Vicious Deep (2 page)

I was born at sea.

Or so my mother said. They were in my dad's rented summer rowboat having one of their seaside picnics way out on the peninsular nook of Manhattan Beach and the rest of Brooklyn. That's when she went into labor. I've always pictured her in the middle of biting her sandwich, then dropping it and putting her arms around her stomach with me inside. And my dad all flustered with his glasses practically falling off his nose, not knowing if they'd make it to the dock in time. Mom said she grabbed at the sides of the boat, and he tried to row at the rhythm of her breaths until they reached the dock and she could start pushing. But they didn't make it to the dock, and I was born right there in the water.

When I was little, my mom would tell me this story every night before I went to bed, after all the other fairy-tale books had been exhausted. It's funny—I haven't thought about that in a long time.

•••

The morning sun lashes my eyes like a whip.

I roll over and cough up sand and water. I pick at something stuck in my teeth. It comes off on the tip of my finger. It looks like a contact lens. I start to think of what I must have swallowed in that water, but it's really best not to.

My body feels like I've been pressed together by a set of boulders and then shaken—and then stirred.

I want to stand, but I can,t figure out what hurts more—the dryness scratching its way down my throat, the salt burning at my tear ducts, or my legs aching all the way down to the bone. I want to burrow in the sand until the itch along my skin goes away. The back of my skull is heavy. I can only lift it for a moment to see where I am. The sky—overcast but still white-hot where the sun is hiding—spins. I catch a glimpse of the boardwalk and the Wonder Wheel, and I'm a little relieved that heaven looks a lot like home.

My ears pop, and there is a warm emptiness where the water was clogged. My heart pounds, and it feels like someone is playing a bass drum right beside my head. I can hear sirens and four-wheelers far, far away. I can hear crabs making their way up the beach, the surf racing to suck them back into the water. My eyelids are heavy but I fight to keep them open. For a moment, just a moment, I fear I'm not really alive, because I must have drowned. I must have.

I try to stand again, and everything hurts too much for me to be dead.

“Down there!” someone shouts. A dude's voice.

“Where?” A girl's voice.

“By the pile of garbage.”

“Which pile?”

“Where all the wood is.” He sounds exasperated, like he's too hot and too tired to be out here.

“Ohmigod.” I know her voice. “Ohmigod. Ohmigod. Ohmigod.”

“Layla, stay in the car!” he says. “You're not even supposed to be on patrol with me!”

Feet hit the sand and run.

Engine turns off.

Guy grunts.

Second set of feet on sand.

Hands on my chest. “Tristan?”
Her
hands on my chest.

I keep my eyes shut, which isn't hard to do, because I've never wanted to go back to sleep so bad before, not even during homeroom with Mr. Adlemare. My heart skips, because I know she's going to do it. She doesn't even press her ear on my chest or check the pulse at my wrist, which is the first thing we are certified to do. Good thing too, because the bass drum has moved from my head to inside my chest. Her fingers slide into my mouth and push my jaw open. Now, I can't say I haven't dreamt about this moment before, because when your best friend suddenly transforms into the girl every guy notices walking along the beach, believe me, it's the only thing
to
think about.

I press the back of my tongue to the roof of my mouth so her CPR doesn't choke me. I've had enough of nearly drowning for the day. Her lips are warm, like leaning your face up at the sky and wishing the sun would kiss you, and it does. It really does.

I can't help it. I fight the ache in my arms and press her down against me. I touch my tongue against hers and taste the salt on her bottom lip.

Now, I should remember that the last time I tried to kiss her was on my seventh birthday during pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey. She pinned the sticker on my cheek, so I kissed her, because when you're seven, a kiss from a boy is the worst kind of punishment. That time she slugged me on the chest and ran to my mom. She's gotten stronger since then. Her fist comes down on my chest like a hammer.

“Damn,” I go, “you hit like a dude.”

Her lips are open, all shocked like whatever she was going to yell at me is lodged in her throat. I don't know if I'll ever be able to look at her without thinking of this moment. Her entire face is red, and her cheeks puff up in that way they do when she's so angry she can't stand it.

“On the bright side, you saved me,” I go. I can't stop from grinning. “Right?”

“Looks like he didn't need CPR after all,” says a strange guy's voice. I notice him for the first time, a guy so orange that his white hoodie radiates against his skin. He's got muscles that put boulders to shame, even though his face doesn't look older than mine by much. He brings his radio to his lips and mumbles something into it. The feedback pinches my eardrums.

“Hey, man,” I say. I try to nod my chin up in the universal guy-salute, but my neck's too stiff and I must look like a spaz.

“Don't act like anything hurts all of a sudden,” Layla says. Why's she so mad anyway? It was just a kiss.

“Look, I'm sorry. I didn't know it was you,” I lie. “I thought it was some hot EMT coming to my rescue.”

Orange guy chuckles and talks into his radio some more. “The actual EMTs are on their way if you want to play dead some more.”

“Don't mind if I do.” I avoid looking at her. I have to. I prop myself up on my elbows, though my muscles contract in protest. I don't need this guy telling other lifeguards that I'm a wimp. Though I guess I have that almost-being-mangled-by-the-ocean thing as an excuse. “Good to see you, though. That was some sick wave. Wish I'd had a surfboard. Oh, yeah, thanks for finding me.”

“I'm calling your
mother.
”

“Aw, come on, Layla. I was just playing.”

She stomps up the sandy hill until the only thing I can see is her ponytail swinging in place, taunting me and moving steadily out of my reach.

My favorite memory of Layla is when she told off a cop.

She was nine and change, because I was already ten and she still had some weeks to go. She hated that I was born on June 24, right smack in the best part of our Coney Island summers, and her birthday was all the way in August, when the water started getting cold and the trash piled up as tall as we were.

The cop, three times our heights and with a gleaming gun at his side, stepped right in front of me. I was pulling our raft toward the water by some moldy rope I'd found under the pier. We'd just read
Huckleberry
Finn
and wanted to sail off onto the Mississippi, but all we had was the Coney Island Beach. The raft was my greatest accomplishment, wood planks supported by our boogie boards held together with Krazy Glue taken from the baby-sitter's desk drawer. The tips of my fingers were raw from having stuck them to each other and then pulling them apart.

“What do you think you're doing?” the cop said. He was too tall for me to read his badge, but I remember his face, fat and red with caterpillar eyebrows.

“Why?” Layla asked.

“Answer the question.”

“We're not supposed to talk to strangers,” she said, her hands on her hips, the same way she did when her dad told her she wasn't allowed to play with me so often. That she also needed friends who were girls.

The cop pulled out his badge. “See this? I'm not a stranger.” And then the cop reached for me. Just to grab my shoulder, just to take us back to the boardwalk. But I struggled and Layla kicked him on his shin, and we left the raft that we'd worked on for a whole week.

Sure, another cop found us on the boardwalk and called our parents. I lied and said
I
was the one who had kicked the cop, and he didn't say different. Layla was pissed at me for trying to cover for her, but I always have and I always will. Just like I know she'd do the same for me. She's my best friend. She's my Layla. She's my girl.

•••

In the ambulance they give me extra-strength, hospital-approved painkillers that numb my muscles until they feel like putty and the stretcher feels like down feathers.

For a moment, I'm falling. It's one of those dreams where your mind zooms out and you're falling, falling, until you think it's actually happening, so you jump in real life, and that jolts you out of the dream.

But the nervous jolt lingers throughout my body like the world just dropped from under my feet and I still haven't hit the ground. I can barely keep my eyes open. What if I don't wake up? Why can't I remember anything? But my body is numb and sleepy and warm, and when I do push myself to open my eyes, I'm in the hospital. I'm hooked up to a bunch of beeping machines with screens that look like last week's algebra test I got a C on.

A nurse comes in. She's tiny, with a round face and eyes like the anime posters in the boys locker room. Except
those
anime girls are blowup dolls in Catholic school uniforms, and this nurse is just sweet. She comes up close, and I can see she doesn't have any makeup on, except for the pink on her cheeks. No one's cheeks can be that pink.

“Hello, nurse.” When I hear my voice, it sounds raspy, the voice I always think Rip Van Winkle would've had after he woke up in the wrong century. That's how I feel—like I've slept for too long. I look around the white room, but there isn't even a clock.

She fumbles with her clipboard, flips through some pages. Her lips open, but it's like she doesn't know what to say, because she just stands like that.

“You're awake?” she says. It's supposed to be a statement, but it sounds like a question. Or maybe the other way around. You never know with girls.

“Yeah. Couldn't sleep with all this beeping.”

She gives me a look that certifies me as the biggest douche bag this side of Brooklyn, and that says a lot. “Oh, that's a joke.” She looks down at the floor. She's wearing white sneakers with pink socks.

“Not a very good one, I guess.”

“No, really. It's funny!” She gives me a truly pretty smile. She walks up to my bed and fixes the pillow. She smells like chemicals trying to smell like apples and vanilla, but it's still nice.

“What's your name?” I ask.

She points at her name tag. “Christine. You sure are popular. We had to put some of the flowers out at the nurses' station, because they don't fit in here.”

For the first time, I look around the room. I've never been in a hospital before. I don't even remember having to go to the doctor before. This hospital looks just like the ones in the soap operas Layla's mom watches, all white with a TV running a basketball game in one corner and a little table full of yellow and white flowers. Except mine has bouquets on both windowsills, on the table beside my bed, and all along the wall on the floor. I can't even imagine who they'd be from. My mom wouldn't send flowers. She would be here. “I'm Tristan.”

She laughs and fiddles with the wires taped to my pulse. “I know.” She nods over to where my file is at the foot of the bed.

Duh, again. “So, Nurse Christine”—I take a deep breath and put on my best grave face—“am I terminal?”

It takes a second for her to register that I'm still just kidding. When she gets it, she looks at her white sneakers again, shaking her head. “You shouldn't joke about those things.”

Stupid me. She sees death and sickness all day long.

“I'm sorry,” I go. “You don't have any pills to cure me of being a jerk, do you? 'Cause that would help me out
a
lot
. Maybe even some sedatives?”

This time she laughs for real. “I think the sedatives we already gave you give you nightmares. You were talking in your sleep.”

“You were watching me sleep?” I think I say it because I like the way her cheeks flood fuchsia when she looks away from me, all shy.

“I should j-just go get someone, I think.” She leaves the clipboard in the metal slot at the foot of my bed and is out the door. Man, as much as I can get girls to like me, I sure make them run away as fast as they came.

Two seconds later the door opens and in walks my mom. She takes three huge steps and pulls me into an iron grip.

“I think you just realigned my spine.”

“Oh, honey, I'm sorry.” She holds my face in her hands and says, “Let me look at you.” Her voice is smooth and deep, like she should be singing everything she says.

Her eyes—a turquoise so sharp I would say they were freakish if mine weren't the same color—are all watery, and I can't stop myself from burying my face in her embrace, because when I ran out into the storm, I remember her face flashing in my mind.

She wipes her eyes with her index fingers and tries to laugh it off. “I could kill you for worrying me like this.”

For the first time, I notice Layla and Maddy standing to the left of my bed like they're afraid to come too close.

“Do you remember what happened?” Mom asks.

I shake my head and regret it, because the room spins with it. I remember sand and a whole lot more pain than I'll ever admit to willingly.

“It was so strange,” Layla says. “We were just talking—” She pauses, like she's not sure if she's remembering right either. She bites her lips before continuing, and I fidget because every part of me is happy to see her.
Every
part. I remember the CPR on the beach like a flash. Her angry face walking away from me. I rub the spot on my chest where she punched me.

Now, sitting in the visitor's chair, she plucks a daisy from the bouquet on the table beside her. She twirls the yellow flower in her hand and squeezes a petal between her fingers, like she's trying to get the sticky sweetness out of the flower before she plucks it.
She
loves
me.

“We were talking,” Maddy interrupts. She takes a seat at the very corner of my bed. She stares at my feet sticking out from the blankets. “Then we saw those storm clouds, and people just started screaming and freaking out and running out of the water all at once. You were holding this little girl who wouldn't stop
crying
. Then you gave her to
me
.” Her voice reaches a high pitch before she stops and takes a deep breath.

Layla plucks another petal. It falls onto her lap. She's wearing white shorts and a blue T-shirt that says “LOLA STAR” in big yellow letters.
She
loves
me
not
.

“We were getting evacuated, and they couldn't go after you, because they had to get everyone else off the beach. And then we made it to the boardwalk just as the wave crashed. It reached all the way up to the boardwalk.”

“Yeah, Ruby's roof came down a bit, but nothing major.”

“I remember spinning,” I say, with sudden unease in my gut.

“They said there was a whirlpool a few miles out. Some schooners hit the bottom. They've been washing up for a few days.”

“Do you remember anything else?” my mom asks, brushing my hair back. The gray overcast light makes the red of her hair look so much brighter. Actually, everything looks brighter. The golden tan on Layla's skin, even the dull blond of Maddy's pigtail braids shines. My hearing isn't as good as when I woke up on the shore, and I don't know if I was just imagining that stuff, but I swear I can hear the way my mom's heartbeat quickens and skips. “What's wrong?”

She shakes her head. “I hate hospitals.” She hums something, which is what she does when she's distracted.

“You're such a fast swimmer,” Layla says.
She
loves
me.
“You got out so far before the first wave even hit. I've never seen you swim like that.” She says the last bit like she's really trying to remember the last time she saw me swim, like she's been missing something. I'm missing a lot of somethings, and it's making the back of my head pulse.
She
loves
me
not.

“Th-then the next day there was no sign of a storm. I mean, it's been overcast, but the water is super still. Beach patrol's been searching the shore for days.”

“Whoa, wait. How many days has it been?” I ask.

“Three,” they say in unison.

Three
days?
I can't even say it out loud.

“Alex and I found you this morning.”
She
loves
me. She loves me not.

I sit up and feel stronger right away, like lying down is the problem.

They're so quiet that I can't stand it. “Guys, what? What's wrong? I'm alive. Happy news. What's with the morbid?”

“It's just that…you're the only one we've found,” Layla says. Then adds, “Alive.”

“Shit.”

She
loves
me. She loves me not. She loves me.

I jump when Mom goes, “Madison Shea! What
are
you doing?”

Maddy lets drop the corner of the covers she's holding up. “Sorry, I j-just…There's stuff on your feet, Tristan.”

And there on the inside of my ankle is a thin residue of sand that looks like it's been mixed with glitter. That's Coney Island sand for you.

My mom forces a chuckle, the kind she reserves for PTA meetings and community brunches. “The sooner we're home, the faster you can have a real good bath.”

“Mom, if I'm the only survivor so far, they're not just going to let me walk out of here. That nurse just went to get the doctor.” Not that I want to stay here any longer. This is just like my mom, hating hospitals so much that even when she sprained her ankle last December, she just sat on the couch for two weeks rather than see a doctor. Two
amazing
weeks for her, since Dad and I were her menservants.

The cute Asian nurse comes back in. “Hey,” I say instantly.

She
loves
me
not.

She gives me that shy smile, then looks directly at my mother. “Doctor Burke is taking off a cast, ma'am.”

“Maddy, will you tell my husband that we'll only be a minute? Oh, and will you take one of these bouquets? They're just lovely. Pity we can't take them all.” She plucks a card off one and reads it out loud. “‘Get well soon, XOXO. Luv, Amanda.' Who's Amanda?”

“I don't remember,” I say. Sometimes my mom acts like she's not part of this universe, living always in her head. Maddy is still in the room, and even though she looks away quickly, I don't miss the hurt on her face. She picks up the bouquet of daisies beside Layla and walks out of the room like she can't put enough distance between me and her.

“What a strange girl,” Mom says before turning to me. “Your clothes are in the bathroom.”

I don't know what to say.
This
is
insane?
Can you get arrested for leaving a hospital without a doctor's approval? Is it like walking out on a restaurant check? I hold up my wrists with all the tabs hooked to them. “Um, hello?”