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“After I teach the Kings to stay away from my family!”
Do I not know my uncle at all? My cousins and aunt are hanging on for dear life, but none of them appear all that surprised by this behavior. Not even Chandler. It’s like everyone knows this dark angry side of my uncle except for me.
We hit a big wave and Gregory’s hand accidently jabs down on the gas when we land, increasing the speed. We’re sent flying over the surface at a breakneck speed. Everyone is screaming. Everyone is falling.
And then we crash.
I’m whiplashed forward. The booming crack of metal smashing wood assaults my eardrums. I hit the deck first—then I’m airborne. The ocean comes at me so fast. When I hit the water, the unbuckled lifejacket slips right off my body.
Cold salty water fills my throat and burns my eyes. I sink deep and then I kick out, pushing for the surface and crying out for breath when I reach it. I look around but I can’t see the lifejacket, it’s lost in the debris from the sailboat getting hit by the speedboat.
I’ve worked on my swimming, but no lesson could’ve prepared me for this. The entire left side of my body screams in pain. I hit the deck hard. My ears are ringing. My lungs have water in them. I’m coughing. Coughing. Coughing. The water is too dark and too cold. My eyes burn. It’s so salty. So terrifying. So wrong.
I scream but that quickly takes the last of my oxygen, so I kick instead, trying to get a sense of exactly where I am and how to get to safety. Is everyone in the water? Did Ethan and Cooper take a direct hit? I can’t see anyone else, so I start screaming for Ethan, screaming for Sybil, screaming for Hayes, and Amelia, and Cooper, and even screaming for Gregory. Where is everybody? Are they okay? Are they alive?
My yells go unanswered and make me so much more tired. I have to stop.
This watery nightmare is made worse by the pain in my side. It’s so fierce I can hardly move my limbs. I tell myself to take a deep breath, to kick through the pain and tread water. Don’t pass out. Find something to float on. But I’m losing faith. My head is throbbing and my vision is tunneling, a panic attack closing in fast. I can’t let the fear take me, because if it does, I’m certain I’ll drown.
So I kick, but it hurts.
And I count in my head, but it’s too fast.
And I slow my breathing, but I’m still hyperventilating.
It’s all too much and I can’t control what’s happening. I swim toward the wreckage, pushing through the splintered wood bobbing on the ocean’s surface. This is bad. This is really, really fucking bad. My ears are still ringing and I try to yell again, but every time I do I end up swallowing more water and losing energy. I don’t hear anyone. I don’t see them.
My legs seize up.
The panic chases me and now that my muscles are cramping, it’s going to catch me. I’m not going to make it.
Sybil.
She’s screaming. I hold onto her sound like a lifeline. Further up ahead I spot my uncle’s boat. It’s still floating, looking relatively unscathed, and it sounds like she’s on there. I just need to get to her, to keep going.
I can do this.
I can do this.
I can’t. The waves are too strong.
I can’t. The cramps are too intense.
The panic takes hold, as if it’s an invisible force wrapping itself through and around my body. The serpent has returned and it pulls me under.
Fifty-Four
Somehow, miraculously, I focus on the surface and make it back up there with my arms alone. My legs are useless to me, the panic still owns them.
And that’s when I see Ethan. He’s coming for me.
Blood stains his hair and face, but his arms are rotating in frantic arcs as he swims. He yells my name like it’s a desperate prayer and pulls me against his body just before my face is about to dip beneath the surface again. “I’ve got you,” he promises. “You’re okay.”
He’s so much faster than I am, able to swim us over to the speedboat in record time. I blink, grateful that this boat took less damage than the Kings’ boat, that it’s still floating. The Juliet is completely decimated and already half under the dark waves. A few more minutes and it will disappear beneath them entirely.
I crane my neck, searching for everybody. There’s Chandler and Amelia and Sybil and Hayes.
But I don’t see my uncle anywhere, and I don’t see Cooper either.
