My T-shirt and shorts are already soaked, so I wade in deeper until I can lift my feet off the bottom and float. And then I can’t feel the cold anymore. I can’t feel anything anymore. So I let the current pull me out even farther, past a floating swim dock and beyond the clanging safety buoys.

I can still hear the others carrying on and having a good time. But it’s like an echo. I’m separate from all that chaos now. I stretch out on my back and let the water hold me up. Carry me away. I’m far enough from shore that there are only gentle swells. I rise and fall with them. Like breathing.

It makes me feel safe. That painless, floating feeling. The numbness of it. And the dark. Like being rocked to sleep. Suspended. Inside a cocoon, maybe.

Or a womb.

I stare up into the emptiness and think about that night. Twelve years ago. When I was five.

This beach.

These waves.

That sky.

I’m trying to remember something real. A tight hand on my wrist, maybe? But that moment has slipped away, and I can’t get it back. There’s just the same impossible memory as always.

Stars falling into the sea. Like rain on fire.

The heavy, wet plop of them.

And, always, a voice that seems to come from nowhere. From no one.

Look at the stars!

Water is sloshing around my ears, but somehow I hear shouting. Not memory voices. Real ones. Muffled words tinged with panic.

“Avril!” It’s Jude. “Too far out!” Then something I don’t catch. Dangerous. Undertow something. “Come on back!” I open my eyes and let my feet drop so that I’m treading water. It’s so much deeper here than it was along the edge.

Darker.

Colder.

Val and Lex are waving at me like they’re signaling an aircraft. Motioning for me to swim toward them. Lex yells something about sharks.

I spin in a slow circle. In one direction, I see my new friends. Jude and Lex and Val. The fire burning on the beach. The lights of Whisper Cove Theatre shining in the distance, at the top of the hill behind them.

But in the other direction, there’s open water. The lighthouse, and then just black. A slick, wet nothingness that seems to go on forever and ever.

And for a second, I don’t know which way I want to swim.

I hesitate. I’m looking for someone. Waiting for her.

Hoping she’ll find me.

I’ve been searching for my mother for years. In creeks and rivers. In muddy Texas lakes. Our neighbor’s bottomless swimming pool. The bathtub. And I’ve never found her.

Or she’s never found me.

But surely here. In this place, of all places.

This ocean, dark and deep.