Page 119 of Sweet Nightmare

Instinct has me throwing my arms out again as I suck breath after breath into my starving lungs. The fuzziness fades, and I’m alert again…just in time for a terrible ripping sound to echo through the air around me.

Suddenly the screams get worse. More terrified and definitely more desperate. And then I’m falling again.

Only this time it’s not in a vacuum. It’s through fierce winds and rain and lightning, straight into the raging, roiling ocean.

I hit the water hard and go down, down, down into the sea. There’s one moment where I wonder if this is just part of the portal, part of the magic. But then a big fish—a really big fish—swims by, and it sinks in. I’m not in the portal anymore. I’m in the freaking Gulf of Mexico.

At night.

In the middle of a hurricane.

With sharks.

And I’m sinking fast.

Everything I’ve ever read about getting pulled under in the ocean always says to find the light and swim up. But from where I’m at, there is no light. Just fathomless darkness in all directions.

I tell myself the monsters I’ve faced at Calder Academy in the last day or two are way worse than anything in the ocean. All of which sounds well and good until something brushes against my leg in the water, and I finally give in. I freak the fuck out.

I start flailing and thrashing—the absolute worst thing I can do, but terror is a desperate, clawing animal within me, and all I can think is, Get out, get out, get out.

Plus I’ve been underwater for at least a minute now—maybe more—and my lungs are burning.

So I do something that feels so wrong but may be my only chance of survival. I read somewhere that as long as you have air in your lungs, your body will try to float. So I roll myself around until I’m lying prone in the water—or at least, I think I am. And then I force myself to relax every muscle that I can.

It takes a few terrible, nerve-racking, desperately important seconds, but then I break the surface and take a deep breath, inhaling almost as much salt water as air, before I am dragged under again.

But that’s all I need. I spin around and start swimming without any hint that I’m going the right way. Panic tries to set in again, but I beat it back.

Seconds later, the water changes—somehow it grows even choppier and harder to move through. I take that as a sign that I’m getting closer to the surface, especially since what’s beyond the water, directly above me, seems a little lighter. Like maybe, just maybe, I’m getting closer to shore. My head breaks through the surface of the water again, and this time when I try to take another deep breath, I slap my hand over my mouth as a makeshift filter. It works, kind of, and I actually manage to get more oxygen than water this time around.

I do that a couple more times before I feel up to looking around and trying to get my bearings. If I’m lucky, I’ll be close to the island, and I can swim to shore.

The irony of wanting to get back on the island, now that I’m finally off, is not lost on me, but I figure, at this point, it’s any island in a storm. Literally. I’ll worry about getting off again if I manage to live through the next ten minutes.

But bobbing around in an angry, storm-tossed ocean isn’t exactly the best vantage point, and I can’t see the island. I can’t see anything but the next wave set to crash over me. And then the next one. And then the next one after that.

Every wave takes more energy from me, and every struggle to stay on the surface leaves me more and more exhausted. But I manage to keep from going under again. With no idea of which way I’m going, only knowing that I have to do something, I wait for the next wave to roll into me. Waves move toward shore—or at least, I think they do. It’s not like I’ve had much experience with them, despite growing up on an island. But maybe, if I go with the wave instead of fighting it, it will take me closer to the island.

Closer to safety.

The wind is wild now, and it’s got the ocean whipped into a frenzy, so it doesn’t take long before another wave comes through and I get to test my half-baked theory.

I can see it building, see it growing taller and taller. So I take a deep breath and tell myself that when it rolls over me, I shouldn’t fight it. Instead, I should relax and just let it take me.

It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Harder than losing Jude. Harder even than losing Carolina—to the prison and then to death. It’s definitely harder than accepting that I might die out here, without ever seeing anything but the walls on this island.

I think I’ve always known that, though. It’s why I’ve fought for control for as long as I can remember. Control over my choices, control over my body, control over my magic. Control over anything and everything in a world designed to wrest that control from me at every opportunity.

I’ve lost more battles than I’ve won—a lot more. But no matter how bad things have gotten, I’ve never stopped fighting. Never stopped trying to hold on to some manner of control over my own life.

So now, to have to give that up? To have to give myself over to this storm, to this wave, to this endless, roiling ocean that doesn’t give a damn about my life or my choices, is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.

But I know if I don’t, it will be all over anyway. Because I’ve already lost any chance I had of controlling anything that matters. All that’s left is accepting it…and then seeing what happens.

The wave is bigger now, so big I can’t even see the top of it. Fear is a nightmare running rampant inside of me, but I ignore it. And then, as the wave finally crashes through me, I stop fighting, take a deep breath, and I give myself over to whatever comes next.

CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

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