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I find that a bit hard to believe. More like he didn’t give her a choice to reject him. “Do you have her number? Can you call her?”
I could go back to the shop, get her number from the paperwork, and call her myself, but it would mean going inside and dealing with Doug. I can already hear what he would say, channeling Frederic’s favorite slogan: “We’re not the guests’ babysitters. If they can’t be bothered to show up on time, that’s on them.”
But there’s no need. Daniel’s already holding his phone to his ear. After a few suspenseful seconds, he puts it back into his pocket. He shrugs nonchalantly but his shoulders seem tense. “No answer.”
Before I can respond, I hear Neil’s voice from the boat behind me. “Cass, you should come and look at this. We’ve got a problem,” he says once I reach the boat, just loud enough for me—but not the rest of the group—to hear. “The boat won’t start.”
It’s not all that surprising. Even though the boats are fairly new,compared with most of the resort’s equipment, they still give us trouble now and then. But my God, could just one thing go right today?
“Looks like we’re going to have to start with the shore dive after all, poor visibility and all,” I say. “Maybe Doug can fix it when we’re out and have it ready for this afternoon?” I offer to head inside and clear it with him, but Neil is already walking toward the shop. Even with the relative chaos this morning, I feel my nerves from earlier return at Neil’s uneasy quiet.
I turn back to the group. Selfishly, I find the boat problems actually work in my favor. This means we can do our final equipment check on the beach and give Lucy twenty or so more minutes to get here. It’s not so much the idea of leaving Lucy behind—in fact, I’d be pretty grateful not to have to stare all day at those eyes, the same shade of cornflower blue as Robin’s. But there’s something about Lucy that I can’t quite put my finger on. I think about how the envelope landed on my doorstep the day after she arrived on the island, how I’ve had the feeling of someone following me ever since. I don’t know who’s behind it all, but if there’s even the smallest chance that it’s Lucy, I want to know where she is, what she’s doing. If she’s skipping out on dives she’s already paid for, she must have a reason.
“Okay,” I say, taking another unsuccessful look up the path for Lucy. “Let’s get started, shall we? Daniel, until Lucy shows up, you’ll be my buddy for the equipment test.”
“Well, I certainly can’t argue with that,” he says, not missing a beat.
We spend the better part of the next half hour walking through the lessons we learned the day before. We test each part of our equipment—making sure the fins and masks are tight enough,checking the air in our tanks, practicing breathing through our primary and alternative respirators, and confirming that our depth gauges are reading correctly.
“As we talked about yesterday,” I say, “diving in Koh Sang is a bit unique. Unlike most other dive sites, you don’t always have to take a boat out to the ocean to complete your dive. Instead, because the water drops off here so close to the coast and one of the most beautiful reefs in the Thai islands is within sight of the beach, all we’re going to do is walk on out into the water to start our dive.
“We’ll be down on the ocean floor for about forty-five minutes. We’ll stop a few times and practice some of the same exercises from yesterday. All the training you need to handle the worst-case scenarios.”
I was hoping that by now, Lucy would have shown up. But she’s still nowhere to be seen. I have Daniel try her cell again, but it’s the same result as earlier. We have no choice but to go on without her.
I take in the three students standing in front of me, trying to ignore the pungent smells of gasoline floating over from the boats parked farther down the beach. All three of them share the same nervous look in their eye, even Daniel. This is always my favorite part of teaching. The moments before the first dive. Watching the students’ faces painted over with anticipation and a healthy dose of anxiety. It always makes me think back to my first time, when I realized just how peaceful it can be underwater. A place where no one judges you, where you don’t have to act or think or be what everyone expects you to be. It’s easier underwater. My fears always seem to slip away as soon as I break the surface, as the salt water cleanses my skin.
I give them the warnings I can now say from memory.
“It’s going to be very different from yesterday. If you encounter a problem, you won’t simply be able to stand up and be above water. We’ll be about ten meters below the surface, so if an issue comes up, we need to deal with it effectively. When we’re down there, we can’t have any joking around.” I cut a sharp glance at Daniel, who raises his arms in mock innocence. “Do not panic if something goes wrong. Keep your breathing as routine as possible. Otherwise, you’ll rush through your tank of air. And most importantly, do not—under any circumstances—panic and swim directly upward.”
We talked extensively yesterday about the dangers of a rushed ascent. The broken eardrums, the nitrogen poisoning, the popped lungs. My warnings have done little to settle their fears.
“I envy you guys,” I say, straining my voice to sound comforting. “You are about to have one of the most magical experiences of your whole lives. Your first time breathing below the ocean’s surface. The world is different underwater, you’ll see.”
I expect Daniel to come back with a witty remark about how cheesy I’m being, but he’s silent, the nerves apparently getting to him.
Once I’m sure everyone is set, our group of four starts walking toward the water. Our toes touch it first, then our ankles, our knees, our legs. We continue to wade out, the tanks strapped tightly to our backs, like soldiers on a battle march. Slowly, as we gain ground, the water rises, eventually splashing against our necks, our toes no longer brushing the wet sand. The inflated vests keep us afloat, bobbing above the waves.
I check that everyone is ready, and then it’s time to descend. It’s painfully slow, stopping every few feet or so to check our depth, deflate our vests a bit more, and plug our noses and breathe sharplyinto our masks to clear our airways. The water lapping at our skin subtly transitions from bathwater to a temperature cool enough that it makes me thankful for my wetsuit. But the descent goes without a hitch, and eventually, we’re on the ocean floor, the transparent water stretching above us, the surface now a glass ceiling.
Once we’re all down, I check in again with Ariel, Tamar, and Daniel individually, using the sign language we discussed in class. I see the same spark in their eyes that I remember having on my first time.
I indicate for them to follow me before I turn and start swimming, my hands clasped behind my back, propelled by my fins sluicing the water like a pair of sharpened scissors. Groups of fish, so small and white they’re almost translucent, recoil when they feel the current from our bodies. All the worries I’ve had over the last day seem so insignificant now, as if they belong to someone else.
Doug certainly wasn’t wrong about the visibility. The water is usually clear enough here to see a dozen or so meters in any direction, but today the waves are stronger, picking up the sediment on the ocean floor and blurring it into a soupy haze, granting us sight for only a few meters at a time. We pass a school of clown fish, and about eight minutes into the dive, we spot our resident sea turtle, Harold. I point him out to the others, placing one hand over the other and wiggling my thumbs as Harold swims by, looking at us through apathetic, wizened eyes. I watch my students’ faces glow with a childish gleam behind their masks. Daniel makes some inaudible sound as a flurry of bubbles rises from his respirator, and giddiness fills my chest. The shame, the anxiety, the paranoia from earlier seem to wash away as the salt water laps against my skin. None of that can touch me down here. None of the problemsthat infiltrate every one of my thoughts on ground seem capable of penetrating the water’s surface.
And seeing my students recognize the same feeling for the first time puts everything in perspective. These are the moments that make everything worth it. I would never have experienced this beauty, this calm, without all the horror that had to happen to lead me here.
Once the excitement calms, I stop the group near a familiar body of coral and gather the three of them in a circle, each of us hovering a few feet above the ocean floor. We start with the first exercise: taking out our respirator as if it’s been ripped from our mouth so that they know how to handle themselves if their source of air is suddenly cut off. I demonstrate, reminding them how it’s done, before pointing to Daniel, signaling for him to execute the skill. He looks at me, shooting an “ok” sign with his fingers before getting to work. He repeats my moves exactly: removing the respirator, throwing it behind him, blowing out the small trail of bubbles.
But as his arm reaches back to locate the respirator, he stops. His eyes grow wide, and his limbs look as if they’ve turned to stone.
I pause a moment, frustration simmering. It’s one thing to play his asinine games when we’re in the pool, but this is different. Losing your source of air at this depth is not a joke. I snap in his direction, the friction between my thumb and index finger making no sound but producing a thread of bubbles designed to catch his attention.
But he remains unmoving, his eyes staring past me.
I turn, squinting to see what he’s looking at through the impaired visibility, and slowly it comes into focus. An outline, a form silhouetted against the haziness of the water. I shift my body, edging closer to it. At first, I think it might be litter, some piece of discardedmaterial thrown overboard from the boats that plow through here as if they own the place.
