7.

They decided to take shifts in front of Jax’s laptop, and because she had the first shift she also had the difficult task of waking her little brother at midnight.

Lolly was asleep upstairs with the baby, in their parents’ room, and Cara had drunk some of her dad’s coffee to stay up, so now she was wired and couldn’t get to sleep.

Jax, on the other hand, was crabby about being woken and then all but nodded off at the console, so she made him drink coffee too. She found some old instant in the cupboard and added plenty of milk.

“Putrid,” he said, and stuck his tongue out, eyes squeezed shut in revulsion. “I can’t believe anyone drinks this stuff on purpose.”

“I think there’s Coke in the fridge,” she said. “I’ll get you that instead.”

Soon Jax was wide awake and had his screen set up with two windows, one showing the webcam view, the other displaying one of his databases.

“Why don’t you try to sleep,” he said. “You need it.”

But it was no good. She sat up in her bed, the bedside light on, and kept getting up to do things—first to make herself a pb&j, then to pace the kitchen worrying about Max, and what other things the pouring man could do to them. If he could do that, was there a limit?

She still felt mad at her mother sometimes—at moments like this when she was stressed out. She was just a kid; they all were, even Max. It wasn’t fair they had to save her. She should be saving them. Their mother should be here, and she should protect them from the so-called man whose name was fear, for God’s sake.

Then she felt bad for thinking that way. They weren’t really kids, after all—or barely, anymore, except for Jax who was a freak of nature in any case and had a mental age of 90—and their mother had always looked after everything, and now it was their turn.

But still, as she paced, she went back and forth between feeling sorry for herself and Max and Jax and her mother and feeling angry. She couldn’t seem to help it.

“Max could have been killed,” she said aloud, standing still in the middle of the kitchen. It was like she was accusing someone.

She was alone, of course.

Ω

She must have fallen asleep because the next thing she knew Jax was standing over her, where she was curled in her dad’s favorite armchair, and he had his laptop open.

“Do you see something?” he asked, and crouched down beside her to show her the display.

She rubbed her eyes and looked at the screen, which was basically a rectangle of black. In the middle of the black she saw a faint lightness, but she wasn’t sure if it was anything—it might just be the reflection of a passing plane on the waves, or a faraway boat. It might be anything, in fact.

“I don’t know,” she said, doubtful.

“What if it is?” said Jax.

“I mean, it could be,” said Cara. She tried to look more closely, but the light was so faint, so characterless, that she couldn’t decide. “Or it could be nothing.”

She didn’t want it to be the fires, of course. She didn’t want it to be what they were looking for. Because if it was, they’d have to tackle it without Max.

But then she thought, what if we miss it? Because we’re afraid to handle it without him? What if we miss our one chance?

She sat up straighter in the chair, touching her good-luck ring with two fingers of the other hand. It grounded her, somehow. Her mother had called it a name in a foreign language, she recalled—nazam, or nazar, she thought now. Not that it mattered…but as she touched the ring, staring out in front of her over the top of the computer at her dad’s book case, she found the spines of the history books faded from her sight and she could imagine, instead, the scene on the ocean: a yellow, fluorescent buoy bobbing on the water and all around it what looked like a bright field—a shining field. Beneath the field, columns of blue-green light went down, down into the water, and the waves moved around her….

“What’s wrong?” asked Jax.

She was dizzy, and had lurched sideways in her chair.

“Seasick,” she said, because it came into her head.

It must be true.

And she rose.

“You’re right,” she said. “We have to go. It’s time.”

Ω

Once, when their dad was on a health kick and didn’t want to drive so much, he had put together a strange cart that attached to the back of his bicycle. It looked a bit like the buggies people pulled their babies around in, but it was meant to hold a kayak. He’d only used it for short distances, mostly to get to the bayside beaches near their house when he wanted to go for a paddle by himself. His kayaks were very light, and so long they could be hard to balance without scraping occasionally on the ground, but the cart had worked for their dad and it would work, she hoped, for them too.

But she and Jax had to go farther—across the highway to the ocean side. She didn’t remember her dad doing that.

They took one of the doubles, a wooden kayak their dad had built last summer from a kit when he was trying to relax more and not work so much. He called it a pygmy boat or something; since it was a double it could easily hold both of them. They roped it onto the cart carefully, because if it fell off in the dark, on the beach road, it might be hard to get back on. They threw in paddles, water and lights and Cara’s backpack; they wore their headlamps from camping trips, just in case.

Cara would pull the kayak behind her, with Jax up ahead to scout out the smoothest route.

And finally she called Zee’s cell, to find out how they could pick up the scuba and night-diving gear in case they turned out to need it. She had no idea what to do if Zee said no—she could call Cory, she guessed, but it would be beyond weird coming out of the blue like this….

It took a long time for Zee to pick up, and when she did she sounded half asleep. But the scuba stuff was laid out in her garage, she said in a smudged, groggy voice. The tanks were all full and had been checked. There were flashlights and headlamps you could use underwater. If Cara and Jax were quiet they could come pick it up on their way; the garage door was unlocked.

“OK,” said Jax, putting on his helmet on the porch. Her bike was on the road already, the kayak secured behind it. “Then let’s rock and roll.”

He was trying to sound like Max, man of action. With Max in the hospital and her dad in the air somewhere between here and Chicago, Jax must think he was supposed to act like the man of the house.

As they passed Hayley’s place, cycling tentatively as Cara got used to towing the kayak behind her, a porch light blinked on. Surprised, they braked and watched as Hayley slipped out the front door and ran down the walkway to meet them.

“I heard about Max,” she said. “He’s OK, right?”

“His arm is broken,” said Cara. “But that’s it. He’ll be home tomorrow, and you can draw a cutesy heart on his cast.”

“Is it happening now? The thing with the sea lights?”

“We think it might be,” said Jax.

“We’re not sure,” put in Cara. “We have to check it out, is all.”

“But you can’t go without Max,” said Hayley urgently. “He’s—you need him to stay safe! You can’t go out there without him!”

“We have to,” said Cara. “He’s in the hospital. He’s unconscious. And this could be it. This could be our chance.”

“But—”

“We do have to,” said Jax gravely.

No one said anything for a few seconds.

“Then I’m coming,” said Hayley.

“That’s crazy,” said Cara. “It could be dangerous. Have you already forgotten?”

“You might need me. It was supposed to be three, remember? And now there’s only two of you. So count me in.”

Cara and Jax turned toward each other, but she couldn’t see the expression on his face in the dark.

“Take this,” he said after a moment, decisive. He hopped off his bike and pointed the handlebars at Hayley. “I’ll go back and get Max’s. Gotta keep it on the down-low so we don’t wake Lolly. I’ll pick up a life vest while I’m at it, so you don’t sink.”

In five minutes they had three bikes and were on their way again. Cara didn’t know what she thought about Hayley being with them, but the message had said three, that was true. Tonight might not be the time, in any case. She hoped it proved not to be—hoped it was a false alarm, so the real action could wait until Max was back.

It seemed like a long, dark ride to Zee’s place, and once there they could barely fit the gear and the wetsuits into the kayak. Finally all of it was bundled in, though, and they lowered the garage door with a creak. Then they had to cross Route 6, and turns were the hardest part. But finally they were making their slow way up the lonely road that cut through the national seashore to the beach. It had no streetlamps, being a park road, and the moon was gone, covered in black. The lights on their bikes were solitary in the dimness around them—a dimness full of the sighing of the breeze through short pines, the rubber of their tires on the pavement, the rubbing of the kayak against its bungee cords…

Cara found herself counting, at times, in her head, to ward off thoughts of the pouring man. He could appear anytime, couldn’t he, now that it was dark out? Wasn’t that what they’d found out today? On the Cape, after all, water could pop up anytime.

But at long last, when Cara’s phone said two in the morning, they made it to the parking lot and left their bikes lying on the sidewalk. Maybe having their bikes stolen was the least of their worries. They untied the kayak and carried the boat and its contents, with some awkwardness, down the steep wooden staircase to the sandy flat of the beach. It dropped once, but luckily it slid only a few steps before it stuck, and they were able to pick it up again.

As they sidestepped down the stairs she looked out over the water. Far out in front of them was a glow—a pale and otherworldly green.

Ω

They pulled on the wetsuits first, which were too big for them and felt heavy. Hayley had done some scuba once before—something called a “resort dive” a while back on a Bahamas vacation, when her dad was still around and the family had some money—so she offered to go in, if they needed her to, but Cara and Jax shook their heads. It was hard to figure out how to fit into the kayaks with tanks on their backs, especially since there were only two seats and Hayley had to be crammed into the same seat as Jax, but finally they figured it out and Cara pushed out the boat and then jumped in herself.

With Cara and Jax handling the paddles and Hayley trailing her arms not so helpfully in the water, they headed straight out toward the patch of light. Their wet, bare feet, awaiting the fins, were braced against the footrests and Cara felt how fragile they were, in a way—three kids in a pygmy boat, balanced there tenuously, out in the middle of nowhere on the vast, dark kingdom of the ocean.

At first they heard nothing but the soft, low curling-under sound of the waves hitting the sand behind them. Then that sound faded out as they drew farther away from shore, and there was only the rhythmic scoop and splash of their paddles and the slosh of water against the kayak’s hull. For once, Hayley didn’t say much.

Cara’s stomach felt hollow with nerves. She wished Max was here—Max with his scuba knowledge and his common sense, his casual, skeptical attitude that somehow inspired confidence. She almost wanted to call him at the hospital, just to be reassured by his voice; and technically she could if she wanted to, because there was a strong enough signal out here and Jax, of course, always had his cell in his pocket. Or in this case in a dry bag, at least.

But Max was asleep in a well-lit building on solid ground, his arm in a sling and an IV stuck into him with a button he could push if he decided he needed pain relief, and he deserved to rest. Anyway, if she called him now he’d been furious that they were going without him—furious both that he was being left out and that they were taking such a big risk.

If this turned out not to be a false alarm she would simply have to do it without him—she would have to be the eldest, the responsible one.

And yet at the same time she had to trust herself to Jax—Jax and his wild instincts. Commit her belief utterly to a ten-year-old, in a matter that could be life or death.

Something compelled her forward. She had to do this; she couldn’t give up. She was needed.

She closed her eyes as she lifted, dropped, and raised the paddle again, as she swirled it over to dip on the other side. It wasn’t much harder than paddling with her eyes wide open, at the moment: there were no obstacles, and no moon over the wide-open dark water. For some reason she thought of “The Owl and the Pussycat,” which she had loved when she was a little girl and her mother read it to her at bedtime: The owl and the pussycat went to sea in a beautiful pea-green boat…they danced by the light of the moon, the moon, they danced by the light of the moon.

They were nearing the glow on the waves now, and it began to look like something unearthly—not the reflection of lights from boats or shore on the waves, nor the shine of starlight, that much she was sure of.

“Can anyone see the buoy?” asked Jax, who was furthest forward.

“Not yet,” said Cara.

“Here,” said Hayley, and snapped on one of the flashlights. Ahead of them her beam jumped on the water, but revealed nothing. “Oh well.”

On and on, and briefly Cara turned and gazed back at the shore behind them, which looked almost as dark as the water, as far as she could see. A ways to the north there was one point of light, which she thought was maybe a restaurant called The Beachcomber—it was the only business on the beach side that she knew, up at Cahoon Hollow. It was built right over the water, a tourist trap, as her dad called it, and was always crowded in the high season. As far as she knew, it was the closest thing that would be lit up at night north of here…and then she heard a gasp: Hayley. She turned back around in time to see, gleaming ahead of them, an ocean that looked turquoise.

It was lit up like an aquarium. She couldn’t tell whether the thrill she felt was one of excitement or plain fear.

She felt herself break out in a sweat—or maybe she just noticed that she was already sweating beneath the oversized wetsuit, which was awful to paddle in.

“That’s it, Jax,” she said.

“Has to be,” he agreed.

“We’re going to have to do it without Max.”

They gazed at each other, not quite believing it.

“The buoy is yellow,” she said after a minute. That was the way she had seen it. “Let’s look for it.”

“We need to tie the boat to the buoy,” added Jax. “And Hayley, you’ll be the lookout. Then if we need you, we can pull on the anchor line and you can come in.”

“Lookout? Alone?”

“Look,” said Jax. “We don’t know what we’re doing. We may need someone out of the water, someone who could help if something happened to us. Because this—this is his domain.”

There was a silence as Hayley waved her flashlight around; but it was swallowed up in the glow from the waves, no use at all.

“There,” said Hayley, and pointed.

Sure enough, a yellow buoy floated a few feet away.

“I’ll tie it,” said Jax, and before they knew it he was doing an odd slither off the boat and into the water. The kayak rocked, but didn’t flip. Jax half-groaned, half-screeched. “Cold! It’s so, so cold!”

“I can’t believe you’re doing this,” said Hayley. “And I don’t get it—how deep down is the wreck, anyway?”

“It’s not supposed to be too deep,” said Cara.

“Very shallow. About thirty feet,” sputtered Jax from the water, working to attach the boat to the buoy. She could see his legs moving beneath the water to keep him afloat, vague silhouettes. The kayak bobbed away from him for an instant, pulling the rope taut, and Cara steered them back with her paddle.

“There,” he said, and then tied on another rope—a guide rope that was going down with them into the depths. He scrabbled with a hand in the front hatch of the kayak and brought out a donut-shaped weight, which he fixed to the end of the rope before he dropped it into the water.

“How’d you learn to tie all those knots?” asked Cara, surprised.

“We had a thing on knots at camp,” said Jax, and then glugged some water by mistake and spat it out as he clung to the side. “They did a Boy Scout deal. So Hayley? We’re going to need a signal, in case of emergency.”

“How will you signal?”

“Three tugs in a row. And you can do it too—tug on the rope if you need to,” he told Hayley. “Three sharp tugs in a row if you want us to come up. If there’s danger up here, danger to you, anything. I don’t think you can pull us up—it would capsize this thing. So if we signal, all it means is you should get out of here.”

“And you can paddle back in to shore if we’re not back in what—Jax?”

“It should be about two hours, since it’s so shallow here. I mean, I think we have about two hours’ worth of air. Cara, I’m going to need you to put my dive weights on me. After that I’ll sink down. The belt’s in the bottom there. So—let’s do the masks first, OK? And then hand me my weights and I’ll just drop….”

“Masks on,” said Cara, and handed his over the side.

They adjusted the masks over their eyes and noses.

“Wait,” said Cara, and propped hers up on her forehead. She felt suddenly panicky. “Jax. We don’t have a clue what we’re doing! We don’t even know why we’re going down there!”

“She needs us,” said Jax, sounding pinched and nasal through the thick, cloudy plastic. “You know that, Car. That’s why we’re going.”

Cara stared at him, but his eyes were invisible through the mask, in the dark. He stuck his regulator into his mouth and flicked on his headlamp.

Finally she took a deep breath, flicked on her own light, and put in her own mouthpiece.

“Good luck, guys,” said Hayley. “Don’t die on me.”

Cara clicked her own weight belt on and handed Jax his, and as he grabbed them and sank, she reached up out and touched the back of Hayley’s hand. Then she slid backward out of the kayak—as close to the backward roll Max had taught her as she could come without a normal diving boat.

Cold, cold, cold. Even with the wetsuit on.

She got her bearings for a second, breathing the way Max had taught her, only through the mouth. Now I’m a mouthbreather, she thought. It wasn’t so bad.

Jax was near her, a small, dark shape in the glowing green, moving downward. She saw his swim fins swishing.

She grabbed the rope and followed.