

  “And bring home treasures—”

  “Sponges, Felix. Sponges.”

  “They’d sell it to pirates.”

  “They sold it at the market.”

  “She and her mom supported the whole family with the stuff she brought up.”

  “That part is true.”

  Felix turned his bright gaze on me. “T’s just like her. She’s amazing.”

  I shrugged. Ben looked at me with a new level of respect, and I blushed. Steph hadn’t stopped watching the ocean, afraid it would reach out its salty hand and snatch her from the beach. I’m not sure she’d even heard our conversation.

  “I’m a good swimmer too!” Felix said. “I know how to grab lobster without getting pinched. And crab! We can all take turns, and I—”

  “No!”

  Felix startled as if I’d slapped him.

  I took a breath and evened out my tone. “No, Felix. Steph and I will do it. Ben can’t swim with his leg like that, and you’re too little.”

  I wanted to take the words back as soon as they were out. My last few sounded like Mom, and not the good part of her. The tough-as-shark-skin part of her that suddenly appeared when you went away.