Waiting to die.
The green-eyed stranger in the seat across from mine is gesturing wildly to get my attention, the whites around his irises flashing like surrender flags on a battlefield. He’s scared, too. I can’t see his mouth beneath the mask, but his eyes are screaming indecipherable instructions at me. When I see him pulling a neon bundle from beneath his seat, his message clicks.
He’s telling me to put on my life vest.
Panting hard, I pull the deflated plastic over my head. I do my best to get one over Sophie’s blonde pigtails, but it’s hard to control my limbs, the plane is jerking so much.
The stranger is gesturing again — this time at my feet. In the turbulence, the compressed life raft has rolled my way, coming to rest just beside my backpack.
Grab it! The stranger’s eyes are flashing. Grab the raft!
I watch my hands like they belong to someone else as they close around the straps and pull the thick roll of yellow fabric up into my lap. It’s surprisingly heavy. I cling to it with desperation, afraid another bump might make me lose my grip. When we hit — because, in these horrid, frozen instants, it has become increasingly clear that impact is not a matter of if but when — it may be the only salvation from the crushing embrace of dark water.
I should be crying, by my tear ducts refuse to cooperate. I cling to the emergency pack, my mind empty except for a single thought I repeat over and over, a prayer to any god who happens to be listening.
I don’t want to die.
I don’t want to die.
I don’t want to die.
I want to go back — back to that curb at Boston Logan international Airport, to wrap my arms around my mother one last time. Back to before I got on this plane. Back to that simple town I couldn’t wait to escape. Back to that picture-perfect future I dismissed with such disdain.
But I can’t.
The only thing I can do, here and now, is adjust my grip on the raft and reach out for Sophie. I feel her small fingers slip into mine, and squeeze hard to tell her I’m here with her.
You’re not alone.
Looking straight ahead, my gaze locks on a steady sea of green within the chaos. It’s strange that the last thing I’ll ever see are the eyes of a stranger, burning into mine.
My final moments, shared with an utter asshole I met at the airport.
If I could muster any sense of humor, I’d have to laugh at the absurdity of fate.
We approach the Pacific with all the optimism of a bug on a crash course with a car windshield. And in that free-fall, his eyes are the only thing holding me steady. They never shift away, even as our descent picks up speed. Even as I discover that I was wrong — my tear ducts are perfectly capable of producing moisture.
A single tear streaks down my cheek.
One Mississippi.
Two Mississippi.
Three Mississippi.
I never make it to four.
Chapter Five
U N D E R T O W
I love the water.
I spent six summers teaching sailing lessons — instructing New Hampshire youth on the finer points of wind direction, tying square knots, capsizing two-person SunFish. You don’t take on a job like that voluntarily if you don’t enjoy getting wet.
I lived for those salt-skin summers. Bronze limbs, sun-bleached hair. Fingertips turned to prunes from too many hours in the ocean. Each morning, I’d swim from the dock to my small sailboat in under a minute, half across the harbor in the same time it would take anyone else to affix oars to a dinghy. Submerged beneath the surface, my strokes effortless, I’d imagine myself a mermaid, or a selkie from the Irish fairy tales Mom used to tell me.
I love the water.
Correction: I loved the water.
…until the moment we crash into it.
I’ll never forget how it knocks the breath from my lungs like a punch to the gut. How it pulls at me with aqueous fingers, dragging me to the depths along with the fragmenting fuselage. We hit with a force that rattles my bones and steals every molecule of air from my lungs. Sophie’s small hand is snatched from my grip. The only reason I’m able to hold onto the emergency raft is the strap looped tight around my wrist.
The plane fills so instantly there isn’t even time to catch a proper breath before water rushes in from all directions. I grapple with my seatbelt buckle as my head whips sideways, searching for Sophie and Samantha.
They’re simply… gone.
The cabin has cracked down the middle, sheared clean in two like a soda can on one of those late night infomercials for expensive knives. I hear metal tearing as the front section of the plane falls away, sucked down to the bottom of the ocean. There’s a flash of silver, like light catching the scales of a fish, before it sinks out of sight, into the dark depths of the Pacific. It’s only a matter of time before the tail follows suit.
I have to get out of here.
The life raft’s pressure gauge goes off — with a hiss of compressed air, it inflates and shoots upward. The strap, still wrapped around my wrist, threatens to tear off my arm as I’m pulled after it, a helpless fish on a hook. I’d kick for the surface if I could tell where it was. There’s no light, no air, no indication of up or down. I am a meteor in space, drifting without direction, my course set by the gravitational pull of the raft.
My lungs are on fire inside my chest, screaming for oxygen. Black spots explode behind my eyes. If I don’t get a breath soon, I’m going to pass out. My lips open, desperate for air, and salt water rushes into my mouth. I know a single gulp will seal my fate, but there’s nothing I can do to stop it. My limbs aren’t cooperating. My body is no longer under my command.
I think I see some light, a flicker of the storm at the surface, but it’s too late. Water pours down my throat, into my lungs. It sweeps away my last thread of consciousness, stills my legs from kicking, slows my heartbeat down to nothing. I feel myself lose the fight for survival as that faint flicker of hope above fades out of view and my eyes drift shut.
And then…
I’m gone.
“Breathe, damn you! Breathe!”
There’s a mouth on mine, blowing air into my lungs. Hands on my chest, pounding down on my ribcage in even beats.
“Come on! You don’t get to die on me!”
His lips are warm. So are his hands as they cradle my face, pinching my nose closed as he breathes me back to life.
“Stay with me. Please.”
Choppy pants of air hit my cheeks as he shoves at my chest with renewed efforts. He is a one-man life support system, keeping me alive through sheer force of will. His words are punctuated by the rhythm of his hands.
“Stay. With. Me.”
The voice is ragged. Laced with desperation.
I know that voice…