CHAPTER

31

I DIDN’T SINK right away, but I was too weak and dizzy to swim, so I started to slip under the surface of the water. My legs kicked for the bottom, but it was nowhere to be found. They kept kicking and kicking uselessly as I slid down into the darkness.

The impact of hitting the water had shocked my mind out of its fog.

There is, of course, an instinct that takes over when you’re fighting for survival. But what people who haven’t been through it don’t realize is that sometimes there’s also the opposite instinct—the instinct to let go. To accept the fate dealt to you.

I’d messed it up before, but here was my second chance. I could get it right this time.

With the water pressing cold against my skin, there was clarity. I saw flashes and visions of the accident in my brain. Things I’d never remembered before. I saw Siena’s head slam against the window and come away bleeding. I saw the airbag trap Dad against his seat, misshapen by the water into a mask that stuck to his face. Dina was to my left—I felt her hand grasp for me and then fall away, and I knew without looking that something was terribly wrong.

And then it was just me and Mom.

She had somehow managed to turn on the light inside the car. I could see her fighting with her seat belt, which reminded me to unclasp mine. She’d also triggered the sunroof, which was now half-open, giving us our only chance of escape but also allowing water to rush into the car. My seat belt was undone. Easy peasy.

I waited for her, expecting her to float free and come with me to the surface.

But she didn’t. She couldn’t. Her belt was stuck; the latch was damaged.

She looked at me and pointed up, out the sunroof.

I was stunned, paralyzed.

“Go,” she said, in the half moment before the water flooded us.

I shook my head.

She reached up and grabbed my wrist.

GO, she mouthed. GO!

She shoved me toward the sunroof, and at the last second, she pulled my face down to hers and kissed my forehead. Then she held me up and I saw her mouth move in the shape of the word:

GO.

So I did. I went. I lived. Because it was what my mom wanted.

And maybe because it was what some impossibly small part of me wanted, too. I mean, sure, it wasn’t the obvious choice. A clueless decision, in fact, made without any thought of the aftermath. Not a thought about how much surviving would suck, how much misery and complication waited for me once I broke through the surface of the water.