Breathing Underwater

by Sarah Allen

  This surprises me a lot. Takes me off guard, even. This is what she’s noticing? This is what she’s seeing in my picture taking? I’ve been trying to communicate deeply with her—to reach her where she is—for so long, in so many different ways, and this feels sort of like she hasn’t understood the words I’ve been saying, but instead has noticed something small I’ve been casually doing by myself in the background. Like I’ve been trying to show her these big, epic, meaningful landscapes, and instead she scrolls back to some tiny blurry selfie and says, But what about that?

  I’m not quite sure what to make of it, but I’m happy for anything she’s noticing. Anything that connects us.

  “We’ll both get there,” I say. “We shall conquer!”

  She looks at me and she looks softly sad.

  “Maybe I’m just terrible,” she says.

  “Definitely not,” I say. “The songs you’ve shown me are amazing.”

  “I don’t know,” she says.

  “I do.”

  She sighs. “Thanks, but I don’t know if I want to keep getting more of the same lame rejection without feeling like I’m getting anywhere.”

  I laugh. “‘The Same Lame.’ That should be your next song.”

  She doesn’t laugh, but she doesn’t roll her eyes either. “I don’t know,” she says again.

  Ruth is talking to me, close to confiding, which, for me, is a kind of walking on light waves. But I worry her hands might be losing their grip on the edge of The Pit.

  “I think your work is amazing, no matter what anyone else says,” I say.

  The same lame cheerleader words, but I’m not sure what else to say. I hope she knows I mean it.

  “I appreciate your effort,” Ruth says. “And I know it’s all blue skies and happy sea otters in Olivia Land over there, but sometimes things just suck.”

  I see Ned out of the corner of my eye, but I keep focused on Ruth. “I know,” I say.

  Ruth clenches her hands and looks down. “I keep doing that to you. I don’t mean to snap … it’s not … I’m sorry. I’m really sorry about today.” Ruth sighs. “Don’t listen to me, okay? Be happy. Take lots of pictures.”

  I want to hug her, tight and long. So she knows I see the struggle, so she knows I know how creative and fun and thoughtful and loyal my sister Ruth truly is. I also want to tell her I’m trying to understand the best I can, and that things aren’t always easy for me either. A voice in my mind says, happy otters can get hurt too, and then I’m remembering the way otters hold each other’s hands and imagining what it must be like to be the person who takes care of the otters here at the aquarium, and all those thoughts make me want to grin, which totally doesn’t help my attempt to appear serious and understanding. Mature, like Ruth. Which, clearly, I’m not, or at least she doesn’t think I am.

  I don’t say any of those things, though, because I’ve pushed enough for one day. Another blowup and I’d shrivel like a raisin, and besides, just being here with Ruth in the blue water lights, the way we’ve talked about things while silver fish bob around us … all of that turns this into a good day after all.

  Ruth’s turned back toward the glass and the water. I spot Ned the turtle again, coming from up high, toward Ruth. I lift my camera as fast as I can. He’s almost in frame … Ruth’s about to look up at him …

  The room rings with a high-pitched squeal. I stop my instinct to turn around and instead I keep my camera lifted, fiercely trying to get this one shot, but Ruth’s already walked away, out of frame.

  I turn around and there’s a little girl, maybe four or five years old, with perfect blonde whale-spout pigtails. She sobs in hiccups and plops down in the middle of the floor.

  By the time I’ve realized she’s probably lost her mom, Ruth is already kneeling at her side. I check around the room. Now that someone’s taking care of the crying child, most everybody is going back to their own groups.

  “You wanna know something?” Ruth is saying. I tune in to their conversation. “Guess how much percent I promise we’ll find your mom and you’ll be okay?”

  The girl hiccups again, but the sobs have stopped. She’s thinking hard about Ruth’s question. “Nine?” she says.

  “One hundred,” says Ruth.

  The girl’s eyes get wide. And Ruth smiles.

  I click a few photos. Something feels like it’s happening here, so photos are my natural response.

  “It’s going to be one hundred okay?” says the girl.

  “Yep,” says Ruth. “And you know I’m right because I’m smart.”

  The girl considers again. She’s practically chipper. “Yeah,” she says. “And you have blue hair.”

  “That is absolutely right,” says Ruth. “Let’s find your mom, okay? Can you remember what color shirt she was wearing?”

  “Abby!”

  A woman with a baby in one arm and a spit-up stain down her left shoulder comes running toward us. She’s got those exhaustion lines under her eyes and she practically melts onto the floor in front of the little girl.

  “Honey, you have to stay holding on to the bag, remember?”

  “I had to say bye-bye.”

  The woman sighs. “I know. Okay, let’s go. Don’t you want to see the octopus?” She stands up, a tight grip on her daughter’s hand. She adjusts the diaper bag over her shoulder while trying to hold the baby in one arm and keep a handhold on Abby with the other. She pauses long enough to turn toward Ruth. “Thank you so much,” she says. “Sorry, I’m all over the place…”

  In the particular shrug of Ruth’s shoulders, I can tell she has the exact right words for this situation, like an artist with custom paints.

  “Naw,” says Ruth. She looks back at Abby. “Hey, it’s pretty sweet you have a mom who takes you to the aquarium, huh?”

  Abby hops a little. “Yeah, to see the octopus like on TV.”

  The woman shakes her head and laughs. “She is weirdly obsessed with the Discovery Channel, I swear.”

  Ruth points her elbow over in my direction, but she doesn’t look at me. “When she was little, my sister used to cry herself to sleep at night if my mom wouldn’t let her watch Shark Week.”

  The woman laughs. Ruth smiles again.

  “Anyway, thanks,” the mom says.

  “Have fun,” Ruth says. Mom and daughter leave. As Ruth watches them go, her shoulders slump back down.

  I have an imaginary conversation in my head, where I tell Ruth that things will be one hundred okay. What I do know one hundred percent is that in that hypothetical conversation, her response is an eye roll and a huff. And that’s on a good day.

  How come she gets to tell someone things will be okay, but I can’t tell it to her? Just because she’s sixteen and that girl was five doesn’t make it any different.

  And there’s something else too. Ruth has had a pen cap between her teeth and a notepad on her lap for most of her life. She practices her words like Serena Williams practices serves. She’s careful with them and uses them exactly the way she wants. So why do her softest ones seem to flow more freely to strangers than to me?

  I try to hold tight to the good ones she just gave me, even if I wish I got them more often.

  My hands, in their usual habit, hold tight to my camera. We are here in the same place, Ruth and I, but if we each told our story of the aquarium, the two would be completely different, like we’re experiencing this on opposite hemispheres. But isn’t that what pictures are for? To show each other our stories?

  Is it possible, even through the highest-quality lenses, for two people to really, truly see the same picture?

  I have a couple of good shots of Ned the turtle, but none with Ruth in them. I keep clicking through my camera, scrolling past photos of sharks and turtles and the statues out front, up to the most recent ones. My stomach does that clutch thing when I hit the magic shot, the one that will be my post for the day. It’s all silhouette. Ruth and the little girl, backlit in underwater blue. Ruth’s shadow finger is pointing
at a tiny trio of fish and the girl’s silhouetted face is pointed up in awe.

  “Just When I Needed You Most,” Randy VanWarmer, 1979.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  We have a long drive ahead of us. It’s about seven hours between Houston and Fort Stockton, where we plan to stay for the night.

  I tell myself it doesn’t matter at all if Ruth is nicer to strangers sometimes. I mean, she was helping a little girl, right? That’s a good thing.

  Ruth looks very pale this morning. Paler than I’ve seen her in a while. I want to bring her soup and her old stuffed animal and the perfect songwriting gig, like Ruth sometimes talks about, all served with a magic kind of medicine that will make anything hurting feel better—one hundred okay—just like that.

  Something Magic, like a Treasure Hunt? Maybe?

  I really, really hope so.

  Tomorrow when we get to Arizona it will be time for Something Magic. And as far as magic is concerned, it’s good timing. I could use the extra help.

  On the original trip, our Something Magic day landed on our stop in Little Rock, Arkansas. It started out as an awful day for me, because I’d lost Murphy somewhere the night before. I’d torn apart our hotel room looking for him. I looked under all the blankets, under the beds, in every drawer, even in the shower, and nothing. Ruth told me that because Murphy’d happened to go missing on Something Magic day, it meant he was off doing something magical, and that change was magic, even if it seemed hard at first. She told me it was all going to be okay, but even that didn’t make me feel better.

  We left the hotel for some brunch and a walk around. I was grumpy all through our meal, even though it was pancakes. We ended up at a bridge with tall metal spires and a metal grate along the side. As we walked across, the metal grate got more and more full of locks. Combination locks in all kinds of colors. Ruth told me they were wish locks, and that when you locked your wish in place, it would come true.

  I guess my family is pretty amazing, because we went to a hardware store right away and bought one of those locks. They knew how much I needed that wish. Maybe I should have used my wish for something different, and maybe a ten-year-old is too old to be wishing for her stuffed killer whale to come back, but in that moment none of that mattered. I just wanted Murphy.

  So I locked my wish in place, and took a picture of it for our Treasure Hunt, just in case. And guess what was waiting for me back at the hotel, resting neatly atop the newly made beds, like he’d never gone anywhere at all?

  Something Magic.

  There are no lock bridges in Tucson, Arizona, the city we’ll be reaching tomorrow. (Plus, when I was researching, I found out putting locks on bridges can actually be pretty damaging.) But when I googled Tucson, I found something just as cool. A bridge, a highway overpass, covered in metal mesh in the shape of a gigantic rattlesnake, complete with a pointed, rattle-y tail on one end and gleaming red eyes on the other.

  Definitely a bridge magical enough for a replica picture.

  We say a long goodbye to Darcy before loading into the RV. She and Ellie have made us all sandwiches with turkey slices and avocado and Dijon mustard and honey-oat bread that totally look gourmet, even though I’m not usually a sandwich person.

  I give Darcy a hug. “Hey, thanks for everything,” I say. “I think your dad would say your superpower is making people feel relaxed. Easy with themselves. I wish I could do that.”

  “Ha, that does sound like my dad,” she says. “But hey, no fair if you took my power. Stick with your own, girl.” She winks.

  I try to remember what Eddie said mine was. Something about finding neat, pretty things to make people happy or excited. Ruth is in the doorway, tying her shoe. I just wish my power was to have whatever power people needed, to do exactly what they needed, exactly when they needed it, and I wonder if anyone has that power. It’s almost a game, trying to think of powers in this way, instead of as specific things like flying or talking to animals or breathing underwater.

  What would Ruth’s power be?

  “Have a fun rest of the trip,” Darcy says, her arm still around me. “I’ll be following your pictures. You’re basically my family’s official favorite photographer.”

  “Ha, thanks.”

  I head into the RV, and Darcy begins her goodbye to Ruth. I watch from the window, wondering what they’re saying. Maybe it’s not possible to have the power to be everything for everyone every time. Maybe Darcy’s right, and that wouldn’t be fair. Or would it mean everyone was identical, with the same power? Would that be better or worse than one person’s power not being enough?

  Ellie is the last one to climb back aboard the RV. She gives Darcy a long hug first, delaying as long as possible the final drive away. When we’ve all finally said goodbye, we wave to Darcy through the window as we pull away. When we’re officially on the road, I settle into my loft.

  On our last trip, Ruth didn’t really have a plan for our Something Magic days, because she said that’s sort of the point; you can’t plan for the magic. We found the New sign and the old dinosaur bones because we were looking for something specific, but Ruth said Magic is different. Magic you have to let happen, and capture it when it does.

  Normally I’d agree with her, but since this trip is about repeating the pictures from before as much as possible, I do have a plan, even for Something Magic. An epic diamondback-rattlesnake bridge plan. And this time, I hope my plan actually works.

  I go between checking my phone and watching the Texas sky swim past. The clouds seem like they’re glittering, and I’m getting some really nice comments on my pictures. I think my pictures are even getting better. Good signs for Something Magic, I hope.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see Ruth sigh and turn up the volume on her iPod. She’s wearing pajama pants and she looks like she might throw up. I’m still wondering if she’s virus-type sick or if it’s something else. If this is a wrong-dosage kind of nausea. The medication she’s on has worked for a long time, but from the beginning Mom said things can change, and we’d take it one step at a time.

  Ellie gets up from her seat and chooses a bag of chips and a Gatorade. Ruth’s earbuds are in, and Ellie doesn’t say anything to her, just opens the chip bag and sets it and the Gatorade at her side before sitting on the couch across from her. We both watch Ruth mindlessly reach her fingers into the bag and nibble on a chip or two. Again, just a few bites and sips of drink seem to help.

  With all the Darcy activity going on, I had wondered if Ellie and Eddie were noticing any bad signs too. I’m glad I wasn’t the only one. I’m glad they are here.

  Ellie stands up to go back to the passenger seat and sees me watching. “Want some snacks?” she says, holding up her own open chip bag.

  “I’m okay,” I say.

  Once Ellie’s back in her seat, I lean over the ledge of my loft. Ellie looks up at me, smiling.

  “Hey, I’m texting updates to your parents,” she says, her thumbs hovering over her phone. I catch her glance over her shoulder at Ruth before looking back up at me. “Anything you want me to tell them?”

  “Oh, just that I’m really glad you guys are letting me ride on the roof of the RV and I only fell off once.”

  Eddie and Ellie both laugh.

  “Won’t they be glad they sent you with us,” Ellie says.

  Ruth adjusts her earbuds. I try to remember some of the things Darcy said that made her smile.

  “Ruth?” I say.

  She clicks something on her iPod and raises an eyebrow in my direction.

  “When we get home, what if you dyed my hair? Not like yours, but, like, purple maybe. Just the tips.”

  She takes the pen cap from between her teeth. “Mom would ground you and murder me,” she says.

  Why is it so easy for me to make other people laugh, but not her? Why is it so much easier for her to use her gentlest, most supportive words on strangers rather than on me? My hands ball into fists before I realize it. Ruth is back into her music. I just want
her to listen. To hear all the things I’m trying to say. For one terrible moment I see myself ripping the iPod out of her hands and throwing it so hard at the window the glass shatters. The image scares me like a daytime nightmare. I think about pouring cool water on the steam inside me. I try, try, try to envision it evaporating away.

  * * *

  Texas is rockier than I expected. There are white chalky hills, jagged like cliffs, barricading our right side. We stop in a tiny town to fill up the RV with gas.

  “Last stop for a while,” says Eddie. “There’s not much between here and Fort Stockton, so if you need something, get it now.” We all head into the gas station.

  There are two hawks circling above our heads. I come out of the gas station with a blueberry muffin and chocolate milk and watch them. Birds usually fly away too fast for you to really see them, but these two stay right above us, hanging on the wind. They make me think of fire dancers, with the sun and us as the center of their circle.

  Ruth is the first one back in the RV. I’m not sure if she’s eaten anything but a couple chips from the bag Ellie handed her earlier, and she didn’t get any food in the gas station. Her skin looks gray. While she climbs back into the RV, I stay outside to wait for Ellie or Eddie. I need to talk to one of them about this. To see if they’re seeing what I’m seeing, or if things are okay and I’m overreacting. I wait and look at the sky and watch the two birds circle each other.

  Ruth has gotten sick like this before, but the problem is that I don’t know what it means. I don’t know if it’s a twenty-four-hour kind of sick or a back-to-before-the-medicine-started-working sick. She might just have some tummy bug. She might just need to sleep. But it might be much worse. She might be in the deepest, blackest kind of Pit. The kind that feels like a trap, like you’re never going to be free of the dark again.

  All I want is for her to be okay.

  Ellie and Eddie come out together, holding hands and laughing. They look up to see what I’m watching.

  “Those are some beautiful birds,” says Eddie.

  “Yeah,” I say. “Hey, uh, can I talk to…”