And then, she began to walk toward the Pacific Ocean, drawn to the largest body of water she could find.

47 | Prem

Before that day—the day Kiki found me in the swimming pool—she loved the water. She liked to do somersaults underwater and practice her swan dives off the board, and she really loved being in the ocean, especially in Hawaii, where the water was warm. Neither of us could believe that was the same frigid body of water we saw when we drove up to San Francisco for Easter brunch. Kiki tried to walk into those cool, gray waves, but she couldn’t get in all the way; she couldn’t be the super-mermaid I drew into my award-winning graphic novel, WaterMan, who saves the world from drought.

But she just stopped, after that day. She stopped going in the water, or even near the water, which made me sad, because in addition to me and Gilly, that was just one more thing she loved that she didn’t have in her life anymore. I was really proud of her when she was brave enough to do it again, to visit the ocean, then try surfing. I was proud of her when she dipped her toes into a swimming pool just like the one where she found me; I know she had to be really strong to do that. One day, I hope she’ll make it in all the way into a pool again.

Kiki didn’t want to swim with me that day after school, and she didn’t want me to swim alone, but that’s no reason to be afraid of the water forever. There are good reasons to fear the water. It’s big, it’s powerful, it’s controlled by forces we can’t see, and it can make us feel really small when we stand next to it.

But the water is also full of magic. When we go underwater, our bodies feel like we’re floating in outer space. Our ears feel like we’re in a tunnel. We can make bubbles and do somersaults and try all kinds of things we can’t do on land. All those amazing creatures live under the water: the colorful fish we saw in Hawaii, and some that don’t even look like fish, just like rocks or leaves. There’s a whole different world down there.

I just wanted to look at the water that day. That’s why I climbed up onto the chair. Once I saw it, the clear blue pool with light dancing on its surface, I thought I would just dip my legs in. It was so refreshing and so playful, lapping at my legs, begging me to slip in. It couldn’t hurt, I thought, to play in a different world, where the rules of gravity and movement were different, just for a little while. And I had so much fun in the pool, steering my spaceship into another galaxy, hiding underneath it from the invading forces, shooting the spray gun I got at Tommy’s birthday party. It was so much fun. I can’t think of a better way to spend my last moments on earth.