Page 64 of Holding On

Her grip on me falters just as I knot the hoodie around both of us. I catch her head so her nose and mouth stay above the waterline, but she’s weak.

We can’t stay here. We can’t climb high enough.

We’re going to have to swim out.

I try to calm my breathing. I take several deep breaths and make a plan. In my mind, I picture the tunnel, the rocky shelves, and the protuberances jutting into the space we’ll have to swim through. The caves are a part of my childhood. I know every curve, every rock formation. I hold her against me, and my heart rate slows, as does my breathing. I wrap my arm around her and then lift her chin with a finger.

“You need to listen, Maya.”

“Ye-ah,” she whispers.

“I’ve got you. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

Her head lolls to one side, and I lift it again.

“Kiss me.”

She tilts her head up to mine, and I kiss her in the cold dark of that cave. I need her strength, and she needs to know I’m here.

“Maya,” I say, pulling away and stroking her face with one hand. “It’s going to be hard. You have to listen to me.”

I give her swift instructions and she nods, then she holds her breath twice for me, though only for a few seconds. Her lips part and her breath escapes after just moments. She’ll have to do it a lot longer than that.

I pull on the arms of the hoodie, making sure the knot between us is tight, and I start walking toward the mouth of the cave, feeling along the rocks I know so well.

I’ve played here since I could walk. The whale rock is above us. But I’ve never been inside during high tide.

Panic starts to rise alongside the water level. Tides here are fourteen feet and tick up by the minute. You always have to be on alert. I pull her up higher on me, and she loops a thin arm around my neck. A swell lifts me off my feet, and we start a side crawl.

The large swell moves us toward the back of the cave like a watery sigh. My feet are growing numb.

I strike out again, leveraging receding waves.

We’re pulled along at a manageable rate, and I can keep us from the walls, which are stacked with tumbled granite.

We’re out of the large high-back chamber and in the narrow tunnel, and the water almost reaches the ceiling just a few inches above my head. The freezing water covers us both, her head barely above the swells.

Again, my feet lift from the sand. This time, however, when the water recedes, I’m still treading water. We have to get out of here.

“Maya, now,” I say. We both hold our breath and dive under.

I feel her dead weight under me as I try to kick through the water.

I rise to the surface and hear her gasp and cough, but at least she held her breath.

“Again!” I shout, and I take another deep breath, plunging us back into the icy water. With one arm around her—the other in a blind stroke, feeling my way out—I work to keep us in a straight line. I try to surface, but there’s not enough ceiling space to keep our heads above water.

She’s struggling weakly against me, her arms trying to grip me—grasping, letting go, fumbling for a place to hold onto.

She’s drowning.

I put both hands on either side of her face, place my mouth over hers, and blow.

I find a foothold against the bottom of the wall and push to the top, floating for a moment until I feel the wave recede, leaving just enough of a gap for me to take another breath.

I go under, find her mouth, put mine over hers, and breathe into her.

This time, her lips are freezing cold. She opens her lips and I exhale into her mouth, deeply, feeling her move but creating a vacuum in my own chest.