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or down, but as the water stills, I swim to where it lightens. The moon makes a streak of weak light through the water, like my personal lighthouse beam leading me home.
    Something ice-cold touches my spine. When I turn around, nothing is there. There’s a trail of foam in its place, and I pray to every god that has ever or will ever exist that it’s not a shark.
    In the lighter water, blood clouds around me. I don’t think anything bit me, but my throat and ribs burn like nothing I’ve ever felt before, like the skin there is burned to a crisp. My feet ache the way they do when I run barefoot on hot sand for too long. The still water churns faster and faster and faster, and I don’t know what to worry about first—the cuts on my neck, the burning in my muscles, or the whirlpool that’s starting with me at its center.
    When I try to kick, I keep sinking. The whirlpool pulls me farther and farther away from the surface. I can’t see the bottom, just pitch-black and more pitch-black. The pressure around me feels as though my bones will turn to foam. I scream because that’s what my mind tells me to do. A muffled sound and some bubbles is all I get, even though I know if I were on land, all of New York would be able to hear me.
    Then, as fast as the whirlpool started, it stops spinning. The current changes to a gentle bob, and I swear—I swear on every trophy I’ve ever won—that the water is taking me somewhere.
    I float over a cluster of giant black rocks that seem to be the beginning of an even bigger precipice. Bits of light start blooming. They’re pinpricks around the rock at first, then blooms of seaweed that glow like the buzzing neon sign of a bodega. Starfish with beads of glowing lights. Fish in colors that live in between other colors. A long red fish with the longest golden fins spins around my head. It presses its face against my cheek.
    Somewhere in the distance there’s a deep wail—an angry guttural sound that echoes on the rocks until it becomes the tail end of a sigh. The fish scatter, and everything stops glowing.
    I’m alone again.
    I fight the numbness in my legs and use all my strength to push myself up. I’ve spent every day of my life swimming, but doing laps around a pool is different from pushing yourself up to the surface when you’re in the middle of the ocean. The pressure down here is like a vise grip around my limbs, but I swim, harder than I ever thought I could, until the water looks lighter and I can see my hand in front of my face again.
    A white shape comes into focus in the distance. The echo is back. This time it’s a song-cry, a lullaby that feels like it’s slithering into my heart and finding pieces to break. I let it calm me, pull me back down. I stop fighting to get to the surface and think about my mom and her shining red hair, her sad turquoise eyes when they find me. She always told me I was born to swim, but I don’t think this is what she meant. I think of my dad fixing computers alone in his office. I think of Layla, despite myself, and wish I’d chosen her every time.
    The song-cry is closer still. My leg muscles get that familiar twinge when I’m in the water too long, like muscle bending the wrong way. My eyes are getting blurry. I keep stroking, but there isn’t any strength behind it. I’m sinking, and there’s a shark coming at me. Its nose points upward, like it’s always smelling. The unmistakable rows of jagged teeth, the red gums that always look bloody.
    This guy has chains, like he just busted out of shark prison and he’s happy to see me. He speeds up, fin flicking whippet fast. I push myself backward, as if that’s going to do any good. I hit something cold, a wall. Something grabs me. The singing is right at my ear. I try to pull myself out of the grip. They’re hands. Cold, slender hands with nails like crushed glass.
    It still sings, whatever it