Girl Underwater Read Free

steady, too, like he was built for this. Built to be here, in this moment, for reasons I will never understand.
    Together, we crouch down as much as our bodies and space will allow. Time stalls, then stands still. Oxygen masks skitter over my back like confused birds. Screams turn to sobs. The plane heaves up, down, sideways. I desperately want to look out the window, to get my bearings. To see one last thing—a star, a house, or maybe just the sky—before I die. Before everything ceases to be.
    Instead, I stare at my shoes. A weathered pair of old Nikes, chlorine-bleached from all those hours on the pool deck. One of the laces is untied, but I can’t tie them with my arms locked around my legs. So I just sit there, gazing at the faded Nike swoosh, watching my tears stain the industrial blue carpet. What an awful thing to see right before you die. Soda stains, dust, a dead spider. But I’m too afraid to look at anything else. I’m afraid to even move until Colin says my name and that awful terror recedes again.
    We’re only six inches apart, our faces so close I can taste the whisper of peppermint on his breath. He must’ve brushed his teeth after that coffee, which I know is a weird thing to think right now, but it streaks across my mind anyway, a grain of comfort in the chaos.
    I’m glad he’s here—someone familiar, if only in the loosest sense of the word. He must be thinking about his actual family: his parents, his siblings if he has any. The people who raised him, their alarms set for five o’clock on Wednesday morning, waiting for him to come home.
    The question comes to my lips, unbidden. “Won’t you miss your family?”
    He looks at me for a long moment. A pained expression colors his face, then fades. “We’re going to make it, Avery.”
    Something about the way he says my name makes me forget the hurtling luggage and blinking lights, even as the plane lurches forward, then dips with a violent shudder. A renewed chorus of screaming goes up. Something hits the ceiling, then drops, limply, onto the floor. I catch a glimpse of someone’s head and close my eyes hard enough to hurt.
    An announcement rolls over the speakers, as if it even means anything anymore: “This is your captain. Brace for impact.”
    This time the view out the window shows dark pines flitting past us like an accelerated movie reel. A lake glistens in the distance, reflecting the pale light of the moon. This isn’t so bad, I think. To see something so magnificent, so natural, right before we die. I always loved the water: lakes, oceans, pools. I always felt at home there.
    Then, I let it all go, finding Colin’s gaze instead. It’s only us now, our paths converging in a spiraling nowhere. As I try to process what it means to be with this familiar stranger, a strange serenity floats over me. It’s as if all the thousands of horrible moments before this one have distilled themselves into something meaningful, something almost like fate. “You have the bluest eyes,” I say.
    A lone tear rolls down his cheek, the kind that comes without warning or expectation. I want to touch it. I want to make things right again.
    Then, a roar. It sounds like the fingers of God scraping the belly of the plane, a gritty screech that makes my blood hum.
    â€œDon’t be afraid,” he breathes.
    And then we hit.

3
    T he date screams at me from the hospital white-board: WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 10 .
    How did it get to be December tenth?
    As I consider this, my nurse bustles in, tells me it’s time for breakfast. She sets the tray on the table, and the stench of processed eggs fills the room. Unlike yesterday, or the days before that, there is no lunch menu this time.
    No lunch menu because today I’m going home.
    A pile of spare blankets sits in the corner. On the opposite wall, an electrical cord dangles from an unplugged flat-screen TV. I stare at the blank