Be still. Breathe!
My lips and chin shake so badly, it’s hard to snatch a breath. My breathing is raspy, terrified, my muscles tense and tight.
Find the boat!
Find the fucking boat!
I’m looking over my shoulder, desperately scanning the surface, when the first hit comes. I don’t even have time to cry out as I’m thrown off-balance, cheek hitting the water, arms and legs pirouetting. The impact knocks the wind out of me, emptying my lungs, leaving me numb with shock. I hang there, dazed, shaking my head as if to clear it.
It comes to me in fragments.
The cold. Water filling my ears. A ringing in my head. Bubbles everywhere. Blood dripping down the cuff of my wrist. The dark, the dark.
And something else. I go completely still, peering down through the water.
There’s something below me. Circling.
A shadow in the water.
If a shark is in attack mode, try to fend it off with your hands. Strike at the most sensitive parts…the eyes or gills.
I thrust my arms out in front of me, and the blood drips onto the surface. I spin in a frantic circle. The boat. My only hope is getting back to theReel Easy.I can’t think about Luke. Can’t think about anything else but getting out of the water.
I squint hard and see the faint outline of the boat twenty meters away, the skull and crossbones of theReel Easyflag flapping softly in the wind. I surge forward, freestyling as fast as I can, terrified Luke will gun the engine and leave me here. But the boat isn’t moving. It’s drifting in the current, eerily silent.
Get to the boat. Get to the boat.
But what if Luke’s pulled the boarding ladder up? It happened before on theDeep Sea. It must have been summer because the sky was bright and blue and endless. And hot. I wanted to ask if we’dbe going home soon, but I wasn’t dumb enough to speak when Dad was fishing. So, I lowered myself over the side and jumped in. But when I rose up to the surface, Heath’s anxious face peered over the side.
Just cooling off,I called out.I’m coming back in now.
Dad snorted, raised an eyebrow.How you gonna get back in?
I treaded water, confused. I’d thought I’d haul myself up the stern of the boat, near the outboard. Wordlessly, I swam to the back and tried to pull myself up.
I couldn’t.
Freeboard,Heath told me later. The term for the height of the boat in the water.Ours is two and a half meters, Min. If you jump off, there’s no way to get back on…
My legs start cramping. I grab at my left calf. My hand is so numb that I can’t even feel it, and it’s too far to swim to shore.
I race for the boat, swimming as fast as I can. I’m halfway there when something grazes my left knee. I lash out, thrusting my fists under the water, kicking hard. My foot connects with something solid. I kick again, harder. Water rushes into my mouth. I choke on it, spitting it up, hitting and kicking the whole time.
I duck my head under, throwing punches, striking left, then right, exhaling with effort, a stream of bubbles escaping my mouth. They stir the water up, like someone’s blowing smoke in my face, and I can’t see a damn thing. My arms are floating up near my chin, lost in the bubbles, aching with the effort of striking through the cement-like water.
For a moment, everything goes still. My mind slows, my lungs empty. Then the water begins to clear. It happens so slow and so damn quick. My head is tilted back, watching the little bubbles float up, up, up to the surface, like vapor floating up to a dark sky.
Something tugs at my chest, like it’s gripping both sides of my heart in its cold fists.
It’shere.It’shere.
Some things you’re just not supposed to see. Some things are so horrific, your brain goes slow with the shock of trying to process it.
Like this.
Like thisthing.
This is what my family have spent a lifetime hunting. It charges out of the deep, so fast, too fast. My mind is numb, slow with terror.
