What Happened to Lani Garver

by Carol Plum-Ucci

  I stare at my dad's empty desk chair, then the ship-to-shore radio, hearing what my intuition tells me is a dream, but I'm wide awake.

  "Coast Guard, this is the vessel Goliath. We are approximately eighty-four miles southeast of Atlantic City. we just lost power and a valve below the waterline. We have a list. We are caught in something, a very heavy current pulling us northeast. We are being ... sucked—Mayday, Mayday. Coast Guard, this is the vessel Goliath—"

  I grab for the handset and push down the button, which stops the shrieking, at least while I speak. "Mom? What's wrong? Over!"

  The shrieking mixes with her voice while she's talking to me, to Dad next to her, it's all mixed together. "oh, shit, we got the baby! Evan! Tell your brother to ... Wade! What the hell is that? over the port stern! Look with your eyes! Mother of God!"

  I want to jump through the radio to get to my mom's screaming Maydays, and I want to bolt upstairs to get my brother, Emmett. I end up backing out slowly, hearing The She until she has almost overpowered my mother's voice, which is screaming. The sound is all through me then, coming from the sky, the beach, the radio.

  I'm up the stairs, throwing open the door, but Emmett isn't there. I tear down the hall to the big wooden door and the stairway that leads up and around to the widow's walk. I pass my mom's padlock, hanging open, and try the stairs that go up and up and round and round. But I'm still a thousand pounds and I can feel myself being sucked down ... into black, deep, dizzy, swirling black. I croak, "Emmett...," but I'm falling backward ... forever and ever falling.

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