A Swirl of Ocean

by Melissa Sarno

  “What is?” she asks.

  “A part of you to be a part of me.”

  She smiles. “Always.”

  “I only wish the ocean could have shown me more.”

  She sets my twirled hair against my neck and lets her fingers rest there. “There’s something you should know, Summer. About that morning.”

  “What morning?”

  “I always said that I found you, but…” She hesitates. “That’s not entirely true.”

  I feel my heart begin to race.

  “I didn’t walk the shore and stumble across you there. It wasn’t like that. I was at the deck, and I saw you in the water. You came in with the tide. I had to help you.” Her voice catches. “I had to help you breathe again.”

  I try to understand. “I wasn’t breathing?” I ask.

  She shakes her head. “You had swallowed too much water.”

  “Wait, so I was drowning or something?”

  “Drowned,” she says.

  Drowned?

  “I helped you start breathing again, and the paramedics came and you know everything from there. The police. The investigation.”

  But I can’t think of all that. I wasn’t breathing? “Was there anyone else there?” I ask, my heart drumming.

  “Not that I saw. And the detectives knew that. Always. The investigation was thorough. But there was a lot, in all that commotion, I might not have seen.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  “I mean, we never knew everything that happened that morning. We couldn’t.”

  “You couldn’t,” I whisper.

  “Maybe I should have told you sooner. But now you know it all.” She takes a deep breath. “I’m sorry I didn’t.”

  I feel her fingers resting near my necklace, and I reach for them. I wasn’t breathing and Lindy helped me breathe again.

  I turn to her. “You saved my life.”

  She squeezes my hand. “More like you saved mine.”

  “So what do you think of a summer in the mountains?” Jeremiah asks. He sits cross-legged on our kitchen chair with some homework assignment, all sweat-stained from track practice.

  Tanvi lies flat on the couch, her arms stretching up above her, holding on to a romance called Jockeys and Juleps.

  I just rest my elbows at the table with my own homework. Even if it’s months away until the end of the school year, I wonder how I’ll survive an entire summer without Jeremiah. “Why can’t your dad just visit you here again?”

  “ ’Cause I’ve never been to the mountains.”

  The reason sounds as good as any. It feels like none of us in Barnes Bluff have ever been anywhere. It’s funny that it would be the biggest hermit we knew of, Turtle Lady, who’d end up on someone else’s shores down in Florida.

  I try to imagine where I’d go, but I can’t even picture it. Maybe that’s the problem with year-rounders. All this living in a place where everyone else visits. You get stuck in the same endless cycle of seasons, never walking a floor that doesn’t have the slightest dusting of sand.

  Tanvi reads loudly, slapping another page down, as if to scream louder toward done. When I told her about Lindy saving me and how all my dreams were real, she called me the girl who came back from the dead, and she sank even deeper into stories, if that was possible. I guess she’s making sure she knows what love story she wants.

  I fumble through my own book. The one we found in Turtle Lady’s dumpster, A Guide to Long Island’s Shores. My new science experiment is becoming more like a history assignment. I’m putting all the shells to use. The oysters and mussels, the moon snails and lady crabs. They’re the history of each creature. A reminder of their pasts.

  The doorknob rattles, which sets Elsa off. She races along the floorboards, paws scraping the wood, yapping and clucking, rushing the door, then bouncing like a pogo stick.

  Elder pushes the door open, a goofy grin plastered across his face, like always. “Hello, Summer and friends.” He says it like we’re a television sitcom. He grabs Elsa’s collar, and she pops up and down like a crazed puppet.

  Tanvi is suddenly interested. Her book drops to the floor, and she sits up quick, surveying Elder and Lindy from her spot on the couch.

  The Shaky’s only open weekdays for lunch in the off-season, serving the fishermen who have already been up a full workday, so Elder drops off and picks up Lindy on the way to and from the hatchery. Lindy’s shedding her things, her bag and a funky scarf. She slips her flats off.

  I want to close up shop, too, rush my own things up to my room and yank Tanvi and Jeremiah away. But I know that Elder is a part of things now, so I will myself to stay put.

  Elder tries to keep Elsa down while holding out a white cardboard box. “I don’t want to interrupt your study group, but I thought you might want to take a look at this.”

  I guess I have to get up and take it, so I make a show of leaving the table, swinging around the chair, huffing, and traveling around Lindy’s lump of things. “What is it?”

  “I sent away for it. Careful. It’s fragile.”

  As soon as I get close enough, I get the whiff of Elder’s awful fish smell from a day at the hatchery and glance at Jeremiah, who is bringing his own hand to his nose.

  I try not to grimace as I take the box. It’s postmarked from a lab in Australia. Inside, there’s tissue paper and Bubble Wrap, and I carefully peel back the layers. It’s a shell. But different from any I’ve seen here. It’s in the shape of a coil, but none of its sides touch.

  “Spirula—” Elder and I both say at the same time.

  I look up at him. I didn’t think it was possible, but his smile is even goofier. There’s an excited tremor in his voice. “It’s the one I told you about. I thought since I ruined the mold experiment, you could use this for your assignment.”

  “It’s sixth grade, Elder. This isn’t kindergarten show-and-tell,” I say, but Lindy squeezes my shoulder, looking over me into the box.

  “It’s pretty,” she says.

  I have to agree as I run my fingers over the soft shell. It’s nice. He’s doing something nice. So I force a half smile. “Thank you. I really like it.” I hesitate. “I love it,” I confess. Because I do.

  We stand there for a minute, in silence. I guess he doesn’t get the hint that our moment, or whatever this is, is over, so I make sure to let him know. “We’ve got to finish our homework,” I tell him.

  “Oh, right, right. Of course. I’ll see you all later, Summer and friends.” He does this weird bow thing as he crosses the room, holding tight to Elsa’s collar. She’s seething as he drags her across the floor to the stairs.

  “He’s taller than I thought he’d be,” Tanvi immediately starts in.

  Lindy laughs.

  “I can definitely see what you see in him,” she continues.

  “Tanvi,” I scold.

  “What? Lindy’s all quirky and cool. She needs someone practical. Levelheaded. Science-y. He’s nerdy-cute.”

  Lindy slaps my shoulder, amused. “See?”

  I look at Jeremiah, and we roll our eyes at the same time, but I try to understand Lindy and Elder from Tanvi’s perspective, as if they are on the tattered cover of one of her paperbacks with the roaring ocean behind them. Maybe it does make sense.

  I hold on to the shell. “I’ll be right back,” I say, then I charge up the stairs myself, the remnants of fish smell wafting down the stairs. I hear the shower start up in the bathroom. Elsa scratches and yelps behind the door of Lindy and Elder’s room.

  I move toward the bookshelf of my own bedroom, to the arcade tickets and the jar of actual ocean.

  I lift it and swish around the murky brown water inside.

  Like Lindy said, we couldn’t know everything. At least, not now. The ocean is an endless study of secrets. Maybe, som
eday, it will reveal all of the ones that are mine.

  For now, I’m glad I came back to life. To this life.

  I look around at the piles of my funky shell collection and feel for the moon snail shell at my neck. I take out the Spirula from its box, from its place in a lab, perfectly white, pristine, and smooth. It’s not barnacled or jagged or a mix of faded colors like the others. It sits in a perfect coil, empty of who it used to be.

  The ram’s horn squid is so rarely seen alive, you’d never even know it existed if it didn’t leave its shell behind.

  I set it on the shelf, like a secret.

  “I just need to find one more thing,” I tell Lindy the next morning, the two of us slopping through the marsh. “And then the science project will be complete. Plus”—I point ahead—“you get to see this.”

  We both stop at the overturned canoe. Lindy runs her fingers across the wood. The paint is weathered and faded but there.

  “The turtle.” She smooths her hand over it. “I wanted Coop to paint a turtle.”

  “Why?” I ask.

  “I don’t know. I like turtles.”

  Our rubber boots squish in the mud.

  “I remember wanting so badly for things to go back to the way they were that summer. With Alexis. With Kimmy and Len. I spent a lot of time wishing for it.” She cups her fingers under my chin and turns me to face her. “Promise me you won’t do that.”

  I wince a little, knowing I’ve spent time wishing Elder away, wishing we could go back to the two of us, and Lindy knows that.

  She drops my chin from her hand. “You can miss stuff. That’s allowed.”

  I laugh. “Allowed? Like you can control missing.”

  “It just shouldn’t stop you from moving forward. That’s all. I might have closed out the past, but imagine if I stopped moving forward after Alexis was gone. Imagine all I would have missed.” She twirls her fingers in my hair.

  I look into the shallow pools of water, the way they ripple at the slightest hint of movement. Watch your step, Turtle Lady had warned.

  “They should be somewhere over here,” I say. I scoot down low. “This is where Turtle Lady told me about them.”

  Lindy crouches down, looking with me.

  “She was the one making sure they survived before she left. I have to make sure they made it.”

  I carefully scour the small tidal pools until I find the white and pinkish eggs, jagged-toothed and broken in the sand, and my heart beats, no, no, no, praying they haven’t been ruined and crushed.

  I dig softly around them. All that’s left are three broken shells. I sigh, relieved. “They hatched,” I tell Lindy. “They’re gone.”

  “I hope they’re okay.”

  I look out, across the marsh toward the shore, as if I could see the terrapins scurrying away, but of course I can’t. “They are. They have to be. It’s the way of things.”

  Lindy kneels beside me and we both reach out at the same time to collect the soft eggshell remains. A gift of the ocean that’s ours.

  Thank you to my editor, Julia Maguire, for understanding what I was trying to do with this story and guiding it forward with your remarkable insight. I feel so lucky to work with you. Rebecca Stead, thank you for being there every step of the way with warmth, humor, and kindness. You always have just the right words when my writer’s soul is weary.

  Allison Wortche, this book would not be a book without your enthusiasm for my work. To everyone at Knopf and Random House, I am thankful for all you’ve done to bring my stories into the world, packaged with such love and care.

  To early readers of Summer’s story: Lori, Emma, Susannah, Stuart, and Carys, I am grateful for your notes and thoughts. Jennifer Justice, I appreciate your help understanding more about adoption and foster care. Alison Cherry, thank you for the gift of your starfish story.

  To the Electric 18s, I would not have survived my first year as an author without your energy and support. Laurie Morrison, I am so grateful for your friendship. Thank you for reading Summer’s story and helping me find the right ending. Jennifer Chen, your hard work and dedication inspire me more than you know. Thank you for holding me accountable. Writing Done is never as satisfying without you on the other side.

  To my Goats: you are community, light, and love. Thank you for always being there. Sabrina Enayatulla, Gwen Glazer, and Rebecca Fishman, thanks for helping me feel less alone at my desk by letting me rope you into the publishing process. Bonnie Becker, this book would not exist without the hours of love and care you gave to Emily.

  Thank you to Tracy, Christine, Brian, Tara, Kim, and Scott for carefree summers on Layton Avenue. Jennifer Bezmen, I wonder if you remember the pickles. You are all at the heart of this story.

  Mom and Dad, thank you for Mondays and for a lifetime of love. Lynn Reed and Brad Reed, thanks for all of your support.

  Tyler, Owen, and Emily, thank you for inspiring me every day with your bright and open hearts.

  © KATIE BURNETT

  MELISSA SARNO is the author of Just Under the Clouds, which Publishers Weekly called “heartbreaking yet hopeful.” She lives in the lower Hudson Valley of New York with her family.

  melissasarno.com

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