Chapter 12 Emily
Emily
“Get in the water, you ridiculous child!”
I absolutely will not get in the fucking water, thank you very much.
I’m sitting in a much smaller boat than the one we usually use for research. I still have no idea how she convinced me to get on this fucking thing, and I’m finding myself longing for the solid feeling of the Class II under my feet. I am missing a different boat.
Somehow, Alice is fixing my fear issue. Just not the way she intended to.
But this is a bridge too far. Alice is treading water, her lithe body covered in a thin, pale blue swimsuit that clings to her angles and small curves. She has a pair of comically large goggles on her head, which have a breathing tube attached to the side.
“We’re supposed to be doing research,” I grumble, pulling my swim cover over myself and crossing my arms. “And anything could be down there.”
“Emily, you can see the damn ocean floor from here,” Alice scoffs, rolling her eyes as she adjusts the goggles back onto her face.
She takes a deep breath and dives beneath the surface, which she’s done about a dozen times now, and the world is silent for about one hundred and eighteen seconds before she pops back up on the surface.
“See, I can swim to the bottom and back. It’s less than thirty yards.”
Somehow, that’s not comforting at all.
Alice paddles back over to the glorified raft I’m parked in and grabs the side, hoisting herself up so she’s leaning on her stomach, her lower half still in the water.
“You can’t be afraid here. You’re completely in control,” she says serenely, removing her goggles so she can push her hair off her forehead. Her eyelashes are nearly white and covered in dewdrops, reminding me of mermaids and ice princesses and other animated leading ladies.
“I beg to differ,” I grunt, looking over the side of the boat with disdain. “Seems like you’re the boss here.”
I could face this fear, like I do all others. I thought about it when Alice said she had another adventure for me. Like on the cliff and the research boat, I could swallow down the bile creeping up my throat, force my expression to be neutral, and hold my breath until the experience was over.
But after the evening with Alice on the cliff two nights ago, I seem incapable of faking things with her.
She’s clearly not working for her father.
I’ve known that she was his victim for a long time, but she’s admitted now, in her own way.
Between all the surveillance we’ve done and my personal assessment of her, I can come to Clara with confidence that she doesn’t have anything useful to provide about her father or his operations.
It’s been too long, and there have been too many changes in the past half-decade to assume anything she could tell us from her years with him would still hold water.
I haven’t figured out how to convince my cousins not to use her as bait yet. I’ve been avoiding Clara’s request for an update while I try to come up with a plan. But I know I’ll figure it out, because I have to.
Alice deserves a life. One where she’s not hiding from her father, living in fear of his retribution. She deserves truth and honesty and goodness and choices.
And I can’t give her those things, not now. Not until we kill Konstantin, and Ilya as well. But until then, I can stop putting on this mask in front of her. I can be afraid, even if that’s the only version of myself she gets to see in all it’s ugly truth.
“Look at me,” Alice says, drawing my attention back to her. She’s propped herself up even further now, and bends at the waist over the rim of the boat to grab the extra snorkel she brought.
“You can see everything here, Emily. That’s not an exaggeration,” she promises, tossing the goggles so quickly that I react on instinct and grab them before they smack me in the face.
“Nothing can surprise you. You can get in and out of the water any time you want. The sea floor isn’t very deep, so even if you dive you can always make it back up for air.
The ocean is calm today, so the waves won’t make it hard to swim.
The boat is anchored, so it won’t drift away.
There’s a buoy on a line that you can hold on to, so you always know you’re attached to the boat and can get back to it quickly.
” Her expression is hard and serious as she holds my gaze.
“You are in control of everything possible here. This isn’t about facing your fears.
It’s about learning that fear isn’t necessary. ”
I still don’t exactly believe that. The ocean is so unpredictable…
“A meteor could strike your research lab,” she says like she’s reading my mind. “Even when you’re the most in control you can be, there are still things beyond us.”
I groan in defeat, and Alice squeals and claps as I shrug my cover-up off.
My swimsuit is of the sporting variety, because temperature-controlled indoor lap pools are more my speed.
Even though it’s not particularly sexy, I still catch Alice’s wandering eyes, which is more motivation to get into the water with her than anything she said.
I pull my hair back into a low ponytail, grateful it’s long enough now that the pieces don’t spill out anymore, and affix the snorkel kit to my forehead. Alice instructs me to grab the tied buoy and toss it to her, and then I stare off the edge of the boat.
“It’s easiest to step up on that little ledge and just jump,” she says from about twenty feet away, pointing toward the bench seat that lines the nose of the boat. “If you sit on the rim you might flip the boat.”
“Lovely,” I mutter under my breath, stepping up onto the ledge. My balance is far less stable here, and I bend my knees and hold my arms out to try to stay upright. Alice’s giggles do nothing for my enjoyment of this experience.
“Come on, there’s a prize for you if you make it out here,” she taunts, swimming a few feet further away.
I flicker my eyes up to her momentarily, my blood pumping faster in my veins for a whole new reason.
I love when she flirts with me like this.
It’s only been a few weeks, but her confidence has grown exponentially.
It only solidified the acceptance that she wasn’t lying.
I’m the only person who has ever touched her.
I’ve never been possessive of partners before, and I know there’s something inherently patriarchal and antiquated about the way I feel, but fuck it, I love being her one and only.
“Don’t threaten me with a good time,” I call back, feeling significantly more inspired to jump into the water.
I pull the goggles down over my eyes, leaving the mouthpiece of the breathing tube dangling.
It takes a few more deep breaths, but finally I conclude that if a giant shark eats me, at least I’ll die without ever having to betray Alice.
The water is fucking cold. I read the temperature this morning when I was preparing for the day of research, so logically I knew that it was fifty-eight degrees fahrenheit, but fuck does that feel colder than it sounds.
My whole body tenses up the moment I hit the water, my muscles contracting in place, and I realize Alice was wrong.
I have no control, not even over myself.
Panic slams into me like a freight train, and I wonder how long it will take for the mounting carbon dioxide in my lungs to force me to breathe out and inhale pure sea water.
I hear drowning is more painful than being burned at the stake, and I have a momentary shred of empathy for all the people I’ve killed that way.
But then I feel a hand on my arm, and when I glance up, Alice is there.
The plastic lens of the goggles makes her eyes seem extra wide, and she smiles in a way that reminds me again of cartoon princesses.
When she tugs on my arm again, my blood warms, reminding the rest of my body of its survival instincts.
I kick my feet, propelling both of us toward the surface, which really only was about four feet above my head.
“You did it!” Alice screams while I gulp down the air my body was screaming for. Saltwater is in my nose, mouth, and ears, and I shake myself like a wet dog.
“I’ve never experienced the phrase frozen in fear so acutely,” I cough out, which only makes Alice laugh more. She helps me grab the line attached to both the fishing boat and the buoy.
“But see, you have control over your body. You swam to the surface, you can breathe. And look below you,” she encourages, dipping her face into the water and popping back up, like she’s demonstrating the methodology for me. “You can see everything.”
When in Rome, I suppose.
When I drop my face under the water, it takes a moment for my eyes to adjust to the strange lens of the goggles.
The first thing I notice is our feet, side by side, kicking close to each other.
My skin is so tan in comparison to hers, even though I’ve lost a lot of color on my lower body wearing boots and cargo pants on the research trips.
Where I’m all muscle, the planes of my calves tight and bulging slightly with the effort of treading water, Alice is almost dainty. She seems so breakable next to me.
Below us, though, is an entire universe.
Kelp grows in a forest thicker than the trees on the cliffs, waving at us in the motion of the current.
It’s a sea beneath the sea, endless shades of emerald and olive and sage creating its own ecosystem.
Small silver and blue fish dart in and out, either on their lonesome or in little schools, appearing and disappearing amongst the leaves.
Alice taps me, and when I look at her she taps the snorkel mouthpiece, which she’s placed in her mouth. I follow suit, remembering to blow out first to expel all the water caught in the tube.