Page 120 of Sweet Nightmare

WHERE THERE’S A WILL

THERE’S A WAVE

It turns out what comes next is nothing good.

The wave takes me down, spins me around, tosses me back and forth under the water so that I lose track, once again, of which way is up. But I force myself to wait for a few seconds, force myself not to use up all my energy fighting something that can’t be fought.

No one is more surprised than I am when it works. Instead of continuing to pull me down, the current pushes me back up as the wave rises and swells. My head breaks the surface, and I suck a giant gulp of air into my lungs before the wave rolls forward and takes me under once more.

Again, I fight every instinct I have and let the water take me.

Again, it drags me under and then lifts me up on another cresting wave.

This happens several times, and each time I come up the wave is a little bigger and takes me a little higher—until finally I can see something besides the roiling ocean and the pounding rain.

Far ahead of me—so far that I can’t be sure it isn’t a mirage considering my eyes are burning from the salt water and I’m still seeing everything in triplicate—I can see lights.

Bright lights and a lot of them, like the flood lamps that line the wall that surrounds the island.

I blink and rub my eyes several times to try to clear them. But that just makes the burning—and the cloudy vision—worse. So in the end I have to give up on confirming anything and just trust that what I’m seeing is real.

Yet another thing I’m really not good at.

But the storm is getting worse and the waves more violent. Lightning splits the sky above me followed by thunder so loud that not even the roll of the ocean can mask it.

The next current that grabs me is completely dominating. It drags me under, deeper and deeper, until my lungs ache and I begin to think that this might be the time it doesn’t bring me back up.

So I start to swim up, determined to get to shore now that I know it’s there and that I’m going in the right direction.

The ocean showed me what I needed it to. It gave me the course for my escape route. The rest is up to me.

And so I push myself to the limits—and then past them—as I swim harder than I’ve ever swum before.

After what feels like an eternity, I finally break through the ever-growing wall of water. I expect to be on the surface, but when I look down, I realize I’m actually several yards above the ocean’s surface—in the crest of a wave that’s growing higher and higher with each second that passes.

I only have a moment to notice there are other students with me in the wake of the wave and think that this is going to hurt all of us before it crashes back down, taking me with it.

I slam back into the surface of the water—all that work swimming, for nothing—and get rolled, hard. I turn over and over again, completely out of control as the ocean tosses me around like spindrift.

I finally stop rolling after what feels like hours but is probably less than a minute. I start to kick out, to try to move toward the lights I can see in the distance. But another current grabs me and starts pulling me down, down, down.

Panic sets in as it drags me steadily lower, and though I try to shut it out, try to think logically, it’s almost impossible. Because this time feels different.

This time it feels like I’m not going to find my way back up.

I start to struggle, start to claw at the water dragging me steadily downward. But the current has me in its grip, and it’s not letting go. Not this time.

The realization comes to me slowly, the understanding that I’m going to die out here and there’s nothing I can do about it.

Grief slams into me hard—along with the knowledge that I’ll never see Jude again.

I’ll never get to see his eyes swirl wildly with all the emotions he refuses to acknowledge.

I’ll never get to smell his warm honey-and-cardamom scent as it wraps around me like a hug.

And I’ll never again get to feel his heart beat against my cheek or hear his low, gravelly voice tell me that he loves me.

Losing that—losing him for a third and final time—hurts as much as losing everything else put together.

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