After talking to Jesse, Quinn practically skipped down to the water—strangely elated, even though nothing about their discussion changed how messed up her life was. The fact that he wasn’t angry, that he was going to help, that she wasn’t in this alone . . . It changed everything. And just the fact that someone believed her!
She stood shin-deep in the surf for a moment, easing in. The ocean’s hands wrapped around her legs and pulled. Let’s play!
She stopped teasing it—let it pull her farther out and dove in, through a wave, sputtering for a moment at the exquisite shock of the full-body cold. Quickly, she swam out to deeper water that came up to her chest. Waves barreled toward her. She flung herself up to the peak of the high crests, plummeted down on the other side. Again and again. Fly up, crash down. The waves seemed to get higher and higher, daring her to keep going, sometimes so big that she had to dive through instead of going over, fists pummeling her back and legs as the water thundered toward shore on top of her. She started thinking about the baby, wondering if it (he? she?) could feel all of this, too. If it was scared. Or maybe even having fun. She was sure a doctor would tell her that it didn’t feel emotions, but she had seen pictures online of what a fetus looked like at this stage, and it totally looked like a tiny—if weirdly big-headed—baby. So it was kind of hard for her to imagine that it didn’t feel anything. Don’t be scared, she said silently.
She jumped and plunged and dove, forgetting about everything except the oncoming wave, knowing that fall was approaching and this may be her last swim for a while. And just when she was beginning to feel tired, the next waves weren’t so exuberant—more rolling and gentle, as if the ocean were getting tired, too. She treaded water for a minute, catching her breath, then started to swim in slow, easy strokes, parallel to the shoreline.
She still couldn’t believe she’d stayed out of the ocean all those years. When she took that midnight swim last May, it had been like a revelation. Her fear had been so wildly misplaced.
She could remember every sensation from that night in Maine. Lowering her naked body off the rock into the black depths, her pulse pounding with the thrill of doing something forbidden and dangerous; not only was she going in the ocean, she was at the very beach—Holmes Cove—where she’d almost drowned. But once she slipped into that ink-black water and her body disappeared, any sense of danger vanished, replaced by sheer exhilaration. Disappearing into that water had been like . . . like slipping out of her own skin into something that was both magical and massive, while still intimate and safe. Like she left her body and was just . . . Quinn. Yes. She’d felt more purely herself than she could ever remember. As if she’d found the part of her soul she’d left behind when they moved away. She’d thought she’d be too cold to stay in—swimming in the ocean in Maine in late spring was insanity—but she wasn’t, maybe because it was so hard to tell where her body ended and the ocean began. The half moon had sparkled on the water, making it look like a whole school of those mysterious deep-sea illuminated creatures—lanternfish—had risen to the surface. Like she was swimming with stars.
She’d felt so alive. No fear, no guilt, just thrill.
The exhilaration lasted all the way through running back home on the dark forest path, the moss carpet springy under her feet, the secret of what she’d just done humming inside her. (Jesse was the only one she would tell. If her family—well, her father—found out she’d been swimming alone, at Holmes Cove, in the middle of the night? She’d have been better off drowning.)
Quinn stopped swimming now and turned over to float on her back. The sky smiled blue above her. She placed her hands on her stomach and closed her eyes.
Float . . . float . . . float . . .
Water lapped against her ears, played with her hair, nudged her this way and that. She could almost hear it talking, telling her that everything would be okay.
This was the best—the most relaxed—she’d felt since this nightmare had started. Even aside from the relief about Jesse, everything felt so much easier when she was floating, weightless. Most people, it seemed, dreamed and fantasized about being able to fly like birds. Quinn hated the thought of flying—had panic attacks on airplanes. Quinn’s fantasy, even during the years when she’d stayed out of the ocean, was to be able to swim like a fish, deep into the hidden world that was right here on the planet. Those lanternfish had always fascinated her—making their own light, thousands of feet under the surface. It must be so beautiful down there among them. She’d done a report on them in sixth grade and learned about bioluminescence; to Quinn, it was still magic.
She wished she could stay in this weightless world forever. She imagined swimming down to that mysterious place and releasing the baby into the water, watching it swim away, its path lit by those living lights. At the thought, an image appeared behind her eyelids. The baby, rocking inside her, like she was rocking in the swells. She pictured a round belly and tiny limbs, and wondered if being in a womb was like floating in the ocean, if the sounds were similar, and the weightlessness . . . the baby’s own tiny ocean inside her, until it was ready for the real one. It probably felt just as safe as she did now.
How did you get here? Quinn asked. Who are you? Why are you inside of me? Babies aren’t supposed to be mysteries.
She listened, trying to hear an answer, but none came, just the sound of the water.
Still, she had a profound feeling that the baby could understand her words, that it was listening to her just like she was trying to listen to it. I need you to help me, she said. I need you to tell me where you came from.
She listened again. Water . . .
She imagined it saying: You know. You were there. I didn’t exist yet.
I don’t know. Tell me.
Just the lap, lap, lap of the water against her, and the roar of the waves crashing on the shore.
I don’t blame you. I just need to know.
Caaaw, caaaw . . . a seagull crying . . .
Lap, lap, lap . . .
It was beautiful. The words were inside Quinn, but weren’t her own.
Are you Jesse’s? she asked. Because that was the only beautiful explanation that Quinn could see.
Lap, lap, lap . . .
Beautiful. It was beautiful.
Water stroked her skin. Like it was comforting her. She lay so still and let it rock her, listening.
A still morning sea, deeply asleep . . . That poem again. It was “morning sea,” not “midnight sea.” A morning sea, like the one she was floating in right now.
The sound of the water was its own type of poetry. The rush and roar . . .
And inside her, a shush-shush, shush-shush . . .
A heartbeat. She wasn’t sure whose.