Page 34 of No One Aboard
Francis swam deeper to examine the fish. He scooped up a shell inside of which a shy pink crab drew in its legs. Beforefollowing, Tia scanned the area for Rylan and MJ. They were gone, probably exploring the rocky parts that promised to reveal more marine life.
Tia and her father continued leisurely along the ocean floor. This was the way Tia preferred her father: quiet and exploratory, like Rylan. Here, there was a temporary truce where there could be no verbal tug-of-war, no power struggle or testiness.
No... All human intentions were cut short at the entrance to the sea.
Tia checked her gauge: 1200 PSI. Time lilted underwater. She understood how Rylan felt, never wanting to leave, but there would be more diving to come on the trip. It was time to find the others and resurface. Tia got her father’s attention and attempted charades to ask him where Rylan and MJ might be. Should they surface and meet up with the others back there? Francis signaled they should look around a little longer and then ascend.
Together they retraced their swim, weaving around rocks and even gliding through a tunnel.The Old Eileencame back in sight, the surface of the sea like twisted blown glass.
But not MJ or Rylan. Where could they have gone that Tia and Francis hadn’t seen? Maybe they’d been carried by a current to a new location or were already back at the boat. Tia gave Francis the thumbs-up, the signal to ascend, but Francis shook his head and pointed behind her.
Rylan was swimming toward them, doing everything a diver shouldn’t. His arms scrambled through water to reach them faster, his mask was half flooded, and Tia knew just by looking into his eyes that her brother was hyperventilating. Any annoyance Tia had felt toward him before the dive dissipated, and she swam hard to reach him. A panicked diver was unpredictable and needed—at all costs—to be kept from rocketing to the surface and rupturing their lungs. Rylanpointed frantically, but what he was pointing at, Tia couldn’t tell. Was there a shark? A riptide? What had terrified him so thoroughly?
Tia latched onto Rylan’s shoulder straps. They needed to make a controlled emergency ascent. She signaled for him to breathe and started kicking to go up. As they ascended, she fumbled through the water and found Rylan’s inflator and deflator, deflating all the air from his BCD and hers so their buoyancy wouldn’t shoot them upward and tear their lungs. She didn’t know where MJ or Francis were, but it didn’t matter right now. They were almost there.
Their heads broke the surface after what felt like hours. Rylan ripped his mask off his head and the regulator from his mouth before Tia could stop him. Divers weren’t supposed to shed their gear until they were back on land or boat. Even though the water wasn’t choppy, it was still moving. He could lose his mask or choke on water or worse.
Rylan gasped and struggled to form words as tears sprung in his eyes. “We... w-we’ve gotta... We have to... Oh God, oh God...”
“Hey!” Tia shook him a little. She wasn’t going to get anything out of him in this state. “Count with me. Just to ten, okay? One, two, three...”
He counted with her, stuttering over the words, until he finally found a pattern of breathing that wasn’t going to cause him to faint in her arms.
“Okay,” said Tia once they reached ten. “Talk to me.”
He stared at her with the eyes of a wild animal.
“Something happened to MJ.”
Chapter 16
Lila Logan Cameron
Call sign: Cassiopeia
Day 3 at Sea
Lila slipped inside the crew’s empty cabin, her bare feet whispering like satin over wood. She had changed out of her post-bathing kimono and instead into her featherlight cover-up and a white bikini. Alejandro, Nico, and MJ had kept their room tidy, tidier than Lila’s children’s, at least. It was odd. Lila had assumed that Tia’s stint at boarding school would have made a bed-maker out of her daughter, but it seemed to have had the opposite effect.
Lila skimmed past Nico’s bunk. The boy had pinned a couple postcards on his wall: marble columns in Athens, a vineyard in Tuscany, even a spired building in Guadalajara with faded cursive in the corner that readMiss you,m’hijo.
Alejandro’s bed was the upper bunk. Lila poked her small nose over the mattress to see what he kept closest to him. The only scrap of decor was an old photograph of Alejandro, Francis, and another man, when they were about thirty years younger. Their arms were around each other, and they were sunburned, shirtless, and beaming. Lila felt a pang at the sight of her husband’s youthful face.
At home, Lila had her own collection of pinned papers onthe wall over the old landline. They were headlines with her name in them mostly, and as the years crept by and she noticed the papers were yellowing and the dates sounded far away, she began to burn to add to it again.
MJ had her own small bed. Everything was not only in place but it also seemed prepped for a storm. Her books were tied up in a net that hung over the bed and swayed with the rocking of the boat. The only thing loose was an orange prescription bottle on the side table. Lila picked it up and ran her thumb over the label.
Verapamil.
“Señora Cameron. ¿Estás husmeando?”
Lila’s heart gave a gentle flutter. She tucked the prescription bottle in her cover-up pocket on instinct before turning. Alejandro leaned in the doorway, wiping his hands on his jeans. He wasn’t wearing a shirt.
“Claro que no, guapo,” Lila replied.
Alejandro nodded. He never betrayed any emotion. He was the opposite of Francis in that way, Francis who projected anger or lust with a single muscle twitch. Lila could read the tension in her husband’s shoulders or trace the cut of his jaw and know his longings.
Alejandro was different. His feelings, whatever they might be, never reached his body, not even his dark eyes. And she preferred it that way.
