1. Annie #2
“I try pretty hard to stay disconnected when I’m not working.” She gestured toward the water with her coffee. “No cable. No TikTok. My Instagram mostly exists so customers know I’m not a scammer with fins. If a headline can’t swim up and bite me, I probably miss it.”
“That sounds peaceful.”
“It sounds peaceful because you didn’t see me try to pay a parking ticket online last month.”
“But mostly?”
“Mostly, yeah.” She glanced toward the speaker as the chorus lifted over the beach. “I know her songs, though. A lot of them.”
“Then you’ve seen her somewhere.”
“I honestly don’t think I have.”
I looked at her before I could stop myself.
“You don’t know what Savannah Brooks looks like?”
“Nope.”
She said it with maddening ease, as if she had not just moved several important pieces of furniture inside my chest.
“I know her voice,” Ellie continued. “I know I like it. That’s enough.”
For several seconds, the beach seemed to quiet around the song.
People kept talking. Silverware kept clinking. Gary was still failing to stand beside the palm tree in an acceptable way.
But all I could hear was Ellie Parker saying she knew my voice without knowing my face.
I had spent almost a decade being watched.
Analyzed. Photographed. Frozen mid-blink in screenshots. Ranked on lists written by people who had never met me. Praised for authenticity in interviews where I had answered questions from a page of approved talking points.
And here was Ellie, who had heard me.
Only me.
Without any idea she was sharing a haunted picnic table with the woman singing through the speakers.
“Why?” she asked.
I blinked. “Why what?”
“Why are you staring at me like I’ve confessed to insurance fraud?”
“I’m surprised.”
“That I don’t know what a singer looks like?”
“That you don’t want to.”
Ellie shrugged, and the wetsuit slipped lower on one shoulder.
“I like the music. I don’t need the rest of it. Besides, famous people always look tired.”
The laugh that came out of me had a slight edge.
“Do they?”
“Most of them. Or shiny. Sometimes both.”
“Tragic combination.”
“Deeply.”
She nodded toward the dive shop.
“So, Mysterious Annie, what brings you to Pelican Key?”
A lie stepped forward automatically.
Vacation.
Writing retreat.
Visiting a friend.
My entire career was built on making rehearsed answers sound spontaneous. I could have given her something charming, detailed, and impossible to verify.
But I was tired of lies.
The whole truth was too large to place on a picnic table before breakfast, so I handed her a smaller one.
“I needed a break.”
Ellie did not ask from what.
She only nodded.
“Good place for it. Not much to do except swim, eat, burn your shoulders, and accidentally develop strong opinions about fish.”
“That sounds like a cult.”
“Scuba is absolutely a cult. We just have better snacks.”
I leaned my elbows on the table, forgetting for a moment to angle my face away from the café.
“You teach beginners?”
“Every day.”
“Are they usually terrible?”
“Yes.”
“You answered too fast.”
“I believe in honesty.”
“Comforting quality in someone taking people underwater.”
“That’s exactly where honesty is most useful.” Ellie looked me over with a bright, playful assessment that made the air feel warmer. “You thinking about trying it?”
“No.”
She grinned.
“That sounded like a yes wearing a golf hat.”
My hand went automatically to the brim.
“It’s not a golf hat.”
“There’s a golf course logo on it.”
“I’m wearing it ironically.”
“Sure, Just Annie.”
“I’m not a water person.”
“You’re on an island.”
“I enjoy water from a respectful distance. Preferably with a drink in my hand and no fish judging me.”
“That can be arranged before or after the dive. During is frowned upon.”
Ellie pulled a slightly damp business card from the pocket of her wetsuit and slid it across the table.
REEF RASCAL DIVE CO.
ELLIE PARKER
PADI INSTRUCTOR
Below her name, someone had drawn a tiny shark with eyelashes.
“I do private beginner sessions,” she said. “Less pressure. No group of honeymooners asking whether the oxygen tanks are full of oxygen.”
“They aren’t?”
“They’re full of air. People get defensive.”
I picked up the card.
“Private lessons sound expensive.”
“For you? Very.”
“Because I stole your table?”
“Because you insulted my seating rights and doubted the emotional complexity of fish.”
“I never doubted the fish. I’m afraid of their opinions.”
“That’s healthy. We can work with that.”
The song ended, replaced by something involving a ukulele and a man who seemed extremely pleased about owning no shoes.
Ellie drained the last of her coffee and stood.
“My eight-thirty is probably putting his fins on the wrong feet by now. I should go prevent a felony against footwear.”
“Is that common?”
“You’d be surprised.”
She started toward the dive shop, then turned and walked backward through the sand.
“Careful with the sandwich, Annie. I don’t want to see you on the wall of shame.”
“There’s a wall of shame?”
“Not yet, but I’m ambitious.”
Then she was gone, crossing toward the low white building with her wetsuit hanging at her hips and her laugh carrying back when someone near the tanks called her name.
I sat there with cooling coffee, half a sandwich, and a business card I had no business keeping.
My phone buzzed inside my tote.
RACHEL DONOVAN CALLING.
I turned it face down.
Rachel knew I had promised to rest, which meant she was probably calling to make sure my definition of rest did not involve adopting a boat, changing my name, joining a cult, or dating someone professionally inconvenient.
I looked at Ellie’s card.
Private beginner sessions.
Rachel’s voice appeared in my head, clear and horrified.
Absolutely not. You do not scuba dive. You have a voice people insure. You have ears. You have tour dates. You have a brand.
For the first time in weeks, the word brand made me want to laugh instead of scream.
I opened Reef Rascal’s website on my phone.
The home page showed a turtle, a coral reef, and Ellie hanging upside down underwater while giving the camera two thumbs-down. Beneath it, a banner read:
PRIVATE BEGINNER DIVE: ONE OPENING TOMORROW AT 8:00 A.M.
I had come to Pelican Key to be invisible, not reckless.
I had not come here to let a pretty dive instructor talk me into putting on a wetsuit and making eye contact with judgmental fish.
But Ellie Parker had looked at me like I was nobody.
And God help me, I wanted her to do it again.
The booking form asked for my name.
Not stage name.
Not billing entity.
Not the name people screamed from crowds until it stopped sounding human.
Just name.
I typed Annie Miller before I could talk myself out of it.
The emergency contact box appeared beneath it.
I entered Rachel’s number, because recklessness had limits and because the thought of Rachel receiving a call from a dive shop after I had ignored her all morning was almost funny enough to justify the danger.
Almost.
I pressed confirm.
A second later, an email landed in my inbox.
PRIVATE BEGINNER DIVE — CONFIRMED.
I should have regretted it immediately.
That would have been wise, mature, and reassuringly on brand for a woman who paid other adults to remind her when to drink water.
Instead, I looked toward the dive shop.
Ellie was demonstrating something with a pair of fins and an expression of deep moral concern. She glanced up, caught me watching, and lifted one hand in a quick, careless wave.
I waved back.
Then I picked up my breakfast sandwich with both hands, took one defiant bite, and got egg yolk all over my shirt.