Raging Sea (Undertow, #2)

When the routine is done, I sit myself next to the closest wall, prop my legs straight up against it, and lie back in a ninety-degree angle. I focus again on my breath, trying to ignore my pissed-off muscles, embracing their anger. It is so much better than the fear I’ve been manufacturing since they locked me in this room. I lie still for as close as I can estimate to thirty minutes, feeling my head clear, feeling more like myself than I have in a very long time.

“I am Lyric Walker, Daughter of Summer,” I whisper when I open my eyes. She taught me these lessons, and I abandoned them. I’ve been a fool.



The days pass, and I get stronger with every one. The guards try to interrupt my practice by having me stand in the circle over and over again. At first the intrusions kill my concentration, but eventually I learn to slip right back into the workout once they are satisfied.

I wake eager to get started and end each day with another hour-and-a-half session before I go to sleep. I can feel my muscles tightening in my shoulders and arms, and soon the tremors and cramping are gone. I was never good at handstands, but my mother tried to teach them to me anyway, so I know the basics. I use the walls to brace myself, falling over many times, banging the back of my head once so badly, I’m sure I’ve ripped out the staples, but I get back up and do it again and again and again, until I can do a handstand pushup. At the end of the second week, I can do five of them. At the end of the third week, I can do thirty. My posture straightens, and I’m able to tune out the noises a lot better. The panic attacks still come around, but I’m able to fight them off with some focused breathing.

The hardest part is the food. It’s always the same, always rancid, and there’s never anything to drink, but I eat every bite. It’s the only way I’m going to get stronger. I wish I could just gorge and swallow it fast, but I know it will make me sick to eat too quickly, so I close my eyes tight and try to think of my mother’s spaghetti and meatballs, or meatloaf, or anything. Even the charred black stuff my dad made while destroying the kitchen every morning is better than this. His burned eggs and toast and scorched oatmeal sound delicious.

I think about pizza from Famous Ray’s, and chili dogs from Nathan’s, and cotton-candy afternoons. I think about fried oysters and clam strips at Rudy’s Bar. I think about everything but barfing, and aside from some gagging, it works. I lick every crumb in the bowl and tell myself it will turn into muscle. I’m still working on the rotten apples when the slot opens. I snatch what I can as the bowl is pulled out of my hands, skitters across the floor, and disappears.

I crawl to the door and laugh.

“I ate it all!” I shout. “You couldn’t get it before I was done!”

And I pray. Not like Arcade, but certainly inspired by her. My father is a nonpracticing Catholic, and Mom has her Alpha beliefs, so we never really went to church on a regular basis. I know the basics, but I’m not really talking to God or Jesus or the Great Abyss. I’m talking to whoever is out there and is listening. Sometimes I imagine that it’s Henry from the little church in Shafter. He tells me to pray out loud, unapologetic and vulnerable.

And the rest of the days, I lie on the mattress, silent and mindful. They must think I’m sleeping, but that’s not at all what I’m doing. I’m listening to the noises, the ones that used to drive me insane. I’m counting their rhythms and taking mental notes on their patterns, quickly discovering my meal delivery is a fairly reasonable time-keeping method. I can’t know for certain the exact time of day it is, but I know I get three meals and then there is a long run until the next one arrives. I assume that span is nighttime, when everyone is supposed to be asleep, including me. So the first meal is the beginning of a new day. In between those meals, I’m counting how often someone checks the lock on my door—nine times. I’m noticing that someone demands I step into the circle eight times. There are three times each day when there are lots of people in the halls—shift change. All of it soon forms a predictable schedule, in which I know what’s happening outside my door without ever seeing it. Their routines are telling me plenty about how this place works.

The only thing that breaks up my training is when they steal me away to run tests. I never expect it, and it occurs in the nighttime when I’m asleep. I assume they pump some kind of knockout gas into the room, but I never hear the hiss. During the tests, they poke and prod. The nurse takes blood and tissue samples. She studies my eyes. They drop me into a tank and film me as the scales appear on my arms and neck. They examine the gills on the undersides of my jawline and the webbing between my feet and toes. They want urine and skin samples, and they scan and x-ray me to the point where I’m concerned about getting cancer, but I don’t fight them. My strength is reserved for other things.

“This one needs a bath,” Calvin complains.

“Well, ask Spangler if you can give her one,” the nurse snaps.

“Damn, Amy. You’re a real pill.”