SWIM Book 1 (Complete three-hundred pages)

DAY 60.4

Wednesday, January 17, 2018

I

fed Jack food from the bags George had tried to steal but which I had returned. I had to stop him from eating it all at once. I fed him piece by piece in his bed. He was mad I hadn't looked under the black blankets to check if he was alive or not, but his hard feelings subsided after he had eaten enough and I had kissed him enough.

I'd forgotten how Jack's mouth tasted, how soft, how sweet, and how electric and warm his lips were. It made me high. He blacked me out.

I heard no moans from the world anymore. The sunlight swam in through the curtains and flooded all the windows.

Jack asked me if we should die together in this bed, take the pills and die with romance. Lying side by side, staring into his eyes, I asked him if he wanted instead to live forever with me. He proposed marriage, before we were to kill ourselves, and we had our honeymoon that minute.

In the morning, I was sick and vomited in the toilet. My breasts felt heavier, too. The notion that we kill ourselves was out the window now.

We grabbed Jack's book, and all the food, and many blankets. We kissed Travis's forehead through the black blanket in the second-floor den, and went to the boat.

We didn't dare touch George's body. But feeling sick, I woke up on our journey toward land with total confusion.

I woke up remembering only that I had made love to Craig in the religious library, and I had forgotten how George had died. I even begged Jack to go back and save Craig and save the others.

When I had eaten something and fallen back to sleep, I woke up remembering everything as it was again.

(No clouds were in the sky whatsoever, and I had to cover myself with a blanket to avoid a sunburn.)

Eventually, we heard calls coming out to us through the sunny day-- Brett and the family had spotted us! They screamed out and Jack shouted for them to swim to the boat.

I whispered to Jack though, "Do you think there will be room for the family and Brett?"

But much unlike Craig and George, Jack said that they better fit or else none of us are going to make it out alive.

Brett and the family did fit. The boat started to sink however, and the family had to cup their hands to bail out ocean water that spilled into the boat. Hours passed, and we moved debris, and I still felt sick. I held my belly.

Eventually, as the sun was coming down, the boat reached a point where it was no longer able to go forward. The water was too shallow now, so we stepped out of the boat, and walked through marshland of dirt and city debris.

Hours passed as we marched precariously through the darkness. Until finally, we saw lights. City lights.

And Mexican music. And colorful buildings. Many people were running, and cheering and coming to help us. By morning we went with the family we rescued to their home in Mexico City. The father was a doctor, and the daughter an intern to a Mexican ambassador for the United Nations.

We ate dinner with them, and took the next flight to our hometown in California, where we made the phone call that taught me my family was very much alive. All our families and all our town, were very much alive.

That plane ride over the world with Jack and Brett on either side of me was quiet. And we didn't say much to each other.

When we landed at LAX, our families were there crying and running to us with hugs that never ended. Our community was there too, standing behind them with signs of love and welcome. The news and press were there. And many people were filming with their phones.

We went straight to a non-religious ceremony at the biggest church, and Brett, Jack and I were commemorated back into the community with love, and the town gave sorrow for the deaths of Craig, George and Travis.

Travis's father was terribly sad to have lost his son as well as his wife.

Because I saw that George's family was so heartbroken as well to have lost their son, I let the secrets of George's wrongdoing die with him. I knew I would never suffer him again, so I was at piece and forgave him for my own sake.

I prayed to Craig with love for trying to save me from George, and I hugged his mom and dad who were divorced but nonetheless embraced in tears together. I wondered if the other families felt it was unfair that Jack, Brett and I had survived while their kids had died. And I wondered if they blamed me for encouraging their boys to steal away with me on my father's birthday yacht, because if we hadn't, and if we had remembered to drop anchor, we would have never drifted south, and become swept by the tsunami.

The tsunami hit nearer the equator and only touched the California-Mexican border to Tijuana.

I told my parents I was pregnant, and that I wanted to marry Jack, and they could care less about anything besides the fact that their beloved daughter was alive. Jack and I were married in Paris, and Brett the best man as well as Travis the honorary best man. Our parents bought us an expensive house in Los Angeles, but we eventually moved for a year to the Midwest, on a high up mountain of dirt, where no water could be found for miles.

We planned to move to the east coast or back to California, after my nightmares and anxieties subsided. I had terrible dreams about the flood. And about the deaths of George, Travis and Craig.

When I had our baby, those nightmares suddenly vanished. I slept in the arms of love every night. When our baby was born, we moved back to the west coast to be close to our parents. I went to law school while Jack joined a publication firm and began his business.

When more natural disasters continued throughout the world, the daughter of the family we saved, who had lived in Mexico City, called us from Washington D.C. about a campaign to raise money for communities who fall victim to natural disaster.

My husband and I went for a live television interview in Germany, where a prominent American actor happened to be. He told me to just call him Leo. He said to me that he had been making documentaries to show just how important the global climate change issue was.

Leo said to me how important it is for powerful people to experience suffering like normal people at least once in their lives.

"We so often live in a bubble, where our worst concerns are not making it into an Ivy League college or not being able to afford the next iPhone. Perspective is the only way to happiness. True, unbreakable happiness. Some people worry about high school sweethearts breaking apart, while most of the world only sees that as a petty luxury.

"Billions of people are drowning. They are not fed. They have no clean water. Their basic needs are denied. And the people who have plenty are the ones who deny them."

One year later, after all the interviews were done, I nearly forgot about that Mexican girl from the U.N. and that famous actor. I fell back into the la-di-da culture of my wealthy little town. I had more kids with Jack. And we moved into a bigger house. He wrote more books, and made more money. We inherited from our relatives, and we made lots of wealthy friends while we went on our latest expensive vacations to Brazil, Austria and Italy.

It's amazing, the distance between our worlds. I don't see poor people much, so they fade from my mind. Being poor isn't even real to me, even when I watch the news. And sometimes I think acting poor is what causes being poor. I deserve being rich, because I act rich. I work hard, I treat others right, and God, love and art fill me with joy.

I remember the flood as only a consequence of forgetting to drop anchor. Of happenstance.

I never thought it was because my father's oil company helped kill the world.

Jack and I drank Starbucksevery day, and lived happily ever after.