Read Vicious Deep for Free Online

she’d gone out hunting and killed the abominable snowman. I used to stretch out reading a book, picking out tortilla chips and popcorn from the hairs before my mother noticed.
    I push myself up and stand in front of our entertainment center, which my dad built from pieces of an ancient shipwreck. We call it the public library because books cover the whole wall, from floor to ceiling. I run a finger along their spines, leather-bound books older than this apartment building and slick new paperbacks.
    I feel like I’m looking for something but I don’t know what. I shut my eyes and stop at a black leather-bound book with a worn spine. Fairy Tales and Other Stories by Hans Christian Andersen. We have everything he ever wrote and everything everyone has written about him. Mom’s always wanted me to read fairy tales. Sometimes I’d tell her she and Dad should’ve tried for a daughter, and then I realized I was telling my parents to keep having sex. That’s why I think she loves Layla so much. She’s like the daughter Mom probably wanted me to be. Even though I never want to think of Layla as my sister, I never want her to go away either.
    I flip through the black leather-bound book and notice something I never have before. It’s signed. It says, “Maia, ever drifting, drifting, drifting.” Followed by a signature scrawl I can’t quite make out.
    I shut the book and put it back in place.
    My head is throbbing. A steady dull pulse at my temples. I drink a cup of water and take it back into Dad’s study, where electronic parts go to die. I step on a little silver rectangle with green wires sticking out and bite my tongue to keep from yelling out. Dad likes taking things apart to see how they work, and then he tries to put them back together. Tries .
    The Apple desktop computer is on screen saver, a stream of pictures from our lives. Us on the Wonder Wheel, me eating a corn dog, Mom holding me on the beach, me and Layla at Six Flags, me holding my swimming trophies, my elementary-school graduation, Mom jumping in the air at the park.
    It’s like all these things happened to a different guy in a different life.
    I wonder if something happened to me in the water. I trace the cuts on my neck, which are already scabbing over. What happened to me? I can keep asking myself that, but I might as well be asking the ocean itself. And maybe I have to snap out of it, because I might never know.
    I give the mouse a little shake, and the pictures go away. I click on the Internet icon and type “near-death body changes” into Google. It’s all a bunch of white lights and tunnels, angels and the voice of God, and waking up with the ability to get radio signals in your brain.
    I don’t have that. At least I hope I don’t start getting radio signals in my head. Then again, that might make sitting through class more entertaining. But what if I only ever get one station?
    My headache gets worse. The computer screen bothers my eyes. I finish my glass of water and go back to bed. My room spins around me like after riding roller coasters all day and then trying to lie down. I pull my covers tightly around me. I’m so tired, but I’m afraid to close my eyes.
    The minute I do, I’m back in that water.

The first thing they tell you is not to panic.
    Don’t panic. Don’t panic. Don’t panic.
    I wasn’t panicking when my gut told me to ignore how the clouds turned from white to black, how the waves got higher with each crash, the fleeing screams around me. I didn’t panic, and I dove into the middle of the water to save her.
    But every time I surface, she isn’t there, and I keep getting farther from land. I’m pulled under with so much pressure I can barely move my arms and legs. The one gulp before I’m truly under escapes in tiny bubbles. The suction of the undulating waves tosses me like a bit of driftwood. I can’t tell which way is up