“What are you doing?” I ask him as he lifts himself onto the plastic.
“Getting back in the boat. We should think about heading back for lunch.”
“No!” I protest, almost too dramatically. I’m not ready to leave the reef—it feels like there’s so much to explore. “I just mean… I want to see the shelf on the other side of the reef.”
“It’s too deep over there. Nothing to see unless you dive under.”
“What, are you scared?” I push back. I don’t wait for an answer. Instead, I use the power of my fins to kick off in the direction of the drop.
“Hey!” I hear Caleb struggling to pull up the small anchor. In a few moments, the whoosh of his paddles catches up to me, and I pop up before one almost catches me in the chin.
“At least get in the boat,” he says, defeated. Even though I want to protest, I keep quiet, and together we paddle around a rocky outcropping to a small cove that’s several shades darker than the rest of the water.
“This is it,” Caleb tells me as he grabs his mask. “Sure you’re up for it?”
“I’ve been swimming since I was four, in much colder water than this.” I tell him. “I know what I’m doing.”
Caleb shrugs, slipping his flippers back on.
“Just keep your eyes on?—“
I don’t let him finish before I’m back in the water, sucking in a massive breath just before I break the surface. Itisdeep here—even in the clear blue I can barely see the bottom. But even though I quit the swim team before sophomore year of high school, the muscle memory is still there. I push myself down, admiring the rocky shelf beside me as pressure builds in my lungs. A black and white striped eel as long as my leg undulates like a ribbon across the hazy blue. I gasp in excitement, letting out some of my precious air, and come back to the surface.
Caleb breaks beside me.
“Did you see that?” I gasp.
“Sea snake,” he tells me. “Can be deadly, but their mouths are so small they’d have a hard time getting you.”
“Woah,” I should be scared, but I feel exhilarated. “Again?”
Caleb nods and we dip below the surface, this time pushing even further into the depths. I’m marveling at a massive striped lobster with foot-long antennae when I feel Caleb’s grip on my arm. I turn, expecting another starfish, but see that his eyes are locked on a reef shark a few yards away. He must think I’m scared. But after my dip with Joanna yesterday, I know there’s nothing to be afraid of.
I try to pull back my arm, but his hand doesn’t move. Caleb’s grip tightens as the shark darts to the side, revealing a body at least ten feet in length. And suddenly, I know why he’s grabbing onto me so damned hard.
That’s not a reef shark.
It’s a tiger.
My stomach lurches, and I feel the icy rush of pure panic crystallizing beneath my skin. I’ve seen enough episodes of Shark Week to knowexactlywhat I’m looking at. Only this time, it’s not behind a TV screen—it’s barely twenty feet from us. From the side, I can see something hanging from the shark’s mouth. Pink and fleshy. Knotted with jutting white bones. A very large fish’s spine.
The shark doubles back suddenly, disappearing into the depths, and my adrenaline sets in. I kick out sharply to propel myself upwards, but Caleb grabs my hip, forcing me to stay in place. He shakes his head, slowly. As kids, when we’d go hiking in the Cascades, Dad taught us that with black bears and coyotes, you make yourself as large and loud as possible to scare them away. With big cats, you back away as slowly as you can, never taking your eyes off theirs. But I don’t know anything about fending off a shark.
And I’m running out of breath.
The shark darts back from the blue and careens straight for us, and I instinctively throw my arms around Caleb, my blood pounding like a horror movie soundtrack in my ears. But Caleb doesn’t throw me off. Instead, he moves me behind his body, slowly, never taking his hands off me. When he’s squarely between me and the shark, he runs his fingers down my arm and softly squeezes my hand.
The shark isn’t even ten feet from us, now, the distance between us shorter than its massive body. Every inch of it ripples with power in the deep blue. If I weren’t so terrified, I might think it was beautiful.
Just as the burning in my lungs becomes almost too much to bear, the tiger shark slows, its fins flattening out and lifting away from its sides. Just like Joanna said—a sign of non-aggression. I feel Caleb’s legs moving, his hand pulling beneath my shoulder as he propels us back towards the surface. I’m too petrified to kick with him. Mercifully, we break water just feet from the kayak, and I gasp to fill my lungs.
“Don’t flail!” he warns me, but I’m moving on instinct now. I kick towards the kayak as quickly as I can, beaching myself like a sea lion across its plastic sides and practically tipping it as I scramble to get in. He’s behind me in an instant, and without thinking, I grab onto his arms and pull him up with more strength than I knew I had.
For a few moments, we’re just lying there: masks shoved haphazardly atop our heads, flippers sticking out every which way across the kayak. My heart is beating so fast I almost forget to breathe.
I look at Caleb, waiting for him to yell at me for improper shark sighting protocol, but he doesn’t look ready to pounce. He’ssmiling. Either he’s having a fear-induced mental breakdown, or he’s forgotten, just for a second, that he’s supposed to hate me.
“Was that—” I ask through big gulps of air. “What I think it was?”
