The back float is much harder than on my stomach. So hard, I’m almost positive I can’t do it, and I think he’s getting frustrated with me? Or maybe I’m getting frustrated with myself. Because once I completely give in, stop worrying about water getting into my ears … then it happens.

I’m weightless.

I float on my back, looking up at the blue sky, feeling my body being buoyed by the warm harbor water, gently rocked. I float while Lucky paddles beside me. While he lets go and swims around me. I float while he smiles and slyly peels up my wet shirt from where it sticks to my skin and kisses my belly button where water pools. I float while he swims beneath me like a shark, pretending to bite my thigh and upsetting my balance—then swimming back around and catching me when my legs sink.

“Hey!” I shout, laughing and splashing as I grasp his neck.

“Scared of a little ol’ fish nibble?”

“Scared of drowning, you jerk!”

But it strikes me that’s not true.

I’m not half as wary of the water as I was before we came out here. And when he wraps his arms around me, legs treading water around mine, and kisses me, mouth wet, chest pumping up and down with the exertion of swimming and holding me up, I’m not thinking about the horizon or the possibility of drowning. I’m not thinking about town gossip or whether my mom is happy. I’m not thinking about Adrian Summers or the broken windows, or the ticking time bombs in my life.

I’m not thinking about anything but the two of us.

About this.

This joy.

Right now.

Maybe, just maybe, I could be a water rat, after all.

Kablam.

Chapter 16

KNOCK BEFORE ENTERING: Doorknob hotel sign placed inside a plastic picture frame and mounted with wall-hanging putty on the outside of the bedroom door of Evie Saint-Martin. (Personal photo/Josephine Saint-Martin)

Chapter 16

Lucky and I take the Narwhal out almost every evening for a couple of weeks to the same spot. Turns out there’re these wristbands that Lucky found. You wear them on your pressure points, and they help stop nausea caused by seasickness. Well, that and the antihistamine that I’m now taking before we set sail.

I’m unscrambled, and I can be on the water without wanting to die.

Strangely, I actually like being on the boat now. It feels like we’re escaping the world for a couple of hours. A safe place. Just ours. And yes, we go out in the Narwhal to practice my swimming in the new bathing suit I’ve bought. But often we do a lot of other things, like: