“You can’t be out here—it’s dangerous!”
As if to illustrate my point, a rogue wave crashes over our heads. The current yanks me deeper… deeper… deeper. I’m blinded by salt water and so disoriented my arms flail outward. My hands grapple for something solid, something to help me right myself. I’m panicking—I’m a millisecond from opening my mouth to a deep breath of cold water—but then my feet touch the seafloor. My toes curl into the murky sand. I bend my knees and shove off.
My head breaks the surface and I gasp for air. I’m choking, coughing, sputtering, and my eyes sting. I blink to clear the salt from them, and then I’m searching, kicking to keep my head above water.
He’s… nowhere.
I whip around, terrified I’ve lost him, this stranger I never had in the first place.
My heart turns over when his head surfaces to my left and just out of reach. I lunge for his sleeve, and my fingers close around a handful of cotton. I yank him close, then grab for his submerged hand. It wraps around mine. He uses his other to swipe water from his face, retching and hacking, pulling in air.
“We have to get back to the beach!”
He looks at me, confused and afraid andlost. His raven hair is plastered to his forehead, and his skin is olive, clear with the exception of a few days of dark stubble. His eyes are arresting, fiery amber, contrary to his darkness. He appears… not Californian. Maybe not American. God, what if he doesn’t speak English?
I gesture to the beach, treading hard to keep my head from slipping beneath the waves. “Safe-ty,” I holler, enunciating the syllables in a way that might be offensive, whether he’s foreign or not.
He nods, still clinging to my hand.
I force my tired legs to kick, towing him along with me. He’s kicking, too, but our progress is frustratingly slow. I try not to think about rip currents and sharks. I try not to think about hypothermia. I try notto think about the stranger who’s hanging on to my hand—who he is or where he came from or what the hell he was thinking when he traipsed into the ocean.
I try not to think about how I nearly drowned attempting to help him.
I focus on Bambi, running back and forth where the waves kiss the beach, woofing and howling and carrying on. When I’m shallow enough to put my feet down and tug my hand free of the boy’s, she comes paddling out to swim happy circles around me. As soon as I’m clear of the surf, she takes off, jaunting down the beach, probably in search of her ball now that I’m available to throw it again.
I drag myself to the place where I left my camera and sweatshirt. My muscles are weak and my mouth tastes brackish. Years ago, my brother dumped table salt in my apple juice, just to see how I’d react; I threw up, which is exactly what I want to do now. I’m tired deep in my bones, and residually horrified. I’ve never been so close to dying.
How would Mom get by without me?
I shake off a torrent of sadness and turn to look for Bambi, to call her back so we can go home, where I’ll shower off the salt and crawl into bed, where I’ll sleep the day away beneath my soft patchwork quilt.
When I wake, this morning will be a distant memory.
I turn to find Bambi, but instead I find the boy—the idiot boy who wandered into the ocean fully clothed. He’s an arm’s length away, towering over me, water dripping from his coal-black hair, wildfire eyes searching my face.
I look at him, and I can’t look away.
MATI
She is beautiful like shattered glass—
sharp, asymmetrical, unique.
She is soaked in seawater,
and smells of salt.
She is shades of pomegranate and peach.
She struggles to breathe,
as if the air is mud-thick,
too viscous to inhale.
I know the feeling.
She is exhausted, because of me.
