✯ North Star ✯

4 - The Wreck

I was out on the boat early, trying to sleep — or at least convincing myself I was trying.

It wasn't working. The water moved beneath me in that particular restless way it had after storms, still unsettled, still working something out, and I lay there listening to it and thinking about things I didn't want to be thinking about and not sleeping.

Someone was moving around on the deck, which made the not-sleeping considerably harder. I lay there and listened to the footsteps for about thirty seconds before I gave up and cracked my eyes open.

John B. Mid-step, arms slightly out, caught in the specific stillness of someone who has just been seen doing something they weren't supposed to be doing. The expression on his face was the one he got when he was trying to look innocent and had forgotten what innocent looked like.

"What are you doing?" My voice came out scratchy, still half in the dark.

"Um." He looked at the tanks in his hands, then back at me, like the tanks might have a better answer than he did. "Totally not stealing your dad's tanks?"

Something between a laugh and a sigh moved through me. "Mmkay. Sure." I sat up, my hair doing things I didn't want to think about. "Well, I'm coming with. Where are we going?"

He grinned — that specific grin, the one that meant he'd already decided this was going to work and was just waiting for everyone else to catch up — and held out his hand to pull me up.

"I'll explain on the boat."

I took his hand and stood, and the morning air hit me and I thought: okay. Whatever it is. Okay.

---

A few minutes later, out in the marsh, Kie was staring at the gear with the expression of someone running a very specific and unflattering set of calculations.

"These are empty." She held up a tank. "You took empty tanks?"

"I— you didn't tell me they were empty?" John B looked at me.

"Excuse me? How would I know? I haven't used them in forever," I said.

Kie checked the gauges, moving down the line with the focused efficiency of someone who had learned not to trust other people's assumptions. "This one's a quarter full. It's enough for one of us."

"Love it when a plan comes together," Pope muttered, in the tone of a man for whom things very rarely came together.

"Does anybody know how to dive?" Kie asked.

"It's kind of a Kook sport," JJ said.

Everyone looked at me. The full weight of five pairs of eyes, and the particular resignation that came with being the only person in the group who'd grown up with access to scuba gear.

I sighed from somewhere deep. "Ugh. Fine. I'll do it."

---

"Okay, so — if you come up too fast, nitrogen gets into your blood and you get the bends," Pope started, notepad already in hand, already in his element.