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I want to call out to her now, but I’m reluctant to interrupt whatever’s going on between them. Instead, I continue hurriedly up the path, lined with carefully clipped shrubs and magenta flowers, up to the training pool. I immediately spot my students, huddled together near a group of lawn chairs under a beach umbrella.
I pause before heading over. The public-speaking anxiety I still get whenever I have to introduce myself to a new group is worse than normal. Because each new arrival on the island, every strangeface, now feels like a threat. Could whoever left me that note be in my class? Or are they suntanning at the beach? Or partying over at the resort’s main pool?
Koh Sang isn’t that big. But someone here is trying to ruin me.
I take in a deep breath and try to force the thoughts away as I walk toward the group.
“Good morning, everyone,” I call, hoping that my practiced authoritative teacher voice drones out any wavers that may sneak in. “I’m Cass, and I’m going to be your divemaster. Thank you all for choosing the Koh Sang Dive Resort for your Discover Scuba Diving course. By the end of the next two days, you will have learned everything you need to dive safely and effectively, and you will have completed two open-water dives.”
I pull up my clipboard, using it to minimize the slight tremble in my hands. “Let me just take attendance real quick and have you all introduce yourselves.”
I scan the first sheet of paper. “Ariel and Tamar Abramson.” I look expectantly at the pale couple standing before me. I peg them to be in their early thirties, on the older side for our clientele. The woman’s short black hair is cropped bluntly at her chin, and she looks a bit anxious. But the man standing next to her draws my attention. He’s tall and well built with a military-like buzz cut. His lips are pursed in a tight line, his eyes hard and cold. There’s something discomfiting about him that I can’t quite put my finger on. He doesn’t respond when I say his name, although I see his shoulders tense.
“That’s us,” the woman says. Her voice is clipped, in heavily accented English. “I am Tamar. I am here with my husband, Ariel.” She points toward him, but he remains unmoving. “We arrived yesterday. We are traveling from Tel Aviv.”
“Lovely to meet you two.” I look at the man again for a second too long before flipping to the next page on the clipboard. “Daniel Ayad—”
“Yeah, all right,” says a guy in a brash Cockney accent before I can finish pronouncing his name. An inch-long pink scar that runs along his cheek shifts up and down as he speaks. His swagger puts me at ease. I’ve dealt with thousands of travelers like him. “That’s me. Daniel Ayadebo. Yeah, I’m from London, on my gap year, and I’m starting off strong in Thailand. Gonna travel till the money runs out. Got here last night, and I’m loving it.” His eyes take in the girl next to him. She doesn’t return his glance.
He looks older than most of the guests who come on their gap year, but I don’t comment on it.
“Last but not least,” I say as I flip to the last page on my clipboard. “Lucy Dupin.”
I turn to the girl next to Daniel. She barely reaches his biceps. Her hair is piled up on her head, mostly hidden under a light pink baseball cap, but wisps of light brown curls peek out from beneath it. She looks back, fixing her light blue eyes firmly on mine.
I swallow, forcing myself to keep the clipboard steady, to stay smiling.
It’s her. She’s alive.
Her name touches my lips, light with memory.Robin.
The last time I saw her—really saw her—she was lying in that hotel room. Her slender body was dwarfed by the queen-size bed, her face chiseled as if in porcelain, and those big blue eyes wide open, the brightness slowly leaking out of them. My sister, gone forever.
It’s not really Robin standing in front of me now, of course. Thecloser I look, the more obvious the differences become. Robin was taller than this girl, her cheekbones more pronounced, her hair a few shades darker and curlier. But the eyes are the same. Those big blue doe eyes that belie an unexpected strength.
Still, I want to reach out and touch her. To hold Robin in my arms. But that’s impossible. Robin is buried beneath six feet of frozen ground in a cemetery in upstate New York, under a headstone that no one ever visits.
I can’t seem to find my voice. My brain is devoid of any words to continue our conversation. Instead, I’m back in that hotel room, watching Robin fade away, the life evaporating from her face.
Thankfully, the girl takes the cue. “I’m Lucy. I’m on a gap year as well.”
Her tone is confident, her words lilted. I scan through Lucy’s guest sheet until I reach her country of origin. Australia. There’s a flatness to her accent that distinguishes it from Doug’s; they must be from different parts of the country.
“Okay,” I say, clearing my throat, hoping my temporary lapse in composure wasn’t too noticeable. “Nice to meet you. We’ll be stuck together for the next two days, so it’s best we all get friendly. We’ll start with a few exercises in the pool to get you familiar with the equipment and the basics of breathing underwater, then we’ll hit the classroom to work the science and practical instruction portion of the class, and then tomorrow, we’ll move on to the fun part: the dives. But before all that, I want to start off with the most important topic I’ll address in this entire course: safety.”
I ignore Daniel’s groan. Most of these kids—or adults in Ariel and Tamar’s case—want to jump over safety instructions and get right to the good stuff. They don’t consider the risks inherent inbreathing someone else’s air through a tube while you are meters below the surface.
But unlike them, I know how close death is, leaving its phantom fingerprints on everything. How little it takes to breach that shadowy curtain between this world and the next. A broken respirator, a knife, small white pills.
I run through the many risks inherent in scuba. Everything from permanent lung damage caused by holding your breath underwater or a rushed, panicked ascent, to ruptured eardrums resulting from a failure to equalize upon descent, to the most obvious danger: running out of air while you are meters below the surface. Slowly, gingerly, my body starts to relax, forgetting the unpleasant surprises of the morning and easing back into the routine of the class, becoming familiar with the students’ gaze on me.
The next few hours pass in a steamy haze of normality. Instruction on the basics in the shade, followed by exercises and equipment tests in the pool, and topped with a few hours of the classroom component—a lesson on the science behind scuba, complete with textbooks and quizzes—in the upstairs level of the Tiki Palms. The students seem to be enjoying themselves for the most part. All of them, at least, except for Ariel, who I routinely catch staring into apparent nothingness, his body rigid, as if he’s prepared to jump up and run at a moment’s notice.
As the late-afternoon air hangs heavy around us, Daniel drops his head on the table in front of him and groans. “I thought the point of a gap year was to avoid being in a classroom. Fuck, this is worse than uni, innit?”
That’s my cue.
“All right, all right. I think we can call it for today. We’ll meetat the shop tomorrow morning at exactly eight for our first dive. Make sure you’re there early. We won’t be able to wait for you if you’re late.”
