In Too Deep (9 page)

I
told nobody. Not Josh, not the Sugars, and definitely not Mr. Alvarez. The moment they pulled me into the boat would have been the perfect time to shout, “Wayo cut off my air and took Cortés’s box!” but I couldn’t say anything.

Instead, I cried. I didn’t care who saw me, if Katy thought I was a wimp, or if Mr. Alvarez was disappointed in me. I cried as the boat skipped along the water back to town, and by the time my feet hit land, I’d gotten myself as under control as I could.

And when we returned to Tango Divers only to find the door padlocked from the outside, I realized that I couldn’t tell the truth. I had no idea
how
to tell the truth, because there was so much I didn’t know.

Why, for example, didn’t Wayo cut my hoses with a knife? Why did he only turn off my air? The only explanation was that he didn’t want to call too much attention in case my body was ever found. I wasn’t sure if that meant Alvarez had put him up to it or if Wayo had betrayed him as well.

I didn’t know Josh at all, no matter how much I wanted to pretend otherwise, and the Sugars were the Sugars. I couldn’t trust anybody. So, when Mr. Alvarez asked what had happened, I lied.

I said that Wayo and I had lost contact midway through the Devil’s Throat. Maybe I took a wrong turn, maybe there was too much silt, but whatever the reason, I found myself alone at 130 feet in the middle of the night. I told them I’d wanted to look for him, but it was dark and I was worried about expending too much air. I told them nitrogen narcosis had gotten to me and I’d freaked out.

“It’s not your fault. Wayo must have ditched you on purpose,” Alvarez said, shaking his head, oblivious to how certain I was that Wayo had indeed ditched me on purpose. “But why? And why would he lock the door and disappear? It doesn’t make any sense.”

I was too scared to leave the hotel room for the rest of the trip. A headache was my excuse, from going so deep and almost running out of air.

I’d always had little nightmares about losing air at depth—somewhere in the back of every diver’s mind is the
what if
scenario—but having it actually happen to me was worse than I’d ever imagined. It’s not like you get shot and then you only have a few seconds before your life flashes before your eyes and then you die. Being out of air is like getting a letter in the mail that you’re going to die soon. You have time to contemplate how drowning is going to feel.

I had contemplated it. And I had felt it, and despite the fact that I’d ended up surviving, that sensation still haunted me. Like trying to breathe through a swizzle straw.

Every time someone knocked on the door, I thought Wayo was coming back to finish the job. But the hours passed, and Wayo’s friend the hotel owner swore he had no idea where Wayo had gone or how to contact him. One of the guys in another dive shop said they saw him getting on the ferry to the mainland.

Alvarez withdrew, muttering to himself with a blank expression that hadn’t left his face since he saw the padlock on Tango Divers. He seemed to have no interest in chaperoning, so he finished painting the school himself while the others basically had the run of the island. With every meal he brought me, every visit to check up on me, came another attempt to make sense of Wayo’s actions.

I was tempted to tell him the whole story, if for no other reason than to make him stop asking me about it, but I figured it was in my best interests, as a person who wanted to stay alive, to keep my mouth shut. So, whenever Alvarez tried to talk to me about the dive, I kept consistent.

We got separated. I don’t know how. I don’t know
where he went. I freaked out.

“He must have found something and gone off on his own,” Alvarez said. “But why?”

I finally asked him the question he’d refused to answer that night. “What was Plan A?”

“We had the dive all set up. Wayo and another diver were supposed to go down, but the night of the dive, after the fishing tournament, the other diver canceled.”

“Or maybe he didn’t,” I said.

“I should never have asked you to do that,” he said. The pleas for forgiveness had grown stronger with each day. “I knew it at the time, but I didn’t listen to myself. I was so close, I couldn’t imagine giving up. But that’s no excuse.”

At first, the concern he showed me was reassuring. But as the days passed, and as he kept asking me the same questions, I wondered even more if he had something to do with it. What if he and Wayo were still working together? What if Alvarez knew the box was empty? Was that why he kept coming back to “make sense” of what had happened? Did he want to see what I knew? If the box was really empty when I found it?

“I thought you were supposed to be some superdiver,” Katy said at one point as she dropped off a lunch of chicken tamales.

How easy it would have been to wave the disk in her face.
I
am
a superdiver! Here’s the proof!

I wanted to tell Josh, but I didn’t know how to bring it up. And I was surprised that my main emotion—overriding even the pride about what I’d done, the relief at having survived, and my fear of what was going to happen next—was shame. I was ashamed to have been used like that, whether it was by Wayo alone or by Alvarez, too.

There was no logical explanation for it, but there it was. So I didn’t tell Josh, and I didn’t call Gracia; I kept it all to myself.

T
he United States customs declaration form sets a limit of ten thousand dollars on what can be brought back across the border. I was pretty sure that the disk currently pressed between two cheap copper ashtrays and wrapped in a plastic Tienda del Sol souvenir bag—my dastardly plan for getting it past the X-rays in Cozumel—was worth significantly more than that. So I’d checked the box next to “Nothing to declare,” which was a lie because of more than just what was in my pack. I had plenty of things to declare, starting with
Someone
tried to kill me!

I clutched the handle of my rolling duffel with one hand and the strap of my backpack with the other. My bag’s wheels squeaked when I took a step forward. Third in line. I tried to smile, but my heart was in my throat, and somehow that got in the way. The corner of my eye started to twitch, so I looked down and shrugged into my backpack’s shoulder strap.

My palms felt as though I’d soaped them up but forgotten to rinse. I wiped them on the nicest pair of shorts I owned. Black ones, short but not sluttily so. No baggy travel outfit for me. I wore a red tank top, and my hair was pulled back with a diamond-studded banana clip I’d begged Katy to let me use. It was my version of dressing up. I wanted to look put together for the trip home. As unsuspicious as possible.

“Don’t worry,” Josh said, leaning in from behind me. “Your parents won’t ever find out what happened.”

I swallowed. “Why would you think—”

“I’m just saying. Besides, it’s not your fault.”

Katy looked at me from the next line the way a mother might glare at a misbehaving child. She’d made no secret of the fact that she disagreed with Josh’s take. To her, it was definitely my fault. My fault we hadn’t found the treasure. I closed my eyes, struggling to get my heart under control.

Second in line. A forced smile.

Mr. Alvarez shuffled forward as well, two people behind Katy, by now a shell of his former gregarious faculty hotness. The night before, he’d made us promise to keep everything that had happened—and the real reason for the trip—a secret. There was still the matter of the cheating, after all. Nate called it blackmail, but Alvarez stuck with “mutually assured destruction.”

“I’m a big girl, Josh,” I said.

And then I was standing in front of the customs officer, extending the declaration form with a clammy hand, the weight of the golden disk in my backpack almost pulling me backward.

“Nothing to declare?” the guy said.

I stole a priceless gold relic! The Mexican government
would arrest me if they knew! I think I see a portly diver
named Wayo everywhere I look!

“Nope,” I said, and then because I didn’t trust myself, “Just a school trip.”

I thought he was going to wave me along, but right when he lifted up his arm, he stopped. He furrowed his bushy eyebrows. He saw right through me—I knew it. Next stop, interrogation room. Tears. Accusations of smuggling. Loss of treasure. I clutched the strap of my backpack.

“You don’t have any alcohol in your suitcase, do you?” he said.

“Huh? W-what?” I stammered. “Alcohol?”

“You’re telling me that if I checked that piece of luggage there,” he said, pointing to my duffel, “I wouldn’t find, say, a bottle of tequila? With a worm?”

I couldn’t help looking at Katy, now second from the customs people in her line, who had packed her own liquid souvenir. She stared straight ahead as though we’d never met.

I rolled the duffel in front of me, grateful for the stereotype of the spring-breaking high schooler. “Go ahead and take a look.”

He squinted some more, then reached over my shoulder for Josh’s declaration form and nodded me along. I stepped through the sliding glass doors, and relief eased into my pores like a lotion. I’d made it. The Los Angeles air was refreshingly dry and empty, with the slight taste of exhaust; I breathed it in deep.

“Hey,” Josh said when we’d both reached the other side. “I’m really sorry about what happened—”

“It’s okay.”

“We could talk about it if you wanted.”

The drawback to lying about my misadventure with Wayo was that now Josh saw me as someone who needed his help. Someone who couldn’t take care of herself. I was a little girl who’d lost control, and he was the big brother there to protect me.

“No matter what,” he said, “I think it was brave of you to—”

“I get it!” I said. Having Josh see me that way made me start to see myself that way. I noticed my dad waiting on a bench underneath the American Airlines sign. “I have to go.”

Josh seemed hurt. “At least remember the story, right? We did valuable community service that totally had a positive impact on our worldview.”

I nodded once but Josh followed me. My dad reached for my duffel, but then Mr. Alvarez appeared from behind me, inserting himself between us and extending his hand like a politician scrounging for votes.

“She did great, Bill,” Alvarez said. “A real leader. You’d have been proud of her.” It was eerie, as though he were channeling the predive version of himself. Positive, extroverted, eager to experience what the world had to offer. Josh and I stared at him. Then he leaned in to me, and the concern came crashing back to his face. “Get some rest, okay?”

The ease with which he’d just changed attitudes made me wonder yet again if he was in on Wayo’s plan. He was definitely
acting
like someone who’d been betrayed, but if he could so easily flip the switch with my dad, who’s to say the whole abandoned-puppy-dejected thing wasn’t an act as well?

A woman in her mid-twenties jogged up and tapped Josh on the shoulder. “You ready?” she said, twirling her keys impatiently.

Bluetooth earpiece firmly implanted, blond hair held back with designer chopsticks, she wore tight blue yoga pants and an even tighter white top that showcased both her tan and her sculpted back muscles. Great. On top of everything else, now I had to deal with an unanticipated pang of jealousy.

Josh must have caught me staring at her, because he stepped back and made the introduction. “Violet, Annie. Annie, Violet. My mom’s assistant.”

“Hi,” Violet said quickly and with that flat, eyeless, Los Angeles smile. She nodded to Josh and twirled her keys again. “Come on. I’m in a no-parking zone.”

I said nothing as I followed my dad into the garage, but once I was finally buckled safely in the front seat, I stuck to Alvarez’s script. The trip was a success. We helped people in need, but that paled in comparison to what we got out of it. The Borders Unlimited representative was impressed with the work that we’d done.

“And the Gold Doubloons?” Dad said.

“You probably know more than Alvarez does about ‘Mysteries of the Deep,’” I said, cradling my backpack against my chest like a mama bear protecting her cub. “You could be a guest lecturer.”

“I’m sure he’d love that.”

I could almost feel the disk inside; it might as well have been pulsating. It was taunting me.
Show me to your dad,
it whispered.
You know he’d love it.

I was stuck. On the one hand, if I told him about the disk, he’d be beyond thrilled to hold it, to trace his fingers across the formations on either side. I could almost see the wonder in his eyes; I could almost hear our conversations—animated speculation about what the designs might mean and why Cortés might have left it where he did.

On the other hand, although he had once been an armchair treasure hunter, now he was a teacher. And he was still my dad on top of that. I couldn’t tell him because I knew exactly what would happen if I did. And I wasn’t ready for that. The disk was mine. I was the one who’d braved the Devil’s Throat in the darkness. I was the one who’d squeezed into that tiny cavern. I’d earned it.

I caught a glimpse of something in the side-view mirror, and my stomach fell off a cliff. The driver of the car behind us—there was something too familiar. The dark skin. The tuft of thinning hair on top of his head. The car moved into the next lane and accelerated, and I yelped.

My dad flinched, and the wheel jerked to the side before he got it back under control. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I said. And there was nothing. The other car pulled up next to us, and I realized that the driver was too thin, and Asian, and he wore glasses.

He looked nothing like Wayo.

“
P
air up, everybody,” Alvarez said to the class on Monday. “You’ll be doing presentations on a topic of your choice. Due the final week of school. Rubric coming soon. Start thinking about what you want to cover. You’ve got five minutes before the bell rings.”

I faced the front of the room while the juniors scrambled for partners all around me. Alvarez dropped into his chair and opened his laptop. He seemed about twenty years older. The light was gone from his eyes, the bounce missing from his step. What struck me the most was his hair: shaggy and unkempt like my dad’s. It was as though he hadn’t bathed or looked at himself in the mirror in days.

“He’s taking it pretty hard,” Josh said. He was standing next to my desk pretending not to look at Alvarez.

“Appears to be.”

I still couldn’t tell if it meant Alvarez was embarrassed that Wayo had used him, or if he felt guilty for sending me down there like that. Was he angry with me for not coming back up with the box? Was he disappointed that his search had reached this dead end?

I’d decided to believe that it wasn’t all an act. If he’d had the talent to be so consistent, he would have been out auditioning for movies, not teaching school. This was another reason not to tell him the truth: if disappointment and betrayal happened to be real, finding out that Wayo tried to kill me would push Alvarez over the edge.

“You have a partner yet?”

I shook my head and looked down at the desk. “You don’t have to do that.” Even as I said it, I knew I was grateful to him. “I’m fine.”

A laugh, followed by the screech of desk legs on the floor as Josh whipped his desk around to face mine. “You think I’m taking pity on you? You know more about treasure than anyone in here. It’s a team presentation, Annie. This is pure selfishness on my part.”

“She might say she’ll do the work,” Katy whispered, leaning over my desk on her way to her partner, “until it comes time for the presentation. Then she’ll get all nervous, and you’ll be on your own.”

Josh tilted his head over to her and whispered, “I think she should have let you do the dive instead. To see what would have happened.”

“If I’d done the dive, maybe we would have come back with something—”

“You have no idea how you would have reacted down there.” A little vein had appeared at the side of Josh’s throat. I put my hand gently on his forearm. I pulled it away when he looked down at it.

Katy said, “Oh, I almost forgot, Josh. Much kudos to your family’s PR person, whoever it is. Seriously, congratulations. My only question is, how do you balance it? I mean, you’re such a rock, such support for your mom, and yet you still find time to devote yourself to humanitarian missions.”

Josh said nothing, and Katy—declaring victory—winked and continued across the room.

“What is she talking about?” I said.

“There’s a thing in
People
.” Josh shook his head, avoiding eye contact. “Don’t worry about it.”

“
People
? As in,
magazine
?”

“It’s nothing.” He tapped the desk twice with his palms. “Violet thought you were nice, by the way.”

I almost snorted a laugh. “She did not.”

“You’re right,” he said, nodding, including me in a little secret. “She’s kind of a bitch.”

I wanted to tell him everything right then and right there.

The bell rang, and Alvarez mumbled something that nobody paid attention to. Josh spun his desk back to its original place and motioned for me to go out the door ahead of him. I caught Gracia out of the corner of my eye, but she disappeared almost instantly, blending in to the throng behind me like a halter-topped chameleon.

Josh and I walked outside together. I guess we were headed to craft service, but neither of us seemed to be leading the other. A cool ocean breeze rustled through the palm trees, and a few fingers of wispy clouds had begun to scratch at the clear sky. And I was walking with him, through the middle of the quad, in full view of the rest of the school. The truth was, it didn’t matter where we were going.

“It’s funny,” he said. “At first I thought it was kind of lame, the dive stuff. No offense—”

“Clearly,” I said.

“But then, when we were on the boat, and you were putting all that gear on, and you and Wayo were going over the plan, and I didn’t have any idea what you were talking about—”

“You said you read the manual—”

“I wished I could have done what you were doing. That’s all.”

It took me a second to fully understand what he was saying, but when I did, the sliver of a smile parted my lips. “You were jealous.”

“
Envious
, maybe, is a better word.”

“Of me.”

He stopped me with one hand on my shoulder. “You fell backward into the ocean in the middle of the freaking night. Diving for treasure. How could I not have been?”

I sensed them behind me before I actually saw them. Gracia and Mimi, about thirty feet back, but at least they were pretending to be discreet about it. Every time I glanced around, they were talking to each other, heads turned away from me as though they couldn’t possibly be following.

They needed to cut it out before Josh noticed. As soon as he and I turned toward the pavilion, I said a quick good-bye and fumbled with an excuse about my dad needing to talk to me. Then I ducked into the administration building and hustled down the hallway, coming out at the opposite end.

The girls were walking more quickly now, scanning the quad, no doubt wondering where I’d gone. I hurried up behind them unnoticed.

“What,” I demanded.

The two of them instantly whirled around, their faces frozen in guilt-ridden surprise until Mimi broke the spell. She removed a folded
People
from her purse. “Have you seen this?”

Jessica Rebstock’s face filled half the cover. She was leaning forward on a blue couch pillow, her chin resting in her hand and her fingers curled underneath her cheek. She gave a relaxed, knowing smile, and her skin glowed. The caption read,
FAMILY FIRST
.

“A strange headline for a single-mother divorcée, don’t you think?” I said.

Gracia stepped to me. “What were you guys talking about? I saw him put his arm on your shoulder.”

“That doesn’t mean anything.”

“Or it could mean everything.”

“What did you think of the article?” Mimi said. “I think he comes off pretty amazing.”

“I haven’t read it.”

This seemed to throw her for a loop. She opened and closed her mouth, her head leaning forward a tiny bit and then coming back as she reconsidered. “You’re kidding.”

That’s not to say I didn’t want to read it. With so many of my classmates having spent time in the tabloids themselves, everyone knew that a
People
puff piece was about as good as it got. But I wasn’t planning on reading it because I didn’t want to be so obvious about my interest: my version of plausible deniability.

Of course, I could just have read it and pretended I hadn’t, but I was self-aware enough to know not to trust myself in that situation. Pretending not to have read it and then being exposed as having read it would have been worse than reading it in the first place.

It was a good thing I hadn’t overthought the issue.

“That was at least two minutes of conversation you had with him,” Gracia said. “Two minutes is a long time. Think of all the things that can happen in two minutes.”

“That’s an entire commercial break,” Mimi said.

Gracia laughed. “Commercial break?”

“No passing value judgment on a person’s frame of reference.”

“Since when?” Gracia said. “We rip on Scuba Girl over here all the time.”

“Scuba Girl?” I said.

Gracia shrugged. “Has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?”

“Don’t change the subject,” Mimi said. “When are you going out?”

“It’s not like that,” I said, looking away.

Mimi seemed more frustrated than confused. “I can’t understand you, Annie. You go on a trip to Mexico with the guy of your dreams. You spend two whole minutes talking to him at school the next day. And you look like you’d rather be pulling detention.”

“It’s hard to explain.”

“If it was me—”

“It’s not you, Mimi,” Gracia said.

“I know that. But from where we’re standing, you’re blowing it.” And with that, Mimi whirled around and disappeared into the pavilion.

“Vicarious living,” Gracia said. “Ain’t nothing like it. You sure you’re okay?”

“Are you busy this afternoon?”

Katy interrupted us, appearing out of nowhere. How did she always do that? “Looks like your little plan worked,” she said, shaking her head dismissively.

“Hi, Katy,” I said. Gracia just stared at her.

“I guess I underestimated you.” She turned to Gracia as if sharing a juicy little secret. “Never thought I’d hear
those
words come out of my mouth.”

“Don’t you have to go throw up somewhere?” Gracia said.

Katy half rolled her eyes and went on her merry way.

“I take it your shared experience down in old Mexico didn’t result in female bonding?” Gracia whistled when I said nothing. “That bad, huh?”

Katy sauntered down the pathway—slowly, I’m sure, because she knew I’d be watching her leave. When she finally disappeared, I shook my head and turned to Gracia. “Since when am I the kind of person who has a nemesis?”