This wasn't supposed to happen.
The meteorologist on the 8 AM news predicted clear skies with the occasional drizzle.
Not a thunderstorm.
Not a thunderstorm that would send Mitchell over the boat's railing.
If time froze when I reached my hand towards him, it began again when the ocean reached back.
We were supposed to go snorkeling out at a spot called Molokini. According to the shouts that seem more like screams coming from the captain, we're going to turn around. Just, once we get Mitchell back on board.
Because he fell off and into the churning waves.
The waves that, instead of dashing my AP Psychology partner against the rocks, lift him back up towards us. I look over my shoulder, confused. How's that… How's that happening? I've only ever seen shit like this in the news. When that Captain America guy melted right out of the ice like he was some kind of Avatar. When that Doctor guy turned himself into that giant green monster… the Hulk? And of course, Tony Stark. Who could forget Tony-
Everyone is looking at me.
The entire senior class is looking at me. At my outstretched hand.
I have a lot of friends, a lot of underclassmen that depend on me to deal with the bullshit that comes from some of those friends. That doesn't make everyone's stares less unnerving. Nor less confused.
My head hurts.
A particularly large wave slams against the side of the boat, and I lose my balance, stumbling to the side. Mitch screams, the rising wave falling and dropping him back into the ocean. Tracy, one of his best friends, lurches forward, fighting against the rocking of the boat. Her knuckles whiten as they grip the railing, leaning out over the water.
When she turns to me, her eyes are wide, red, and filled with tears. I think, during lunch one day, she said she'd rather be caught dead than cry in front of us. "What're you doing? Help him!"
Oh. Oh. That's why my hand was stretched out. I thought I'd just tried to grab Mitch when he stumbled, slipped onto the wet floor, and into the waves. Not that… not that…
Not that I know what I'm doing. But what I do know is that I can't let him die.
He was the only one who didn't say sorry the day I came back to school after Luke disappeared. All he did when I sat at my usual desk in homeroom, the one right in front of him, was pelt me with his eraser. It bounced off the back of my head and into the hood of my sweatshirt. I threw it back at him, and we both got in trouble. It was the first time in those few hellish days that I'd laughed.
I close my eyes, and when I do, the ocean stretches in front of me, the waves a trembling, churning blue energy. Mitch is merely a blob, no, a force, in the middle of all of this color.
I'm not quite sure what I do, but in a few moments, he's standing on the deck of the ship once more. Standing. How the fuck is he even conscious?
I open my eyes to figure out how he's still on his feet, and Mitch backs away from me. "Kara?"
The world goes black.
"Luke's not with you?" I wake up to my worst nightmare happening all over again. I want to scream that he's not, that he's gone, but it's as if I'm stuck in my old body as I relive the moment that my best friend vanished.
"No," Past-Me replies, puzzled. Now-Me (Present-Me? Passed-Out-On-A-Boat-In-The-Middle-Of-The-Ocean-Me?) doesn't feel the same rush of confusion as I did back when this happened two years ago. The feeling's faded, like the pages of an old book left out in the sun too long. "E, he's at Project Grad. You know, the thing you experienced about a millennium ago?"
As much as I want to shut my eyes, to block all of this out, I'm still stuck in this memory.
My older brother, Ethan, doesn't offer a retort in response like he normally would. "Aunty just called me. Said the school called and asked where he was. They didn't know, so…"
Instinct turns my blood to ice. The last thing Luke texted to the message thread with Ethan and me was that he was down to go to dinner to celebrate his graduation. Just like Ethan had planned the other day.
"I'm gonna ask one more time, Kar," Ethan murmurs, keeping his voice low to hide the fact that it's shaking. "Is he with you?"
Back then, the idea that Luke would've skipped out on a literal college party while he was still in high school was astonishing to me. He loved us a lot, but man, did he love a good party.
After all, if he was going to ditch, he'd be hanging out with both of us.
"No. He isn't."
The second time I wake up, I find myself in a hospital bed, Move Along by All American Rejects playing from Ethan's old Bluetooth speaker. He'd given Luke his better one for his sixteenth birthday, four years ago. (Two years before he disappeared.)
"Kara?" For a moment, I think I'm still trapped in that nightmarish memory because that voice belongs to my brother. Ethan sits at my bedside, one side of his face slightly red. He probably had his head in his hands while he slept. I glance at him or at least try to. My neck's stiff, so I'm not really able to move it. Ethan watches as I rub the sore spot, which is everywhere and lets out a long breath. "God. Mom and dad are gonna kill me."
"For what?" I retort since given my circumstance, I can afford to be argumentative. "I'm the one in the fucking hospital bed on a neighbor island."
Ethan scrubs his face with his hands and sighs. "We're not on Maui."
There are bags under his eyes.
Those don't get there after one sleepless night, which is how many I assume have passed since the boat.
"Okay, then where are we? And also, please explain to me why mom and dad are gonna be upset, so I have time to make up a good excuse."
My older brother stares at me like I've grown a third eye smack in the middle of my forehead. That's never a good look coming from him. Just means that the guy who usually has a snarky response to everything is speechless.
"You saved that guy with hydrokinesis, Kara. Where do you think you got that from?"
"Hydro-what now?" Ethan lets out a groan and covers his face again.
"Waterbending," he says through his hands. "You saved your classmate using waterbending."
Even though I know he still hasn't fully answered my question, everything comes swarming back to me. For absolutely no reason, tears fill my eyes.
Seeing Mitch stumble as he stood up from his seat, the way he gripped his head, no doubt suffering from the same seasickness we all were. The way that this was probably the worst mistake he'd ever made (aside from getting our team a literal one out of twenty on our mock exam.) The second he'd let go of the railing to clutch his forehead, the boat went over a wave, which really felt more like a rock with how much it shook us, and he'd gone overboard.
I didn't think, and I honestly don't even know if I'm still thinking right now. All I know is that I'd saved him, using powers I'd only ever seen from people like Captain freaking America, like the… the Hulk, or whatever his name was. "What do you remember?"
Ethan's gone from irritated to deadly serious in a matter of two minutes. He never gets mood swings like that. (That's my thing.)
"I… I remember seeing him go over, and... and hearing him hit the water. Mitch stayed conscious for the whole thing, by some miracle."
"It's a miracle you were there to save him." Ethan clasps his hands together on his lap. "And then what happened?"
"What is this, an interrogation?"
He doesn't speak, and I almost flinch. Again, silence is never a good sign from someone who's constantly talking.
"I was sitting closest to where he fell. I reached out while he was going over, and…" I shrug, because how the hell else am I supposed to describe what I just did?
Ethan sighs. "Okay, forget what I said. I think I'm gonna kill mom and dad." He crosses his arms. "So you're confident you did it on accident?"
My shoulders hurt when I hurl my hands into the air. "I don't know how I could've done it on purpose. And honestly, I'm surprised not even mom is here yet."
Ethan's mouth opens and closes, then opens and closes again. Since he's struggling for words, the person who speaks next obviously isn't him.
"I think you should tell her the truth," says Captain America.