She held her breath and pushed herself off the pier. She fell through the air and splashed into the salt water.
After she hit the water, she continued to fall, somersaulting as she went down. It felt like the different parts of her body were doing somersaults separately, her head, her feet, her wrists, as she kept sinking.
She had no idea how deep she’d fallen, but she was out of breath and had to hurry back to the surface to get some air. She felt a terrible pain all over from having hit the water so hard. She struggled wildly to get her head up. The water swirled all around her, splashing off the beams of the pier. She flailed her arms and legs as she tried to stay up just long enough to catch her breath, but she felt herself being pulled down again.
Her eyes burned, and her nose and throat. Surprisingly, she didn’t feel cold except for her ears. Her ears were freezing. They were so cold they felt like they were going to break off.
She raised her head just enough above the surface to get another breath. Her arms and legs began to weaken. She kept swallowing water. She wanted to get air, but before she could breathe some in, she first had to cough the water out of her lungs. And as she coughed she kept taking in more water. She felt like she’d never catch up. She felt that if she could just get her breath once, she’d be all right.
She went down. She fought her way back up, coughed, gasped some air between coughs, and went down again. Her head was spinning. Her nose burned and her ears were frozen. She struggled to just get her mouth above water. She tried to take a breath but her mouth filled with water instead. She spit out as much as she could. Her eyes were on fire. She went under.
Puff-fish, turkey fish, monkeyface blenny…
Nineteen
The Only Way to Find Her Is to Tell Her a Joke
“Don’t hug me until I take a shower,” said Abel as he headed straight for the bathroom. “Angelini,” he added gleefully.
He was eagerly and anxiously looking forward to seeing Mr. Bone. He felt like a teenager about to go out on his first date. He turned on the shower and washed the banana peels out of his hair, feeling so excited that he sang, sort of:
“Oh, I went downtown for to see my gal,
Sing pol-ly wol-ly doo-dle all the day.
We had us a time, and how,
Sing pol-ly wol-ly doo-dle all the day.”
He made up the words as he went along.
“Her name’s Me-lis-sa, but they call her Mis-tah,
Sing pol-ly wol-ly doo-dle all the day.”
He couldn’t stay on tune either.
“Fare thee well,
Fare well,
Fare well to the garbage truck.
Oh I’m off to Lou-si-an-a for to see my Su-sy-a-na,
Singin’ pol-ly wol-ly doo-dle like a duck.”
But he was happy.
He stopped singing as he let the shower spray his face. It had been over five years. Over five years since Nina died, since she drowned at Mitchell Beach. “That’s long enough!” he decided. Now it was time for him to start having some fun. “I should go back to the beach, too,” he thought. “I should take Angeline.”
“Oh I had a dog that said me-ow,
Sing pol-ly wol-ly doo-dle all the day.
So, I got a cat that said bow-w
ow,