Fractured Tide

by Leslie Lutz

  I got up. Wiped my eyes. The sun was gorgeous, laying its eggs all over the sunrise. Every egg bursting into flight just after it touched down. Orange, yellow, a slow burn of the sky-sea. Slosh. Slosh. Pop. I was restless, so I stood and straightened some gear, adjusted the bungees that kept the tanks in place, and folded a beach towel lying on the bench.

  Ben sat by the engine, twirling a pencil over his knuckles as he watched a small flock of birds floating a little ways off. Candy lay curled up on one side, a burned-out cigarette between her index and middle finger. Phil hunched in the captain’s chair, holding court over nothing. I retied the string on my bikini top, tight. Phil was weird, and he was new, and as soon as I got home, I was going to ask Mom to fire him. That felt good, thinking about what I’d do when I got home rather than what I’d do if the Coast Guard didn’t show up. And for once I wasn’t thinking about what I saw yesterday in the USS Andrews. My fear had gone deep and quiet.

  Mom was standing at the rear of the boat, her back to me, a silhouette against the rising run.

  She swore quietly.

  “What’s wrong?”

  She gestured to the ocean in a throwaway motion. “I left a tank and a reg at a safety stop.”

  Ben’s voice rose from just behind us. “What’s a safety stop?” He turned to me, still spinning the pencil, his eyes curious. I got the feeling that was his default setting: curious.

  “Before a deep dive,” she told him, “we hook a tank and regulator on a rope fifteen feet under the surface. If someone screws up and stays down too long, they can hang out at the safety stop and decompress without worrying about running out of air.”

  Ben mulled that over a second. “What happens if you don’t decompress?”

  “Nitrogen bubbles in your brain.”

  Ben turned his attention back to the birds, away from me. “Nice hobby you got there.”

  I picked up my wet suit and put a foot in.

  “No, Tasia,” Mom said. “I’ll go.”

  “Mom, I can’t sleep. And I’m bored out of my mind. You stay with Felix.” I nodded to the roof, where he was still sleeping peacefully. “He’s scared.”

  “He’s asleep.”

  “No one really slept last night.”

  “Have you met your brother? That boy snored through the last hurricane.”

  “I’ll get it. No big deal.”

  I tied my hair back, grabbed my tank, and suited up. Mom looked like she was going to stop me but instead turned and disappeared onto the roof deck. “Don’t be long,” she called over her shoulder.

  Ben side-eyed me. “Aren’t you supposed to go with a buddy?”

  I attached my regulator to the tank valve and screwed it on tight. “Sometimes it’s not practical. Besides, I’ve been diving three times a day, six days a week, since I was fifteen years old. I know what I’m doing.”

  “No high school student has enough time to do all that. You’d die of exhaustion.”

  “Mom pulled me out of school freshman year to help her on the boat after Dad . . .” I tightened a strap, even though it was already fine. “After he couldn’t help anymore. I do the homeschooling thing at night. Gives me plenty of time.”

  “Is that even legal?” he asked.

  I shrugged.

  Understanding lit his eyes, or maybe it was pity. Ben followed me with his gaze as I made my way to the stern. “Anyway, it doesn’t sound safe, what you’re doing.”

  “Somebody drops a fin over the side, and you want two people to suit up to get it?”

  “Yeah, actually.”

  I ignored him and slipped my mask over my eyes.

  Three years ago, right before your big exit, you talked me into that midnight dive on the reef. It’ll be like floating in space, Peanut, but with our lights, we’ll become the stars. Maybe it’s why I love diving in the dark, or the near dark, the sun slowly staining the waters red. Every time I descend into the black water, with my body hanging over hundreds of feet of nothing like a girl drifting on the dark side of the moon, you’re there with me.

  I took a giant stride off the platform. The world shifted, became a rush of bubbles. The cold slipped into my wet suit and soaked my rash guard and bikini.

  I made the okay sign. Mom waved from the roof deck. Her skin glowed rosy in the dawn light, her shoulders back and proud, her gaze set west, toward land. It’s one of my last, best memories of her.

  I swam for the white buoy that marked the descent line. The surface of the ocean slapped the side of my head, rippled over my faceplate. And when the sense of unease hit me, the one I’d had the day before in the USS Andrews, I brushed it away. Mom was right, I thought. I’d seen nothing but a dream in that ship, a floating, horrific dream that leapt out of my unconscious like a slippery fish. Narced. Imagining things.

  I reached the buoy. Purged my BC. The air burbled out of the valves and I sank.

  Immediate relief. Nobody tells you how boring it is, being stranded.

  Above my head, the early morning light skimmed the surface of the waves. Beneath my fins, the world inked out. I pointed my dive light down, past my feet into the blackness, and sank slowly. Like floating in space.

  Fifteen feet down on the ship line, the safety stop gear came into view; a bright pink tank, the reg out of its bungee and hanging loose, pulled sideways by the current. I slipped off my gloves and tucked them into a pocket on my BC. If I could have, I would’ve lip synced to the Vanessa Peters song playing in my head. That’s how much I wasn’t thinking about what swam just outside my circle of light.

  Untying the knot was awkward while holding the dive light in one hand and kicking against the drag of the current. The light kept falling from my fingers. Dangling from my wrist. Sweeping the depths like a crazy searchlight. I finally took out my reg, held my breath, and stuck the end of my light into my mouth. I’ve been practicing since you went away, and I can hold my breath for almost two minutes, a few seconds shy of my grandmother’s record.

  As soon as I pulled the last of the knot free, I should’ve been satisfied. Headed to the surface. Instead I froze, hanging on the rope like a barnacle.

  A prickle on my neck, a brush of current. A sixth sense just outside the poor reach of my dive light. Something was watching me.

  I shoved my reg back into my mouth. Then I swam in a circle around the ship line, forgetting about the gear in my hand. My light showed nothing but particles. They glowed under the beam, and then the current swept them away.

  I pointed the light down and waited, fins limp. My body adrift. The cold air dried out my throat. I knew it was dangerous, Dad, I did. I should’ve surfaced and swam like Michael Phelps to the boat. But like you, I always feel a little pulse inside me that says, Look.

  Better to be eaten head first, Peanut.

  The dive light sliced the dark open. Then a gray torpedo slid through the beam.

  I dropped the tank. It plummeted into the depths. My hand caught the rope out of instinct and the tank jerked to a stop. Pulled me off center. The dive light swung in an arc, scanning the depths. My eyes widened until they felt stretched behind my mask.

  Gray skin. I checked below again and replayed your lessons. You’re more likely to be struck by lightning on your way to Starbucks than you are to be eaten in the big blue. But I was alone. It was dark. There was a lot of water beyond the reach of a dive light.

  I stayed a moment longer, moving my fins slowly against the current, forcing myself to take stock. Sharks don’t want to eat people, I reminded myself. It’s always a mistake when they bite. This one wouldn’t want 120 pounds of girl covered in a neoprene casing. No way. I fire hosed my dive light around below.

  I barely registered the next flash of gray before it hit me. Right in my shoulder. The world flipped on its side, filled with bubbles. I dropped the tank line. The regulator fell from my mouth. A tail as big as my torso swished past.

  I shoved the reg back in and bolted for the surface, a panicked bubble in my chest spreading out into my leg
s, my fins. My head broke the top of a wave. The Last Chance came into view thirty feet away. Mom waved at me. Out of habit, I okayed with a fist on my head.

  But I wasn’t okay.

  I swam in a rush for the boat. So exposed, dangling down into the water, closest to whatever was under me. My flesh covered with next to nothing.

  A wave splashed across my mask. The world blurred, the boat tipped. The ladder bobbed in the waves twenty feet away. Too far. I was small, weak.

  I was food.

  ENTRY 7

  I DON’T REMEMBER MUCH from that swim. At least I don’t remember moving my legs and arms. I only remember the boat. Fifteen feet away. Then ten. Five. The waves pushing it up like a kid on a seesaw. The red lettering of the Last Chance tilting, crashing down.

  I reached for the ladder, and something brushed my leg. I cried out, the regulator tumbling from my mouth. A three-foot swell drew the boat up and out of my grip.

  I finally grabbed the first rung. Fumbled my fins off and let them fall. A final burst of adrenaline pushed me up the rungs, and I tumbled onto the dive platform and coughed on a lungful of real air.

  “You okay?”

  I turned to find Mom looking at me as if I’d lost my mind. She raised a bunch of grapes to her mouth and bit one off.

  I pulled off my mask and tossed it onto the bench with a clatter. “I dropped the safety stop gear. And my fins.”

  She stopped chewing. “All of it?”

  “It was all tethered together.”

  “What were you thinking, Tasia?”

  I started to tell her what happened. And then I realized I had an audience. Candy stood a few feet behind Mom, wrapped in a beach towel, and Ben lay on his side on the scuba bench, propped up on one elbow. Teague, the Bermuda Triangle theory guy, was sprawled out in the captain’s chair, one leg over the arm, craning his neck to get a better look. A crowd had formed on the roof deck.

  I felt stupid as I said it but did anyway.

  “There’s something in the water.”

  Mom turned her back to me, leaning over to peer into the waves, but I’d already caught the shift in her expression, the disappointment. “There’s always something in the water. It’s why we dive.” She took a deep breath, trying to control her temper. “You lost seven hundred dollars worth of gear.”

  A murmur rose from the boat next to ours.

  “Shark!” a girl on the roof deck shouted, and the others laughed.

  But she wasn’t kidding. There it was, that gorgeous dorsal fin cutting the water like a hot knife.

  Mom rushed to the port side. I pulled myself up to a bench to undo my gear, but my numb fingers wouldn’t work the release. So I just sat there with my tank growing heavier by the minute and tried to calm down. And you know how Mom is. How she’s changed in the last few years. She wasn’t about to take it back, not even after seeing what circled our boat. Because I’d dropped the gear. Seven hundred dollars of Mom’s—my—hard-earned money, flushed down the big ocean toilet.

  Candy held her hand over her mouth, her eyes wide. “That was in the water with you?”

  “He was just being a little friendly,” I said. “I shouldn’t have freaked out.”

  Ben, Teague, and Candy crowded the bench, their eyes lighting up with wonder and fear. “Whoa,” Teague said. “This is so much better than Shark Week.”

  Our morning visitor swam an arm’s reach from me, measuring us. Dorsal fin to tail, it had to be at least twelve feet long. It circled the bow and made its way down the narrow alley between the Last Chance and the Ruby Pelican.

  “What kind is it?” Candy asked.

  “Probably a tiger shark,” Teague said, and I hated that he got it right.

  “The ones that eat surfers?” Candy asked.

  “Don’t sound so jazzed about it,” Ben said. But it was in his voice too. The excitement.

  You and me, we’ve seen it a hundred times. People eating it up, the idea of the evil shark hunting humans with a malevolence usually reserved for serial killers and haunted clown dolls. But you know what I know: When it comes to sheer carnage, sharks have nothing on cars. Or guns. These rubberneckers, they sit in their living rooms watching Shark Week, gripping the armrests, while just outside, they’ve got a death trap parked in the driveway. A few feet away, in the bedroom closet, there’s a loaded gun under a pile of sweatshirts. And there they are, watching the nature channel and saying, Uh-uh, no way I’m going into the water.

  Bunch of idiots.

  “Okay, guys,” I said, leaning my head back against my tank. “Enjoy your shark porn.”

  I tried to slip out of my gear, but my hands shook, and the release at my waist was really jammed, damaged when I slammed against the ladder. I gave up, exhausted, and watched the top of the food chain swim on by.

  The tiger rounded the bow of our boat and disappeared, then popped back up on the port side. Something about the way it moved caught my attention. Swimming in jagged patterns, jerky and fearful. Not at all the way sharks act.

  Captain Phil stood on the sunroof, watching, still wearing that purple stone wife beater, which now had wide, dark pit stains. Mom climbed the ladder back to the roof to wake Felix from his pile of beach towels, leaning close to his ear to give the science lesson, pointing at the show. He smiled wide and leaned over the railing.

  I closed my eyes, thought about what Felix and I would do when we got home, and how maybe I’d use tip money from yesterday’s dive to take him for milkshakes at Amy’s Cafe, let him ask his big sister little kid questions about sharks. And I remembered something you showed me in a magazine once, the images of a surfer’s leg. The creepy indentation where it had healed up without a pound of flesh. How you closed the magazine when Felix toddled by, showed him the picture of the clown fish instead. That’s become my job since you went away—flipping the page to show him beautiful things, hiding the ugly bits.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I caught movement. The water buckled a few yards from our engine. As if something large pushed from below. Before I could turn toward it and see it full on, it was gone. My imagination, I told myself.

  More shouts from Matt’s charter. The girls who’d been sun-tanning yesterday were huddled together on the roof—scared and loving it.

  Slosh, thunk. Against the hull. Driftwood, I thought. Or sea trash. Something that fell off a container ship ten thousand miles away riding the currents toward our shores. Slosh. But for some reason my body didn’t believe it. Adrenaline kicked in as I searched the water for the source.

  The tether between Matt’s boat and ours tightened and groaned.

  The sun slanted its light over the water. The waves slapped the boat. The passengers on the Ruby Pelican and the Last Chance watched the tiger circle. The line groaned again. Splash. Some doofus had thrown a Coke can and pegged the dorsal fin.

  An odd instinct in me rose, like bubbles from a regulator, telling me we were all dead. Sudden and irrational, hitting me hard, like the shark had earlier, knocking me off balance. I struggled to get the tank off my back, fighting with the stubborn release.

  One of the girls on the Ruby Pelican called out, “Look!”

  The tail of the shark flailed in the water.

  Teague stood near Ben and watched it writhe and thrash. “It’s eating something,” he said.

  Next to the stern ladder, a ridge appeared in the water, and I stopped fiddling with the releases on my BC. Something moving just below, pushing up the top layer. A faint glow pulsing in dim morning light. Green. Phosphorescent.

  The feeling of unease, the thing that had dogged me since we dropped our anchor here, that’s when it opened up. I saw what was inside. Just for a second. And it was ugly, and terrifying, and inside my chest hard as stone roots. I couldn’t breathe for a full ten seconds. So I leaned against my tank, gripping my knees until my knuckles turned white.

  Wrong. All of it. My body felt light. Another weird thought hit me—I’d left some important part of myself in the wreck. Or worse,
brought something up with me.

  A cry from Matt’s ship. The shark had stalled in the channel between the boats, thrashing its long gray body in a frenzy. The sun slanted rays on it. A cloud of blood bloomed in the water.

  Teague stepped up next to me and leaned over the side to get a better look. “What’s it doing?”

  Something thick wrapped around the shark’s massive body. A clear rope of some kind, cutting into it. My first thoughts were seaweed, then tentacles, both wrong. Two more strands wrapped around it, one around the shark’s jaws, near its gills. More blood. And then, before any of us realized what was happening, the cords pulled the tiger shark down. Pulled deep until the gray of its skin faded into black and it disappeared entirely.

  A shocked silence settled over both boats.

  Movement again, to my left, near our dive platform. A flash of something whitish gray. I turned, and in my memory, that turn took forever. My gaze had been fixed on the red cloud in the water, and then I pivoted toward the little flash of gray-white, past the silver cleat on the gunwale, past the ice chest near the stern. The smell of a clogged drain drifting through the scent of sea brine hit me before I could focus on what it was.

  As thick as a rat snake, but almost see-through, its tip rose from the water and reached across the diving platform. Three more came with it, long and thin, like filaments of a jellyfish, trembling pink as the light of the rising sun hit them. Past the ice chest, the silver cleat. The moment I screamed, the thick one whipped up and wrapped around Teague’s thigh.

  He cried out, high-pitched, as the thing yanked his feet out from under him. I stepped back, my gear throwing me off balance. I fell. My head slammed into my tank, stars exploded in my vision, and the world flipped. Teague flailed out, his fingers scrabbling across the slick deck before grabbing on to my head, my hair, and then my gear, my face. Yells came from all around me. Ben. Candy. A thunder of feet on the roof deck.