39. There Is No Story Here
She hits the water with a smack that disorients her. Her shorts balloon, and her phone falls out of her hand; she grabs for it but then realizes it’s too late. The water is a green glass globe with a stream of translucent bubbles, her own breath escaping. Which way is up? For one panicked second, Coco isn’t sure. She kicks her feet, feels instinctively that she’s going down, not up, flips around, and pulls apart the water like she’s opening a heavy curtain until she breaks the surface. In the twilight, Coco can see the sailboat, but it’s cruising away from her, both motors churning.
She tries to swim toward the shore; the beach at Eel Point is probably only a few hundred yards ahead. But the water has other plans for her. The current carries her out; it’s one stroke forward, two strokes back. She tells herself not to panic—she knows that in a riptide, you swim parallel to shore. She does this for a while. Is she getting closer? Yes, she thinks so. Her sodden polo shirt is weighing her down, and she’s having trouble using her arms. She treads water for a second, though even this is a challenge. The water is muscular, insistent: She will do what it tells her. She wrangles off her polo, unbuttons her shorts, lets them both go. She’s lighter now, but she’s lost ground. She watches as the westernmost tip of the island, Smith’s Point, recedes.
So what now? She turns and sees land behind her. Tuckernuck, Whale Island. It looks close but she knows this is deceptive; it’s half a mile away. Her shoulders start to ache as she swims, and she can no longer feel her legs. She remembers swimming off Great Point, Kacy’s warning about sharks. She moves in the direction she knows land to be, though now the dark land is nearly indistinguishable from the dark sky. She doesn’t think about Leslee or Bull or Lamont or Kacy or her mother, Georgi, back in Rosebush, who is no doubt vaping at the picnic table out back of the house with Kemp. Or, rather, she does think about them but only to remind herself that she can’t waste her precious energy thinking about anything other than getting to shore.
Is she going to die out here?
Coco kicks, scoops her arms forward. She can swim. She has swum not only in her murky, turtle-infested pond but also in the cobalt water of the Lake of the Ozarks, the turquoise water of St. John, clear to the white sandy bottom.
She hears a helicopter, but it’s far away. Even so, she treads water, waves her arms, cries out. Someone is looking for her. She has to make it to Tuckernuck. There’s nothing but ocean between here and Portugal.
Coco’s arms grow heavy; she kicks with all her might just to stay above the surface. Waves smack her face, water goes up her nose, down her throat. She thinks she can still see the coastline but she’s not sure, and then she sees—or thinks she sees—a pinprick of yellow light. A moment later, it disappears. What did Lamont say about Tuckernuck? No electricity, only generators. She gazes up in the sky and sees stars, but navigating by them is a pipe dream. She tries to remember where she saw the light and swims in that direction. She has to stop and tread water in order to catch her breath; she flips onto her back and floats but she feels the current carrying her in what she’s certain is the wrong direction. She’s out of gas, plain and simple. She can’t move her arms; her legs are two lead weights pulling her down.
As Coco slips below the surface, she replays her favorite movie scenes in her head.
The hotel-bed scene in Lost in Translation.
Armageddon:The crew singing “Leaving on a Jet Plane” as they board the spaceship.
“O Captain! My Captain!” in Dead Poets Society.
Finding Nemo,the scene with Crush the turtle. Also the fish tank in the dentist’s office. Just keep swimming, Coco thinks. Her lungs burn; she lets her breath go.
Rocky running up the art museum’s steps.
All of Barbie.
And, of course, the final scene of The Player, which has long served as the touchstone for Coco’s artistic vision. She has a purpose. She is a screenwriter.
Coco fights her way up, breaks the surface, gasps for air.
There is no story here,Bull said. But he was wrong.