One day, we all walked out onto the sand, feeling cool and invincible in a way that only twenty-one-year-olds can, and saw Parker throwing a Frisbee with some of his friends. He waved at me. Well, less a wave and more that two-fingered salute thing guys did to acknowledge you without really acknowledging you. He was heading off to Princeton at the end of the summer, which didn’t surprise me much. He had always been smart—and obnoxious.

One of my friends was like, “Who’s the hottie?”

I had rolled my eyes and said, “Ew. That’s Parker Thaysden, and he just graduated high school.”

“So he’s legal?” another friend chimed in, and we all laughed in the way of people who have another year of zero responsibilities, a rocking bikini body, and fewer than zero cares in the world.

We all made our way to the ocean. It seemed calmer than usual as we swam out past the breakers. I remember diving over one of them, loving the way it felt for my entire person to be submerged in the salty sea, certainly one of God’s finest creations. As the water reached my chest, I had the unsettling feeling that maybe we were out too far, that we should come back in, and just as I turned to tell my friends, I felt something I had never felt in my twenty-one years of communing with this particular spot of ocean on this exact stretch of sand: a riptide. I tried to swim in, but no matter how hard I fought, the sea kept pulling me out.

I had heard my entire life that you never fight the riptide, you don’t swim against it. You swim to the side to get out of it.

That advice was completely useless in the moment as the raging sea kept pulling me under for longer and longer stretches. I would emerge, gasping, long enough to uselessly attempt to cough out the saltwater filling my mouth and nose. My friends were waving their arms at the shore, I saw as I attempted to keep my eyes open despite their intense burning. But who could help me now? There were no lifeguards on this part of the beach. I started to panic, the worst thing you can do when caught in a riptide. I was going to die, I realized, as it pulled me under again, this time for longer. With a sudden surge of adrenaline, I tried again to swim to my right to get out of this thing. I could just make out someone running toward me.

A minute later, when I felt an arm loop around my waist, I wasn’t sure if it was real or my imagination. But when I looked into the face that had come to rescue me, it was the same one I had known since he was three days old. It was Parker. “Put your arms around my neck and kick if you can,” he shouted breathlessly.

As we got to the shallows, I wrapped my legs around his waist and he carried me piggyback to shore like we were back at one of those picnics, doing a partner race.