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wonderful gift of imagination that he bestowed upon her, and she always drew it on her pictures as a thank you.
    As she sketched it, she felt a jolt in her spine as if someone were trying to push her out of her beach chair.
    That was not part of the usual way. What had happened? She was sure it meant something. Because the jolt really hadn’t been physical, but emotional.
    She poked her pencil into the sand and cast a glance across the waves. The water was fairly placid and pretty. Nothing unusual there. Or was there?

    She peered more intently. About halfway between the horizon and the shore, she saw something sparkling. At first she thought it was a bird diving into the surf for a fish.
    She squinted her eyes and shielded them from the sun. She saw that it was not a bird, but a person, and whoever it was seemed to be in trouble. She thought it was probably a kid playing a joke, so she just watched. But something about it compelled her attention; she felt what was, for want of a better term, a spiritual connection. Whatever was happening was important to her in some vital way.
    The person went down once, then twice and did not come up a third time. That was no joke! She felt almost as if she were drawing herself: Nola threw down her sketch pad and ran toward the sea. She dived in with such speed and grace that she mirrored a leaping dolphin.
    This was one thing she was proud of. She could outswim anyone she knew and could hold her breath for almost two minutes. She ducked below the surface and stroked with all her might, slowly expelling the spent air in her lungs as she swam. She could swim more quickly below the surface because she didn’t have to deal with the waves splashing her face. She did not swim as quickly as she did when she was in a pool, but she reached the drowning victim as he was sinking below.
    She slid her arm under one of his arms, across his chest, and pulled him to the surface. She tried to swim to shore. He seemed to have blacked out. This was a kind of blessing for Nola. She knew that if he were awake he could panic and make it very difficult for her to be heroic.
    Though it was summer, the water was chilly and Nola’s muscles and joints found it hard to work right. She didn’t want to pause, because the man would need immediate attention, but it would do nobody any good if she wore herself out and went under too.
    Just as she was about to stop and rest, her feet came down onsand and she managed to pull the stranger to shore. She lay him down on the sand. His long hair was plastered across his face. She was surprised to see that he looked very handsome and very familiar. But this was not the time to reflect on that. She hastily cleared her wandering thoughts and kneeled over him. His lips and eyelids were beginning toturn purple and his face was turning blue. She emptied his mouth of water and proceeded to give him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. She pushed on his chest with her hands.
    Finally, the stranger started vomiting copious amounts of salt water and coughing harshly. His face turned from blue to bright red. He sat up with his eyes squinted tightly shut and coughed for several minutes. Then he sat silent for a moment looking in his lap and wiping the water away from his face.
    Nola pushed his straggled hair away from his eyes. “Are you okay?” she asked.
    “Yes. Yes, I’m fine now.” The stranger looked up at Nola with his big green eyes.
    Nola’s hand snapped from the stranger’s head to her mouth and she gasped hard, sucking in air between her fingers, making a hissing sound. “Oohh, myyy God . . .”
    “Is something wrong?” he asked.
    Nola tried to hold back another hurricanelike gasp. Could this actually be happening? He looked so much like him. It was amazing! “No, it can’t be,” she mumbled.
    “I’m sorry,” he said. “I haven’t thanked you for saving my life. You are—?”
    “Nola,” she replied with her mouth still covered.
    The stranger stood up. “Oh,