Breathing Underwater

by Sarah Allen

“What?”

  “Go outside, open your mouth, and look up.”

  Something like that storm outside shivers down my back. This close to the windshield, it’s almost like being on a pirate ship in the middle of a tempest. Easy enough to pretend anyway, or get the feeling. And I’m with a version of the Ruth who talked with me last night and told me important things, and then let me help her write a song this morning. Kind of. I’m going to get that Ruth back. I have to, now, in this storm.

  “That thunder is crazy, huh?” I say, flipping my legs over the edge of my loft.

  Ruth is hunched into her earbuds.

  Just look up at me, won’t you? I think.

  No. This isn’t going to happen. My sister is going to be here with me, enjoying where we are, enjoying it with me, us together in the middle of this pirate ship storm.

  “Ruth,” I say.

  In that gesture she’s perfected, that motion I’ve started seeing in my sleep, she pulls out an earbud and rolls her eyes. “What now, Olivia?”

  “Wouldn’t it be freaking awesome if there was a storm like this above us when we were diving?”

  “You know that’s not how it works.”

  “But it would still be awesome,” I say.

  She rolls her eyes again.

  “What’s wrong?” I say.

  She raises an eyebrow like I’ve asked the stupidest question in the world. Like I’ve asked Benjamin Franklin if his kite experiment was a little shocking.

  “Maybe I don’t even want to dive pirate ships. Just go back to flipping out about rain to yourself, okay?”

  It’s like Ruth’s taken a magazine of all our games, our Anne Bonny and Mary Read, our couch-cushion planks and bedsheet sails and all our Treasure Hunts, and slapped me across the face with it.

  “Not dive pirate ships?” I say.

  “Honestly, sometimes it’s like trying to sleep with a flashlight shining in your eyes.”

  “Not dive pirate ships?”

  “It’s like living with canaries that won’t shut up.”

  The storm whips and rages behind me. Instead of shriveling me up, her words steam under my skin, but I focus on the crucial point.

  “What about our box?”

  Now she looks up at me, and though her voice is quiet, her eyes stab. “That’s the other thing,” she says. “I’ve been playing along, but how can you be so freaking naive? You think that stupid box is still there? Look outside, Olivia. Look at the real world for a change. You think that box would survive this? And this is one day, let alone years and years. Are you kidding me? Right now, that dumb cave is completely submerged, and that stupid box has been swept away and lost—”

  My arms push me off the ledge before I think about it. It’s a fairly long drop from the loft to the floor, and my knees vibrate with the force of landing. But I don’t fall. I will not let my plan fail, and that thought propels me forward like a wave. I step toward my sister. Her eyes widen enough for me to know my leap surprised her.

  “I want you to tell me we’re going to find that box,” I say. “And then I want you to come outside with me and take pictures in the rain.”

  She gathers herself and picks up her iPod, slides it into her pocket and starts lifting the earbuds to her ears. “Can I be left with some semblance of normalcy and privacy for two seconds, please?” she says.

  It’s like the wind and crashing thunder have started storming inside my skull, and I yank the earbuds from her hands, ready to tug them away, but Ruth snatches them back.

  “What the—”

  “Why? Why?” I ask, backhanding the air.

  “Calm d—”

  “We’re in the middle of a monsoon in the desert. With people who are taking us to pirate ships and probably buying us chocolate right now. Look at that storm. Can’t you see it’s magic? Magic? That box … we put that box there, all those things. I mean, don’t you remember? Don’t you remember the Treasure Hunts? We’ll go to the cave again, together, and it has to be there, it … or something. Something is there. Don’t you understand? How can you not get how … how important that is?”

  Ruth’s mouth opens, but I barrel on like a tsunami with miles of wind building up behind it. My whole being is laser focused and I understand in this moment how storms have eyes, how those eyes see nothing but what they’re pointed toward.

  “And not once, not once have you let me be excited. About the treasure box, about the ships. One time. And you know what? You think I don’t get it. You think I don’t get that things are hard for you. I mean, you say that often enough. I’m some stupid, idiot puppy to you. Well, you know what? It’s not all peaches and roses over here. You have no idea because it’s all about you; you don’t care about anyone else’s problems. You don’t listen. Can you really not think about someone else for two seconds?”

  Ruth’s eyes are wide, wide, wide, and there’s an ocean inside them, and she stares at me while our currents whirlpool and our tides clash.

  “Ever thought about having a sister who won’t talk to you? Who treats you like she wishes you weren’t there? Ever thought about that? Know how many phone calls with Mom on this trip have ended with talking about how I’m doing? Zero. Like, zero. It’s how’s Ruth. Always. Think about how many times she goes to bed without worrying. None. You do realize that, don’t you? And it’s sure as heck not because of me.”

  I can’t shut up.

  “Do you have any idea what I’ve been trying to do this trip? For you? Every time I’ve tried to … but when someone else talks to you, if I said it, then it wouldn’t … why can’t you do just this one thing for me? Just once? Why do you not see … why doesn’t this storm matter to you, or the ships? Why doesn’t our box? Our Treasure Hunts? All our Treasure Hunts?”

  It’s like I’m speaking past the years and years caught in my throat. We haven’t stepped into the rain, but my face is wet.

  “Why don’t I matter?”

  And there it is.

  All of it. Everything I’ve been holding in, bursting from me as raucous and tumultuous as the rain bursting from the clouds.

  The air hangs between us like a minor chord. Like a camera shutter left open.

  I let my words and my hurt bore into Ruth. I will not look away.

  But her gaze isn’t fighting me back. Her eyes are unfocused. Her forehead looks clammy and there’s a strand of hair sweat-stuck to her left temple.

  Her throat clutches.

  And then her pupils flip back under her eyelids.

  And she slips, slips, slips down to the edge of her pillow.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  My fault.

  We’re in the hospital waiting room.

  I’ve got my camera bag clutched to me. Not intentionally. It was a survival mechanism, an instinctual response, to grab it and hold it tight on our drive to the hospital.

  When it happened, I called Ellie and Eddie. I could barely talk. Eddie called an ambulance. Ellie rode in the ambulance with Ruth. Eddie and I followed in the RV, Eddie silently white-knuckling the steering wheel, the shock and roar inside me louder than any storm.

  Now the three of us are in the waiting room: Eddie, Ellie, and I.

  Ellie says Ruth is starting to wake back up. Ruth was moaning. Now we’re waiting for the doctors to tell us what’s wrong. To tell us how bad it really is.

  And it’s all my fault.

  I did something to set it off. I let out my meanest thoughts, the monsters in the darkest caverns of me. I let them all loose and it broke everything. If Ruth never wakes up again, then the last thing she’ll have heard is me yelling at her. Me acting like pirate ships and treasure boxes are more important than her.

  This isn’t what I meant. This isn’t what I wanted. The words I said didn’t mean what she thought they meant. Pirate ships aren’t more important. Digging up treasure was just supposed to help things. To fix things.

  After what feels like days and days, we’re all brought into a gray room where Ruth is lying on a bed.
We’re told she’s not unconscious now, just sleeping. We’re told to be quiet.

  Why couldn’t I have been quiet?

  She’s okay, the nurse tells us.

  Severe dehydration, the nurse tells us. Lack of nutrients. Ruth wasn’t eating or drinking or probably sleeping enough. We tried. I thought we were trying, trying hard, trying everything, but it wasn’t enough, and it still caught up to her. It caught up to all of us.

  Ruth will be okay, the nurse says. Ruth has tubes coming out of her arm that are pumping her full of fluids and good things. She will be okay.

  But I know the truth.

  I know this is my fault.

  Not eating or drinking are obvious bad signs—signs of The Pit—and what I tried didn’t help, couldn’t help. I should have seen how serious it was. I should have done more.

  Mom and Dad are driving to the airport right now. The next flight to Las Cruces leaves at 2:01 in the morning and they’ll be on it.

  Ruth will have to stay in the hospital for a couple days. When my parents get here, they will coordinate a doctor to come and talk to Ruth and maybe change the medicine she takes so it might be better at helping.

  I need to be better at helping.

  We all sit in the gray room for a long time. People walk past our door and nurses poke their heads in every once in a while and check on us and check the monitors that Ruth is hooked up to. I’ve seen her eyes flutter a couple of times. She hasn’t woken up, but her breathing is normal.

  Then a curly-haired nurse in pink scrubs walks in. “Ruth had these in her pockets,” she says. “You’re her sister, right?”

  She’s looking at me and everybody else looks at me too. I nod, and the curly-haired nurse hands me a Ziploc bag. Inside is a tube of ChapStick, earbuds, and an iPod.

  I can’t sit in the gray room anymore. When the nurse leaves, I tell everyone I’m going to the bathroom. I have Ruth’s iPod and earbuds in my pocket, but nobody asks about them.

  I walk down the hall, past the restroom, through the lobby, and out the front doors. The rain is still coming down in torrents. We’ve been washed ashore here in this sterile place, bruised and scarred.

  The storm feels better than it looks, washing down my face and back and arms. My hair will be plastered to my head, but I don’t care.

  Ruth’s iPod is in my hand, my body its attempted shield against the rain. I realize I don’t remember the last time I held or looked at it. No reason to, I suppose. But it’s been a long time. Years, even. The storm pounds down on me and I put in the earbuds, ready for the music and the rain to rock me. I scroll down to her playlists, ready to shuffle through.

  The playlist names—I recognize all of them: “Something Purple.” “Something Singing.” “Something Imaginary.” “Something Flying.”

  “Something New.”

  “Something Old.”

  “Something Magic.”

  “Something Gold.”

  These playlists are all of those things—everything. From what I can tell, these are the last playlists she was listening to, the same playlists we’d listened to together years ago. Maybe this is what she’s been listening to this whole time. I wish it was possible to take a National Geographic–worthy picture of titles on an iPod screen.

  Aerosmith. Queen. Mötley Crüe. I let the wind and the loud music whip me around like a shredded sail.

  When I realize I can’t feel my toes, I turn back around and go inside. Ellie is there, watching me through the glass door. I’m worried she’ll say something about me dripping water all over the hospital floor, but she says nothing, only wraps a white towel around my shoulders, uses another to pat down my hair, puts her arm around me, and leads me back to Ruth’s room.

  Ruth’s still asleep. I still have her iPod in my hand, and I towel off any leftover raindrops.

  “I know everyone’s starving,” Ellie says. “If I go find some food, is that okay? Eddie went to get pajamas and toothbrushes from the RV.”

  “Yeah, that’s fine.”

  “You’ll be all right?” Ellie says.

  “I’ll be all right. I’ll stay with her.”

  Ellie nods, then walks out the door.

  I take the empty seat by the bed. The lamp on the nightstand highlights half of Ruth’s face. Her eyebrows are very highly arched. I never noticed that before. And her chin is so small. Where did she get such a petite chin? We look nothing alike.

  She shifts, moans. Her eyelids flicker open. Her eyelashes look short with most of the mascara rubbed off.

  “Hey,” I say.

  She closes her eyes, groans, and clutches at her stomach.

  “Oh, hey, here.” I grab the vomit tub from the table and lay it on her lap. She holds it to her chin for a few minutes, dry heaving, but nothing comes. A few strands of saliva web her lips. Finally, she lies back into her pillow.

  “Water?” I ask.

  She shakes her head. Her eyes are closed. After a few minutes, I wonder if she’s fallen asleep again.

  “Why are you all wet?” she asks.

  I take her iPod out of my pocket and set it on her lap. “I was listening to this outside. I … I really like your playlists.”

  Somehow I know she’s not going to be mad.

  I pick the iPod back up and put it in her hand, and for a second we’re both holding it. The purple under her eyes is the color of survival. For a second we both have our hands on the earbuds.

  She smiles, then she looks sad. Her throat bobs. “I was gonna make a new playlist. For this trip. But I…”

  Her hands tighten around the hospital blanket. She doesn’t finish her sentence. She doesn’t have to.

  Ruth is here. All of her, all of her happy and sad music, good and bad signs. And all of me is here too.

  I will keep hoping for good things. Magic and gold things. I will pray for strong rigging.

  “I wanna show you something,” I say.

  My camera bag is on the counter, above the cupboards with tongue depressors and more plastic throw-up tubs and all the other patient-room supplies. I slide my camera from the bag and when I head back toward the bed, Ruth scoots over and pats a tired hand on the blanket. I sit next to her.

  I click through the display screen until I find the picture I’m looking for. I angle it toward Ruth.

  “Your hands holding the concert program,” I say.

  Her eyelids blink slowly, but she says, “Hey, that’s cool. I like the stage curtains in the background.”

  I point to the bottom corner of the program, to tiny letters that say New Orleans.

  “Something New,” I say.

  Ruth’s mouth opens, but she doesn’t speak.

  I click through to the picture of Ned the sea turtle. Again I show Ruth. “Something Old.”

  She stares at the picture. She taps a finger on Ned’s green nose.

  “That rattlesnake bridge I was asking Ellie about?” I say. “That was going to be Something Magic. And for Something Gold, a picture of the two of us holding our treasure box.”

  Ruth’s hand rests on the camera.

  “You did the … This is why you wanted to take pictures at that graffiti so bad,” she says.

  I nod.

  “Sorry,” she says. “I’m so sorry.”

  I think of all the things I said to her tonight. “I’m sorry too,” I say.

  They aren’t the perfect words, maybe for either of us. No words will mean exactly what I want them to, but for now, these will do. I reach over and find her hand and hold it and she holds my hand back.

  We stay like that for a while.

  Then she says, “Show me the rest.”

  I turn to her and give her my best full-on, wide, emoji-worthy, puppy-dog grin. “Okay!”

  She laughs.

  I slide the camera back up toward us, click on the display screen, and we start from the beginning. I show her the shoe picture from Café du Monde. We look at pictures of the graveyard, pictures of trees on the side of the road whipping past, and
the high-angle shot I took of Ruth in her bed. We linger on the silhouetted picture of Ruth and the little girl at the aquarium.

  When we get through all the pictures, Ruth leans back in the bed and closes her eyes. “So, Miss Travel Photographer,” she says, “where are we headed to next?”

  “Either New Zealand, for the diving, or London, when you and the internationally renowned band you write for go on your grand European tour.”

  “Eight-week tour, minimum,” she says.

  “I’ll take pictures of you and the band on Abbey Road.”

  She rolls her eyes the friendly way. “Duh, of course. If…” She pauses, looks down at our hands, then back at me, then back at our hands. I think she’s trying to find the right words for something. Finally she just sticks out her tongue in faux annoyance and says, “If you don’t bug me too much before then.”

  Maybe it’s the rain, maybe it’s her music, or maybe I’m just getting better at it, but this time I think I know what she’s trying to say:

  If I’m up for traveling. For anything. For leaving the house. It’s unknown and uncertain waters, sis. That’s what she’s saying.

  Here’s what I’ve learned about The Pit. You don’t really have a choice about falling into it. You just do.

  Maybe one day we’ll go to New Zealand or London.

  Maybe we’ll watch Edward Scissorhands and The Twilight Zone for three weeks.

  I’ll be there, either way. Holding on to the rigging.

  “I’m sorry,” Ruth says again. “I’m sorry you were worried.”

  “Psh,” I say. “Don’t even. We worry about each other. That’s what sisters are for. Besides.” I squeeze her hand. “You also make me happy. You like your weird little sister’s pictures on Instagram and send her funny selfies and appreciate the random things I bring you, like bird feathers. I mean, you know better than anyone that sometimes I’m helpful and sometimes … not, and sometimes I probably push things too hard, trying to make them exactly what I … But anyway, the point is … the point is, my life wouldn’t have treasure hunts without you.”

  She gives a laugh that’s very close to crying. “Not so much on this trip. I haven’t been my … I’ve been having a hard time and you get the worst of that.”