One

Kasey squeezes my hand and asks if I’m ready.  

        “No,” I tell her.

        She settles back on her towel and stares at the sky. “I’ll give you five minutes.”

        All of it—my revelation, the years of avoidance, her desire to help, culminates then. In five minutes.

Stretched before me, the ocean churns. Waves curl like liquid wind in a continuous roiling loop. I dig my feet into the sand and imagine taking root, fusing with such permanence I’m unable to follow through.

I’m here because of Kasey. I’ve seen the ocean take a life and need to defeat my fear. That I’ve made it this far is a miracle. To the beach, thirty feet from the water. I shudder at the prospect of crossing those ten yards.

“Do you still think about him?” She asks quietly.

“Everyday.”

Close by us, a couple debates whether to swim. Lathered in sunscreen, the woman says it’s too cold, while her companion calls it invigorating.

“I’ll pass,” she says, lying on her stomach.

“But we’ve come all this way,” he urges, “we have to.”

I assume they’re on vacation, just like Kasey, the Pacific Ocean another attraction to check off their to-do list. But for the couple, it’s a thing, not the thing. Few people would travel two thousand miles to help a friend purge her fear.

The man announces he’s heading out. The woman tells him the water is fifty some-odd degrees. I smile when he flexes his bicep, as if muscle mass has anything to do with temperature endurance.

Shifting to her side, Kasey strikes a pose. “What do you think?”

“Of your swimsuit? Is it new?”

“It is. I bought it to commemorate our little adventure. It’s also the swan song to my twenties. I’ll be thirty soon and want to go out with sass.”

She makes me laugh. “You’ll have sass when you’re ninety.”

I shield my eyes, as if suffering from glare. In such a bright shade of yellow, it looks like she’s wearing the sun. My two-piece pales in comparison. Occupying drawer space for way too long, the color matches the sea.

“Brian likes it,” Kasey giggles.

I give her a sardonic smirk. “Your husband would think you look hot in a burlap sack.”

Kasey rolls back, stretches her legs, and stands. “Time’s up,” she says. I rub my brow and she reminds me we’ll be doing it together.

“I don’t know, Kase.”

“We’ll just swim beyond the breakers and splash around, maybe hit some waves.” Her smile is persuasive.

“Five more minutes?” I plead.

Shaking her head, Kasey extends her hand. “Come on. It’s time to win.”

We walk to the edge and I gaze out at the cerulean blue of Monterey Bay. The rolling deep stretches past the horizon. A handful of swimmers ride the swells and lightheartedly call to each other. When one man is swallowed by a huge wave, I hold my breath until he reappears.  

Kasey grabs my hand and pulls me forward. The water is painful, a frozen sting that circles my ankles and makes me wince. Though I expect her to hedge, Kasey’s face is fixed in resolve. “You can do this,” she says. “You have to do this.”

We move deeper and it creeps up my legs, forcing my teeth into a steady chatter. Experiencing the same discomfort, Kasey shrugs and signals to keep going. I’m numb when the water reaches my chin. Ducking down, I immerse myself and feel the sea heave. As I resurface, Kasey points to the spot where a swell is gathering. She tells me to go there.

No longer able to touch the bottom, my legs pedal rhythmically against the surge. Having come this far, I feel victorious and Kasey knows it. Her laughter fills the air and she rewards me with a splash. I push my hand through the water and heartily return the favor.

The sea gentles and I lie back, weightless in the coursing liquid. Sun on my face, its warmth caresses me like a kiss. I’ve been pardoned and the feeling is cathartic. Why I’m here doesn’t matter, only that I am.

I bob up and Kasey smiles. She repeats our plan, to see the Lone Cypress and cliffs off Pebble Beach.

“Don’t forget the chowder,” I say.

She splashes me again. “I could never forget the chowder.”

A large swell begins its roll and lifts us higher. After it passes, Kasey leans back to float.  Swirling in the water, her dark hair fans her face like an octopus. When she raises up, I see it.

I know the difference. A dolphin’s dorsal is curved, a shark’s is straight. This one is a perfect triangle.

The ambush is from behind, Kasey’s mouth twists and terror fills her expression. We stare at each other for one long second before she’s pulled under the water like kelp. The ocean bucks as the cataclysm begins, turning the sea into a storm, whipping me with such ferocity I struggle to breathe. With a sharp kick I right myself and stretch my arms for balance. Brine coats my tongue as I fight to stay above water. I anxiously call her name but my cries are muted by the screams of swimmers.

 Though only a dozen, their shrieks resound as they push through the current and onto the beach. Amidst the press, one man slows and swerves away from the others. He launches forward and powers through the surf, slicing the water with long strokes, halting when the depth reaches his chest. Eyes fixed in my direction, he roars an urgent plea. “Swim!”

Fear debilitates me. Afraid to move, I’m just as afraid not to. It’s only when the crimson sea gives up the truth I stretch towards the shore and kick.

        With every pull my arms make, every thrust my feet deliver, I envision being taken, tugged backwards to the blackness of the sea and the infinity of death.

Five feet. Ten.

There’s no time to breathe. Propelled by a wave, I cut through the water until my foot slaps the sand. When a sudden jolt shoots up my leg, I realize I’m whole.

The man hurries over, scoops me into his arms, and carries me to the point where wet meets dry. He lays me down and, as my ropey hair absorbs the sand, my guilt begins to grow. I don’t deserve the gift of a future. Kasey’s the one who should be alive.

At once, a crowd encircles me, uttering kind words with sad expressions. We share a nightmare come to life. Frightened children hang their heads and cling to their mothers’ sides. I understand how they feel. If I could, I would too.

 With a sharp twinge, the tremors begin, squeezing my spine and surging with unrelenting force. Jerking alone in a feral dance, I stare at the tortured faces. In a silent appeal, my pleading eyes beg someone to help me. A child covers me with towels.

My rescuer asks a woman to gather my things and I remember them as the couple from the beach. She’s handed an empty garbage bag and walks purposefully away. When she rejoins the circle, a canvas tote hangs from her arm. She points to the embroidered script. “Her name is Kasey.”

The man squats beside me and places his palm on my cheek. “Kasey, help is coming.”

I want to tell them, “That’s not me,” but my teeth click uncontrollably in response.

Above us, collective heads nod while the faint whine of a siren sounds in the distance. Within a minute, a team of responders sweeps across the sand, armed with enough paraphernalia to save me. I know what they do not—I cannot be saved. No bandage is big enough, no medication is strong enough, there is no cure known.

Although I breathe, I am dead.

The paramedics remove the towels and make their assessment. My feet are abraded, one arm skinned raw. Checking my vitals, they report the tremors are caused from shock and wonder aloud about things like bacteria and infection, internal injuries, and severity of impact. Silently, I tell them my heart is unsalvageable. It is broken.

And then comes the gasp. From just outside the circle, a woman cries out. For one heartbreaking second the crowd shifts and parts, enough I can see an arm rolling in the surf. It pushes me over the edge and I scream.  

And scream.

And scream.

And scream.

I don’t feel the needle, but I know it’s gone in. An instantaneous calm, certainty masked by a drug induced haze. I’m lifted onto a stretcher and lifted again. I float through the air like a genie on a carpet.

A door slams before an engine kicks to life. Dark thoughts swirl through my brain as I engage in the ebb and flow of a cognitive world. Beside me, the woman from the beach cradles my head and calls me Kasey. She strokes my sandy hair and murmurs it will be all right. When one of the paramedics requests my identification, she sifts through the tote. I see her pale as the impact of her mistake takes her breath.

“That it?” The responder asks. “Is that Kasey’s license?”

“Not Kasey,” she whispers.

“What?”

She thrusts out the card for him to see. “Kasey was the other girl.”

He looks at the photograph and turns his head.

Theirs is a haunting exchange.

In a low voice he asks, “Who is she then?”

The woman opens the plastic bag. Among the towels she’s collected, a small cooler, tubes of sunscreen, she produces a mesh sack. She removes my wallet.

“Katherine Mayberry,” she winces, as if it hurts to say.

“Well now, Katherine . . .,” the responder says with a tight smile, “. . . we’re almost there.”

~~~

The room is so bright it rivals the sun. Under the lights, they can see every blemish, every freckle, every pore. When a nurse grabs a metal can and shakes out my hair, sand falls like rain onto the bottom.

Doctors hover above me, the day’s anomaly. They manipulate my arms and legs, chart my pulse and pressure. They seem particularly interested in the red abrasion above my elbow. Raw and angry, it looks the way I feel. “Can you tell us about the attack?” one asks.

I blink back tears.

“Please. It will aid in your treatment.”

“Not yet,” I whisper.

It is the first thing I say since it happened. It is the only thing.

I do not ask them my questions, ones with answers too unsettling to know. Those regarding the children on the beach, the man in the water, the woman who called me Kasey. I wonder if they’re alright. In the aftermath of everything, what’s happened to them?  

        Someone has placed the bag with my belongings in a corner and, from deep inside, a muffled tune sounds. When everyone stops to listen, a nurse removes my phone. She holds it high enough I can read the name and I see the caller is my mother. I hunch my shoulders as I think what to say.

“Should I explain?” she asks.

I lower my chin and nod.

A moment later it is out—a freed, ominous thing, released into the wild. She reports the gist of what happened, because the gist is all she knows, and I hear my mother’s shrieks across two thousand miles. A settling ensues as the nurse informs her where I am, and a simple, “I will tell her,” before the goodbye.

“Your mother is coming,” she says. “She will call Brian.”

I wince at the heartrending task of telling Kasey’s husband.

They give me a hospital room to wait in, a pity gesture. Although an abrasion doesn’t merit admittance, there’s no one waiting for me but carnivore reporters anxious to feed. It would have been cruel to send me back out in the world with only my garbage bag. Yet, I’m familiar with cruel. It’s looked me in the eye.

I walk over to the sack holding my things and remove my phone. Scrolling through the pictures, I stop on the one taken the day Kasey and I graduated. Clad in black gowns and matching mortarboards, we clutch our red University of Wisconsin diplomas, flashing years of orthodontia. On that day, Kasey had seven years to live. Seven birthdays. Seven Christmases. Seven years to cram a full life. I compare it to mine—her happy marriage and outdated home, her parents at the ready for grandchildren, her job satisfying, but not paramount. My throat burns as I envy the life she lost, ashamed over the petty things I deem important.

 Tracing my finger over her brunette waves, I study our contrasts. Kasey—with eyes the color of a Hershey’s kiss, and me—flaxen, blue-eyed, and pale. It had always been easy to imagine her growing old, embracing fine lines and extra pounds. She would have been one of those envied women, beautiful forever, the radiance of her smile a constant. I imagine her now and flinch. I imagine her now and break.

A new nurse stops at my door. Up to this point they have left me alone, but my strident weeping causes her to pause. She has guts, or is beginning her shift, and I instantly wave her away. “No, listen,” she says. “I know you have a long wait and I wonder if you’d like a shower? All the sand can’t feel good.” Guts, I conclude. I say nothing but look at the gauze extending from shoulder to wrist. “No worries,” she says, “we’ll bag it.”

The shower is calming. Under the stream, the grainy residue of where I’ve been begins to wash away. I shampoo my hair three times. I lather my body four. Drying off, I’m still dirty.

I lean against the tile wall and imagine Kasey reborn. I see her face, full of certainty. I hear her voice, ripe with conviction. “This is what you need to do.”

I followed like a lamb to the slaughter.

Hers.

How much easier everything would be if the shark had gotten me.

The grit is still there, under my skin, sinking deeper. I turn on the water again and let the hot stream pummel by body. As my tears meld with the spray, I find comfort in the lack of distinction.