Recoiling from the sting of his mother’s words, Michael struggled against the tightness that had suddenly constricted his throat and the wetness welling in his eyes. “I was just with some other guys from the team, okay? Jeez, Mom! I made the track team, and I’m making some friends out here. I thought you’d be happy for me!” Katharine’s anger dissolved in the face of her son’s pain, but it was too late. “I’m not dead,” he went on. “And I’m not hurt.” His eyes fixed on her, as if challenging her to say anything more. “And I’m going to bed!” he finished. Stalking from the living room into his bedroom, he slammed the door behind him.
Left alone, Katharine dropped tiredly onto a chair. Why had she yelled at him? Why hadn’t she at least listened to his explanation before she’d jumped all over him? In fact, now that she thought about what he’d said, she realized he had a point. Part of the reason he’d always been home on time in New York was because he’d been by himself. The asthma that had kept him out of school so much had seen to that. Until a year ago, when he’d made up his mind to make the track team, Michael had never been part of a crowd, rarely even had friends to hang around with for more than a few weeks at a time. And then, just as he’d been on the verge of realizing his goal, she’d moved him out here.
And he’d succeeded. How could she have started in on him before she’d even congratulated him on making the team this afternoon? It had to have been one of the happiest days of his life, and what had she done? She’d spoiled it, simply because he was an hour late getting home.
Rob was right — she should have controlled her own fears, and been happy that for once in his life Michael was just one of the guys instead of the skinny, wheezing kid who always stood on the sidelines.
He must have been so excited, she should count herself lucky that he’d called her at all!
Katharine went to his door, knocked softly, then opened it a crack. “Michael? May I come in?” When there was no answer, she spoke again. “Tell you what. I’ll forgive you for being late if you’ll forgive me for forgetting that you made the team today. I’m really sorry I yelled at you.”
She waited, hoping he’d turn on the light and tell her to come in, but after a long silence, he only spoke briefly out of the darkness. “Okay, Mom,” he said. Then: “See you in the morning.”
Katharine pulled Michael’s door closed again.
In his room, Michael lay staring up at the ceiling in the darkness. Should he have told her the truth about where he’d really been and what he’d been doing? But if he had, she would have yelled at him some more.
Better just to leave it alone.
Still, it took a long time for him to get to sleep that night.
He could feel nothing except the still coolness around him.
It was dark, the kind of darkness that could wrap itself around you like a shroud, bringing with it claustrophobia. All around him was blackness, and he was suspended in midair.
Slowly, just as the space around him started closing in — so slowly Michael was at first uncertain that it was happening at all — the blackness began to fade into silvery gray.
The water!
He was back in the water again!
As if to prove the thought, a fish swam by. A beautiful fish, striped in startling hues of bloodred, electric-blue, and a green so bright it was almost blinding.
Michael had never seen such a fish, and he turned to look at it. As if sensing his interest, the fish circled slowly in the water, almost as if it were deliberately exhibiting itself to him. With a kick of his fins, Michael moved toward the fish, but it countered his move, pulling away from him at exactly the same speed with which he was approaching.
He stopped.
The fish stopped.
He swam closer, and this time the fish hesitated before moving away and dropping deeper into the water.
Michael tried the maneuver again, but this time moved very slowly, hoping the fish wouldn’t notice his careful approach.
He got within a few feet of the fish before it dived away and stopped below him, as if challenging him to follow.
Michael stayed where he was. Time itself seemed to slow as he floated in the water, gazing down at the fish, now as immobile as he. In the ghostly gray, silent water, he realized that his friends were gone.
He was alone.
Slowly, inexorably, the fish drew him deeper below the surface, moving closer to him whenever he hesitated, backing away from him just before he could quite reach it with his fingers.
Luring him.
The fish moved deeper into the water, and Michael, powerless to resist, dived after it. Deeper. Deeper and deeper they went. Michael, mesmerized, followed the brilliantly colored fish. Then it stopped, abruptly twitched its tail, and disappeared.
Startled, Michael turned in the water, searching for the fish, but it was nowhere to be seen.
And suddenly he realized that the bottom seemed to have fallen away. No moonlight penetrated the water from above. The darkness had returned. The sea itself was pressing in on him. It was getting harder to breathe.
It felt as if metal bands were fastened around his chest, squeezing him. He struggled against the tightening bonds, but it didn’t help.
Panicking, he struggled harder.
Breathe. Breathe!
But he couldn’t!
No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t get any air into his lungs.
The tanks!
Something had gone wrong with the tanks! He sucked at his regulator, trying to pull air from the tank on his back into his lungs, but nothing happened.
Empty!
The tank was empty!
But there was a reserve supply! All he had to do was reach back and turn the lever and he would have ten more minutes of air.
He started to reach back; his arms wouldn’t move.
He was sinking now, dropping into the darkness, into the great yawning void below—
He fought to reach the emergency valve, struggled to suck more air out of the tank, but now his lungs began to feel as if they were filling with water.
The surface. He had to get to the surface!
Drop the weight belt! Drop the weight belt, and pull the cord on the CO2 canister. His vest would inflate: he would pop to the surface.
But he couldn’t move!
He couldn’t even feel his fingers anymore.
Terrified, he struggled again, dislodging the regulator from his mouth.
He had to get it back in!
But his hands wouldn’t obey him. The regulator dangled from the air hoses, just out of reach.
If he could just get his mouth close enough …
He struggled to move his head, but even that was useless.
Now he could feel water seeping in through his nose. He tried to exhale, but there was nothing left in his lungs to expel.
His mouth opened and he tried to breathe.
Water flooded into his mouth, down his throat, into his already choking lungs.
He was going to die.
Die here, alone, deep under the surface of the sea.
No!
Loose! He had to get loose!
Even as he felt his lungs flooding and the blackness of death begin to close around him, Michael thrashed against the milky shroud that was still tightening around him, and a great scream built in his throat.
Frantic, he kicked out, twisting his body in a futile struggle to escape, struggling to gather enough energy for one last effort before the blackness closed around him forever.
Then, suddenly, the shriek in his throat erupted.
Michael jerked awake.
He was tangled in the bedding; the panic still clutched him. He could barely move, barely breathe.
Then, slowly, he began to understand.
A dream.
It had been nothing but a terrible dream.
The light in the middle of the ceiling flashed on, blinding him.
“Michael?” he heard his mother say. “Honey, are you okay?”
His chest still felt as if it were constricted by the bands that had tightened on him in the dream, and Michael wasn’t sure if he could speak. When he finally formed the words, his voice was barely audible. “A nightmare,” he said. “It was terrible. I—” He cut his words short as he realized where the dream had come from, what had triggered it.
“You were having trouble breathing,” Katharine said, coming over to the bed to gaze anxiously at her son’s face. “I was afraid you were having an attack—”
“I’m not,” Michael told her, working himself loose from the sheets and sitting up, sucking the fresh night air so deep into his lungs that he started coughing. A moment later, though, he got through the coughing fit and flopped back against the pillow. “It’s okay, Mom,” he insisted as she started to speak. “It was just a bad dream, that’s all.”
Katharine leaned over and kissed his forehead. “You’re sure?” she asked, her eyes still worried. “I know you thought you were all over it, but—”
“But nothing,” Michael told her. “I’m fine.” He glanced over at the clock on the nightstand; it was nearly five, and outside the window it was almost as dark as it had been at the end of the nightmare. “Let’s just go back to sleep, okay?”
“Maybe you shouldn’t have stayed out quite so late last night,” Katharine suggested, but laid a hand on Michael’s cheek to keep the words from stinging.
Michael sank lower in the bed. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I guess when I knew I was going to be late I should have found a phone. Okay?”
“And I’m sorry I overreacted,” Katharine told him. “And congratulations on making the team. I’m really proud of you.” For the first time since he’d come home, a smile came to his lips. “Sleep tight.” She kissed him once more, and turned the light off as she left the room. But as she went back to her own room, the worry stayed with her. Had it really been only a bad dream that awakened him? Or was it the beginning of yet another siege of the disease they both had thought he’d conquered?
She got back into bed, but for a long time didn’t sleep. Instead, she listened, silently praying not to hear the rasping sound of asthmatic lungs struggling to fill themselves with air.
In his room, Michael was no longer in his bed.
Instead he was sitting beside the open window, breathing deeply of the fresh night air, trying to rid himself of the terrible choking feeling he’d had in the dream.
Yet even now that he was wide-awake, he still couldn’t quite get rid of it, couldn’t quite catch his breath.