Taken by Storm by Angela Morrison Page A

desk next to my chair. A copy of the one of Mom, Dad, and me sitting in a dive boat that disintegrated in my wallet is there. i pick it up. We all wear big smiles, lots of teeth. Mom has her arm around me, and my head is on her shoulder. She’s sitting on Dad’s lap. He’s got his massive arms around us both, holding us together.
     
    Leesie clears her throat.
     
    After what she’s put up with the past couple of days, guess i owe her something. “i needed to get back in the water. Back under water.”
     
    “So was it worth it?”
     
    i set down the picture, look over at her. “You soaking wet? Yeah. Definitely.”
     
    She tries not to, but she smiles. She drops her eyes, fluffs her damp hair, twists it into a ponytail, realizes she doesn’t have anything to hold it with, and lets it fall back down. She looks up and catches my eyes on her, but she holds my gaze. “I’m still waiting.”
     
    “i haven’t been underwater since Belize.” i stare at Gram’s flowered rug.
     
    “Belize is where—”
     
    i nod. “Hurricane hit our boat. i was up on deck with the stupid camera when the storm surge hit. Isadore took me, but i held my breath. My dad. All my friends were trapped. My mom came on deck searching for me. But she—” i can’t say it. Drowned. i see her sinking and choking, breathing in seawater. Dying. No. That didn’t happen. She’s a diver. Divers don’t drown.
     
    Leesie leans forward, her chin in her hands, elbows on knees, eyes soft now. “I’m so sorry.”
     
    “That lake of yours freaked me. i thought maybe the pool . . . i had to go there. See if i could.”
     
    She closes her eyes. “And i messed it up.”
     
    i get up, cross the room, sink beside her on the couch, not letting my thigh bump hers. “i was down there long enough. And”—a knot forms in my throat that i can barely speak around—“maybe it was good you were there.”
     
    She shifts toward me, relaxes enough for our shoulders to touch. “Don’t do that again.”
     
    i stare across the room, trying to make out the details of that picture of my parents and me. It’s fuzzy from here. Did i want to stay at the bottom of that pool? Never come up? Sitting in Gram’s living room, that freaks me, but down there it all made sense. Diving is life to me. Isadore is death.
     
    We sit quiet. Leesie’s too smart or too scared to say anything. i find myself longing for that shimmering blue place with my parents. It tasted so good.
     
    Leesie whispers, “Do you mind?” She slides her hand under mine and lifts it to her knee like it’s something frail she doesn’t want to break. She weaves her fingers through mine, curls them up around my cold hand. She strokes the back of it. It feels good, safe, her hand smoothing over my hand.
     
    i sink back into the soft cushions of Gram’s fifties couch. “The shark story is a bunch of crap.”
     
    Leesie starts. “Somebody actually said that to your face?”
     
    “DeeDee asked to see the scars.”
     
    “Kids here are dumb. Generations of pesticide use.”
     
    “We dove with sharks all the time.” i remember a hammer-head slipping through the blue at the limit of my visibility on a Cayman wall dive, sharks whizzing around my head in the Bahamas, and the massive bull sharks at the Blue Hole in Belize. i feel myself getting emotional. i sit forward. “i’ll go check—”
     
    Leesie’s knee presses into my thigh. “It’s going to be all right.”
     
    No way. Never. Not for me.
     
    Heat emanates from Leesie’s leg, warm from the shower, and wriggles into the sadness, under the pain. i lean my head back, incline my face toward her hair, and breathe deep and slow, in and out, over and over. Training. Hanging on tight to her hand. With every vent, i suck in more and more Leesie. My grip on her hand tightens. Her fruity shampoo mixed with chlorine whirls around me. i cling to her hand like i held on to the mangrove tree that saved me in Belize. Isadore tugs, but i