And from then on, that’s where you meet.
Troy’s fragile body, covered in bandages, lies in a bed in a small room that looks out onto the landing pad for the hospital’s sole helicopter. Once or twice a day, there’s a sound like a gas-powered Weedwacker as the copter revs up and goes off to find the next unlucky soul to deposit in the place. But the sound doesn’t wake Troy. Neither does the TV you watch without really watching, or all the things they stick him with to keep him alive.
As the days pass—the number of days you were lost and then more—things do begin to change for others. Fran shows up with a new hair color—mermaid green this time—and a new girlfriend, Zooey, who is ultra-goth but has a disarmingly warm smile. Since Will is taking a break from tennis, you teach him to play chess and he soon becomes obsessed, playing twenty games a day online. In between being annihilated by eight-year-olds on the internet, he tells you that his father has agreed to let him see a therapist who specializes in intergenerational trauma.
So far, the experience of seeing everyone again is not making you relive the pain. Though it is strange. Meeting everyone now in a climate-controlled room, seeing them bathed and dressed in clean clothes, is like meeting them again for the first time. Sometimes you’re not sure who they really are. Are they the people who screamed in despair in a clearing in the woods, or are they the people watching reality TV and eating snacks from the hospital vending machine?
This includes Diana. For all your talking on the phone, you thought everything would be comfortable again when you saw each other. But unfortunately, the old awkwardness has resurfaced, and you haven’t yet spoken about the night under the canoe. Theonly saving grace is that she’s started teaching you Serbian again. No swear words this time, but phrases you can repeat to Troy in hope that the strange sounds might awaken something in his brain.
“Molim te probudi se.”Please wake up.
“Ti si lepa dusa.”Yours is a beautiful soul.
“Tvoj veiner pas je tuzan.”Your wiener dog is sad.
You all trade off engaging with him. Fran plays him hardcore bands she likes, cranking up the volume on her tiny speaker, as men who sound like Cookie Monster scream profane lyrics into the room. In between songs, she tells him about her new medication, and what it’s like to taper off the old one. Will watches chess videos with Troy, staring with slack-jawed admiration at the confident nerds who lay out complex strategies he hasn’t yet begun to understand. Diana whispers things that nobody can hear, and at times, when you leave the room, you think you hear her singing to him.
When your turn comes, you aren’t sure what to do. It’s hard to talk to him without crying, or just ranting about your problems. Panic attacks, those old friends, rear up again, mostly triggered by nightmares about your trip. You can manage them, but you wonder sometimes if they’re here to stay. But Troy isn’t your therapist. And he doesn’t need to hear about your pain. If that’s true, however, what does he need to hear about?
Eventually an idea comes to you, and from the moment you think of it, you know somehow that it’s right. So one night when you go home, you climb back into the storage space above the garage and you find the box of books that you abandoned after Sean’s death. You dig through the musty stacks until you locateJourney Under the Sea. Then you start working your way through the book with Troy, each day choosing a different path.
“The choices you make are your own!” you recite from the intro. “One mistake may be your last… or it may lead you to fame and fortune!”
Some days you are attacked by a giant squid. Some days, it’s a great white shark. Still others, you get the bends, or drown in a cave, miles and miles beneath the surface of the ocean. On day four, it’s a giant poisonous sea snake whose venom has no antidote. But then, around day five or six, you choose a path that doesn’t kill you right away. And as you move farther beneath the ocean, you discover a trail to an underwater cavern where the lost people of Atlantis have lived for centuries.
As you read aloud about this meeting, you notice that other people in the hospital room have started to gather around you. It’s Fran and Diana today—Will is conspicuously absent—but they listen closely as the people of Atlantis give you the choice to become one of them. They can give you an operation that will allow you to breathe underwater, or you can decline. Everybody in the room has an opinion. Fran thinks it’s a trap. A nurse who has come in to check Troy’s vitals says they’ll kill you on the operating table, or put you in their zoo of creatures from the surface. Diana stays quiet. She has an odd look on her face.
In the end, you decide to go for it. Everyone is hanging on your every word, but when you turn to page fifty-eight, something falls out of the book. You watch it tumble to the ground, a folded-up piece of notebook paper. For a moment, everyone forgets about the plot; there must be a look on your face. You set thebook on Troy’s bed and reach down to grab the paper. When you unfold it, you immediately recognize the handwriting as Sean’s. At first you can’t even read it. You just look at the blue-penned letters like they’re decorative.
Then you see what they are: notes about his obsession with this book. All the paths. All the wrong turns. There are long streams of numbers that correspond to paths of pages. Routes through every part of the story, and which choices he made.
“What is it?” asks Diana.
You shake your head.
“I don’t know for sure,” you say.
You turn back to the book for a second, and while everyone listens raptly, you tell them about undergoing the operation to get the gills, and then about the life you lead underwater when it’s over. It’s a winning path in the book. You’re alive for once. But then the last line of the chapter gives you pause.You like it, it reads,but you regret that you will never again know the world above the sea. Nobody says anything. You look back at Sean’s scrawl. There are a few more notes at the bottom, seemingly about this page. You read them out loud.
“You can win and still lose. You can’t live a life fully under the surface. You have to find a way back even if it’s hard.”
The last words on the page stand alone, with some space in between.
“You are not an Atlantean,” you say.
You hear Diana’s chair skid back, and then you watch as she gets up and calmly walks out of the room. Everyone watches her go. You stand next, but it’s not until Fran says, “Go get her, dude!”that you feel your legs moving and you too head out into the hallway, where you find Diana looking at the bronze face of a man who donated to this wing of the hospital years ago. You walk up behind her, and she turns when she hears your footsteps. Her voice, when she speaks, is as clear and resolute as you’ve ever heard it.
“We have a choice, Case,” she says.
The man on the plaque looks old and distinguished, like he lived a full life doing important work and giving to charities. You want to let Diana know that you remember what she said about Sean’s last words. But she seems too determined, so you just listen.
“We can stay down here forever,” she says.
The hallway is so clean, the floor gleams like the surface of a lake.
“In our grief.”
You swallow and your throat is dry.
