Chapter 4 #2
It took me a long time to learn how to survive her, to survive my own panic.
But now I know that no matter how afraid I am, it can’t consume me.
The panic lives in my chest like a snake, like a vise, constricting my heart and lungs every single second I’m forced to face a fear.
And I survive it, because I am stronger and more cunning than that snake can ever be.
So I let it tighten in my chest. Like holding your fingertips to flame to dull the nerves, I allow that feeling slither into each bronchus of my lungs, suffocating me. I remind myself that it can’t kill me. That I don’t need to breathe. I just need to survive.
And once I’ve settled into that sensation, I force myself to stand. I slide my fingers across the railing as I walk toward Alice, tightening my grip at each bump and jolt, until I’m right next to her.
She smells like the sea. I think we could be a thousand miles from here and she’d still smell like salt and brine, sunshine and zinc. There are faded pink streaks in the white-blonde hair tucked under a baseball cap that I didn’t notice yesterday, and I wonder when she decided to dye her hair.
“I said I think we got off on the wrong foot yesterday,” I repeat, equally as loud. She still doesn’t react, even though I know she heard me this time. “Look, I need you not to hate me so I can finish this research and get my PhD and graduate sometime in the next century. Please.”
I wish this part was a lie, but it’s painfully true.
No amount of money or political influence or willingness to skin someone alive would convince the MIT Department of Biological Engineering that I deserved any amount of leniency or grace during the dissertation process.
I love my work, and I appreciate how it benefits The Syndicate, but I would welcome a single molecule of understanding, emotional support, or recognition that I’m a human being and not a research robot from Dr. Devenigh, my advisor.
I think it’s slightly more likely that Clara abdicates her throne and joins the circus.
Alice still doesn’t respond to me, but her grip loosens on the wheel slightly, which I take as a positive sign.
I keep my eyes firmly on the navigation equipment, pretending to be confused by it.
Whoever said that keeping your eyes on the horizon makes you less seasick is a cruel liar.
I’ll be focusing on the things I can literally control for the foreseeable future.
We make it to our coordinates a lot faster today, probably because Alice is not taking it easy on me. As the boat slows, she rolls her shoulders and cracks her neck, steeling herself for the silence.
“Even if I hated you, I would still do this because I can’t get fired from this job,” she sighs, her eyes most certainly on the horizon. “But I was rude yesterday, so I should apologize. I’m stressed.”
Despite the fact that she did not apologize, I shoot her a forgiving smile that she doesn’t acknowledge.
“It’s totally fine, I was unnecessarily standoffish. And same, stressed. About the research.” I bump her shoulder with mine, which is a little difficult seeing how much shorter than me she is. “Truce?”
She finally looks at me, her chin tilted up and her eyes squinting against the bleak morning sun filtering through the haze. God, she’s pretty. At least I didn’t fabricate that.
“Truce.”
It takes me less time to set up and adjust the equipment today, now that I’m used to the feeling that nearly freezes my cells as I lean over the edge to drop the ROV. The water is a little rougher today, and Alice has to turn the engine back on twice to adjust our position.
After the little robot has sunk to its appropriate depth—a job I am thankful belongs to machines and not me—I try to think through how to get Alice to open up to me. To let me crawl through her brain and pick all the pieces I need out like shards of glass from skin.
“So, how long have you been in Oregon?”
Her head whips up, her fingernails frozen under the sticker she was prying from her aluminum water bottle. Genuine terror flashes across her skin like lightning, disappearing as quickly as it came as she forces herself to relax.
“A few years,” she says simply, locking in the customer service facade she had when we first met. Placid smile, serene attitude, like nothing can shake her.
I don’t love that it makes me want to see how much she can take before she breaks.
“What made you choose this place?” I ask, writing down coded observations—both of the sea and of the woman across from me—in the spiral-bound jotter balanced on my knee.
“I was passing through town and saw they were hiring for the whale watching boat, and decided it was time for a change,” she replies, the answer sounding clinically rehearsed.
To anyone else, they would seem like the words of a woman who has been asked the same question by tourists a thousand times over.
“Staying here is certainly a choice though,” I laugh, gesturing toward the shore like we can see the empty streets and abandoned buildings from here. “Were you from a small town before?”
She opens her mouth to respond and then freezes, the little smile she had nipping at the corner of her mouth dissipating. Back in place is that carefully empty, pleasant expression.
“You ask a lot of questions for a stranger,” she says with a light laugh, her tone carefully curated to sound like the end of a conversation. But obviously that won’t be happening.
“I’m a researcher, that’s what I do,” I wink, pretending I don’t get a little thrill from the blush that spreads along her cheeks. “And we’re going to be out on this boat a lot together over the next few weeks. Would it kill us to get to know each other?”
She pulls her lower lip between her teeth, and for the first time it really is like I can read her mind.
She must know that it might kill us to get to know each other.
From her perspective, I could be a spy of her father’s or her fiancé’s, or simply a careless tourist who will open her mouth at an inconvenient moment and reveal her location to those hunting her. Talking to me, trusting me, is a risk.
But after a few moments of relative silence, save for the thump of the boat rocking in the waves and the gentle scrape of the ROV tether against the hull, she looks a little more resolute.
“I suppose we’ll have to find out.”