I try not to think about that as another set of waves slams into my chest like a one-two punch, strong enough to knock me backwards. My whole body goes under for a moment, head disappearing beneath the surface as I spiral upside down in the riptide. The world tapers down to nothing but dark water. Bleak, cold undercurrents cloud my vision, disorienting me until I have no idea which way is up. The emergency strobe is my only light source, a flickering reprieve from the blackness.
I kick for what I hope is the surface, knowing all the while that I might be swimming toward the bottom. Thankfully, the lifejacket does its job. My lungs are screaming for oxygen by the time it drags me back to the air. My head breaks clear and I gasp, swallowing a gulp of the Atlantic as soon as my mouth opens. I choke against the brine, coughing to clear my airway. I’m dizzy and nauseous, still reeling from my underwater somersaults. The last thing I need is seawater in my lungs.
In the tumult, I’ve lost all sense of direction. I cannot see even a sliver of land over the breaking crests anymore. Cupid is fully submerged, the glinting metallic tip of her mast lost to the ocean’s fury. That should make me panic, but it seems I have grown numb — from the cold of the water, but also from something far more dangerous.
Hopelessness.
It spreads through me, a dull ache that moves outward from the center of my chest, where my heart pounds twice its normal speed, down my tired limbs.
And theyaretired,I realize.So very tired of swimming against currents they stand no chance of besting.
So, there, bobbing like a cork at the center of a cyclone…
I stop.
Stop swimming.
Stop fighting.
Stopliving.
The emergency strobe pulses weakly, a small speck of light in a dark expanse of sea. Overhead, the sky shakes with thunder. I crane my neck back, letting the rain pound onto my face. The blood in my veins is clotted with bitter resignation. I feel the storm surge swirl in deathly tendrils around my legs as I stop kicking.
I close my eyes as it drags me under.
TEN
archer
Where the hell is she?
Rain pelts the windshield, too heavy for the pitiful wipers to keep up. I strain my eyes to see through the rivulets streaming down the glass. Even without the downpour making things difficult, my visibility is next to nothing out here. I’m guided forward by lightning flashes and gut instinct.
If only Tommy had invested in some radar for this rust-bucket…
God, he’s going to be so pissed off if I sink. Not because he particularly cares whetherIlive or die. But if his precious Ebenezer ends up at the bottom of the Atlantic, he’ll never get over it.
The swells are intensifying — the lobster boat rises and falls like a see-saw as it chugs southward, the bow lifting toward the sky, then crashing down again with a drenching spray of salt and foam. It’s getting harder to steer; this vessel was designed to putter around the shallows pulling traps, not power through eight foot swells in the middle of a gale. If I don’t turn back soon, the engine will be thoroughly swamped.
Just a little longer,I tell myself, gripping the wheel tighter as another wave rocks us sideways, toward the rocky shoals off the coast of Little Misery Island.She’s out here somewhere…
But there’s no sign of her anywhere. Not a single trace of Cupid or any other boat on the horizon. I tell myself Jo was smart enough to duck into a cove, to take shelter in one of the many inlets that pepper the shore around Salem and Beverly. She’s a seasoned sailor. She can handle a little bad weather. Yet as I swing Ebenezer around the tip of Great Misery, I can’t shake the nagging feeling in my gut.
It’s the same neck-tingling sensation I had the summer we turned ten, when she fell off her bike riding back from the library and shattered the bones of her wrist. I found her on the side of the road, crying her eyes out, and carried her home.
It’s the same chest-aching tightness I experienced the winter we learned to snowboard, when she got lost in the glades and couldn’t find her way down the mountain. By the time I got to her, she was halfway to frostbite.
Call it instinct, call it insanity… call it whatever you like. Inside my heart, there’s an internal alarm system programmed just for Josephine Valentine. When she’s in trouble, I somehow always seem to know.
Or… I used to.
Maybe that internal alarm system doesn’t work anymore. Maybe whatever part of my soul that used to be synced with Jo’s has eroded over this past year of silence and miscommunication. Maybe she’s perfectly safe in someone else’s rescue boat at this very moment.
She’s probably already back on shore,my mind whispers.Go home, pour yourself a drink, and drown out all thoughts of that girl.
But it’s hard to listen to my mind when my heart is screaming something else entirely.
I’ve nearly given up when I spot something in the water. It’s metallic — each time the sky flashes with lightning, it glints in the dark. As I pass closer, I realize it’s the submerged top of a mast.