Sharing Air

(CW: racially-motivated violence)

Willow's mum guides us down Gummer's Wharf with a hand on each of our shoulders, taking one stride for every two of ours. We pass a sign that reads 128 feet above sea level, seawater lapping at its wooden base and against the mossy jetty we're plodding down. I write that down in my head:

128 feet above sea level. 

"Where is that man when you need him?" she mutters, loosing her vice grip to check the silver watch on her wrist. 

I was placed with Aunt Sarah unexpectedly this summer and she'd already made plans for Willow to visit our uncle's submarine, so now I had an old Hello Kitty backpack and filched rosary clutched between my sweaty hands, waiting to board. 

The pier is crowded with boats that bob in the brine like bath toys, white sails and seagulls flapping against a pale grey morning. Sails, sails, rickety boat. And a big orange thing, mostly submerged, with a man loading crates down into it from the blowhole.

My aunt tsk's, herding us towards him. "Maslow!" she calls. 

He pauses halfway down the blowhole ladder. (Leading into the submarine- the orange metal cage that I was apparently to spend the week in). 

"I don't have time to wait," she tells him, nudging us forward. "I leave them in your charge. Ta, now. Have a nice trip." She kisses Willow on the cheek, squeezes my shoulder over the pink strap, and turns on her heel. 

Willow jumps onto the ladder, forcing Maslow the rest of the way down lest he get trampled by her paisley-soled Nike's. (Special edition, which apparently meant something good even if they could give a person vertigo just by looking at them).

I follow much, much slower. Her voice carries up from the bottom. 

"I'm Willow, remember? Your boss's niece?"

Maslow sighs. "Yes, I know who you are. What I don't know is why-"

"Oh. That's ickle Georgie. I doubt you'll have remembered him, but he's been dumped at my doorstop like a kitten so we must be hospitable." That was Aunt Sarah's instruction, only she puts the emphasis on spit-able and I hope this Maslow fellow isn't also imagining a chewed-up wad of gum. Or a kitten. 

I hurry down, pausing only to drop my bags next to Willow's at his feet. "It's George," I tell him. "Just George." 

I'm a respectable thirteen-almost-fourteen years old and a whole three months ahead of her.

"I've got the top bunk!" Willow calls. 

I dart after her down a gunmetal hallway, narrowly avoiding an elbow to the gut when I start to overtake her in a race to the bedroom. 

"I'm not a bellboy," Maslow complains. 

127 feet above sea level

Maslow dumps our bags in the guest suite, Willow and I busy crowding our faces into the porthole windows, craning our necks to spot the surface as we drift below it. The sun seems wobbly and in-pieces instead of its usual, sturdy circle. 

The light fixture between each pair of bunks, at least, is stable.

50 feet above sea level 

The amazement wears off somewhere between 90 and 70 feet. It was blue—forever. There was a lot of trash. Particles that might have been sand or silt or water-based man-eating bacteria small enough to wriggle past the sidings of the porthole windows, but probably just dirt. 

I unpack my bag slowly, folding my shirts, then my pants. 

Willow lounges on her bunk with a magazine, snapping a piece of bubblegum.

"I could have had this room all to myself, you know," she says. "Was meant to." 

I arrange my socks by length, and then by color.

"Do you know why your mum left you?"

"She didn't leave me," I tut. "She's on some…retreat. For her health. And she'll be back before my birthday."

Willow hums. She snaps her gum. She flicks a bright pink page. 

"Well, maybe it's because you're Black."

My hand freezes on the dresser handle. My mum never calls me the things the boys at school do, so it's not that. Not that it would be. Not that she left. She just…left for a bit. Like popping 'round the corner for milk only it was yoga and meditative healing. And anyways, "She loved my Da. I remember it."

"Well maybe you remind her too much of him, then." Willow rolls onto her back, holding up her magazine to the big, bright light. "I couldn't stand having a child who looked like a man who left me."

I shut the drawer. 

"He died."

Willow shrugs. 

"That's just a different kind of leaving."

20 feet above sea level

There's a library in the submarine. Good for pacing. 

I start out in the armchair with my favorite adventure book, folding and re-folding the edge of the draft notice I use as a placeholder. I keep it towards the end, so I know which chapter the boy's dog dies in so I can skip it. 

My book sits on the armchair while I pace. I count my steps across the carpet. (Seventeen). I watch the dial on the wall. (Ten feet above sea level, and sinking). I find a shelf of YA stuff that must be Willow's, or maybe Uncle Toby's from when he was a young boy, and start pulling on the covers. 

A white girl with a flashlight. 

Two white kids on a dragon's back. 

A white family standing in front of a spooky house. 

I bite the inside of my cheek until my mouth tastes like metal. Old pennies and pain instead of playground dirt and paper with a dead name penned above my address. 

I sit down with the second book and I like it more than it hurts. 

o feet above sea level

"Why did you bring them?" Maslow hisses. 

"We've been over this," Toby sighs, logging the time and date in his manifest. He glides his hand over the silver control room dashboard, rubbing two fingers together for dust. "They were donated."

"What? No, I meant the children."

Toby halts, turning to take in Maslow's frazzled appearance for the first time. 

"What children?" 

200 feet below sea level

We sit down for dinner in a velvet room, all four of us eating tilapia and salad. 

"You know," Uncle Toby says, his knife cutting soundly across his plate. "George."

I try to copy his grip.

"You're about a seamen's age, aren't you?"

"I am?" I cut a glance toward Willow, who's stretching in her seat to appear taller. "I mean. I am."

"Wonderful, my boy. Then I've got something to show you after dinner."

"And me?" Willow asks. "Georgie and I are the same age. And, you know, I won my last science fair with-"

"Yes, yes, m'dear. I have something for you as well." 

Willow beams. 

"Don't think I've forgotten our summer plans so quickly." He swishes dark wine in his glass before swallowing it, nodding at his research assistant. (Not bellboy). "Maslow will show you."

**

Uncle Toby takes me to The Deck, Willow led away in the opposite direction. 

The Deck is a big, shiny room tucked behind a big silver door with a pinpad entry code. 8008, like the boys at school typed into their calculators before snickering, but my skepticism is quickly washed away in sight of the room itself and the honest-to-god shark swimming past the window-wall. 

"It's a blue shark," I say, because I can't help myself. 

Uncle Toby claps my shoulder. "That it is."

It's body glides like magic, the wall all window and the room full of gadgets, a curved control panel in the center with screens and buttons and levers like it came directly off the set of Star Trek. 

"This," my uncle says, "is the heart of my work."

It's the biggest room I've seen by far and when Uncle Toby pulls down the handles of a periscope I spend a few minutes staring at each gill on the blue shark pretending to run my hand over them. I try to catch a glimpse of its teeth. I forget that we look like a giant goldfish until something round and gray attached to the side of The Deck catches my attention. 

"Oh," Uncle Toby says, "that's just the escape vessel."

I can't help but feel relieved. How practical. 

**

"A doll," Willow huffs, slamming the ugly cloth thing against her bed. "I haven't played with dolls since I was five." She paces the length between our bunks. "And I'm the one whose good at science! I'm in high school math! Why should you get to go see the periscope and not me?"

I roll over from where I've been documenting the whole experience in my art notebook, grinning meanly. My head hangs over the side of the top bunk. 

"Maybe it's because I'm Black." 

**

That night I dream of drowning. The escape hatch fails, the hull is breached, and a school of blue sharks sings me a funeral hymn. Spock is looking for me but he can't find a single trace to bring back to my mother. 

I spring awake, kicking the sheets from my sweaty limbs. The dial by my head reads 500 feet below sea level. 501. 502. It's going too fast and I can't set my breath to it. 

I can still hear the singing. 

"Willow?" I whisper. 

"Hm?"

"Do you hear that?"

509. 510. 511.

Willow's sheets rustle.

"…no."

660 feet below sea level

The dials stay rooted to 660 for two hours after breakfast and I think they're broken until Maslow explains that we're coasting. Looking for a creature my Uncle is anxious to document. This is the work. Willow and I, merely passengers. 

So we roam. 

There's the library, the dining room, the kitchen with no easily-filchable snacks and the long metal hallways connecting them like arteries. Down a flight of stairs is the Observation Bay. The window isn't as big as The Deck's but it's sat right at the front of the submarine and Willow plants herself there like she's at the cinema. 

We're in the twilight zone, she tells me. It's all dim and goes on forever in front of us. Even when I squint, it's hard to tell shadows from creatures. 

"Look!"

Something like an angler fish drifts by, only the bulb is part of its translucent forehead and when its head glows, garish orange lights flickering through the length of it are quick to follow, on and off down the line like a repeating loading screen. 

"It looks like us!"

Loading. Loading. Loading. 

Something bumps into the submarine. Hard. The fish goes dark and I stumble sideways into Willow. "What was that?" I ask, clutching the rosary in my pocket. "Do you think something's gotten in?"

Willow shoves me away. "Nothing can get in, Georgie. It's submarine."

"But-!"

"We probably hit a rock or something." Then she crosses her arms. "Ickle Georgie," she coos meanly, "that shark yesterday really gave you a scare." 

"It did not!" I protest. "I've been cage swimming with sharks, they don't scare me." Three summers ago, after Da's death but before all the retreats, just me and mum on a tall, white boat, jumping into the Atlantic. 

Willow shrugs. "Then maybe one of them came back for you." Her eyes flash. "I bet you'd like that."

650 feet below sea level

We're floating, bobbing up in down in search of Uncle Toby's work. 

I'm pacing down gunmetal hallways muttering seething remarks under my breath because I'm too scared to kick anything. I've passed storage and a big freezer full of powdered things and the silver door of The Deck. I plant my finger on a metal map fastened to the wall and trace over the words: Bait Shack. It's by the engine room, the hissing and groaning loud enough to rattle up my feet. It's hot, over here. 

Bait Shack is emblazoned over a thick steel door with a turn crank like a old pirate's steering wheel. It takes all my strength to turn it, boilers and what-have-you moaning through the walls. Singing. 

It's quiet past the door. One big open square with nothing in it but some rope and thick LED light strips tacked to the wall. It smells like sweat and something sour. 

There's a big metal grate set into the floor. 

I creep toward it. 

Peering back at me are eyes. Dozens of human eyes staring up at me from dark faces, white sclera stark in the dim light. There's no door. No key. 

"Son," one of them begs. "Let us out."

I tilt to the side and hurl. 

640 feet below sea level 

I stumble back to the Observation Bay sick with tears and snot. Two more thuds crash into the sub on my way there. 

"Oh, Georgie, really," Willow sighs. 

"There's people in the bait shack." I sway unsteadily with the next hit, gripping her shoulders. 

She doesn't push me off. "What?"

Maslow and Uncle Toby rush into the room, peering out the large window. 

"We're on the chase, m'boy!" Toby cheers. 

My breath shudders on the way in. "There're people in your bait shack."

Uncle Toby twitches before he turns around, sharing a meaningful glance with Maslow. 

"You shouldn't be wandering," Maslow chastises. 

Willow grips my arm, stepping subtly in front of me while I heave, breath coming shortly.

"Air?" I suddenly wonder, fear spiking through my racing heart. "We're- how much a-air? There was so- they were so-"

Uncle Toby sighs. "Death row is a bit…crowded. Expensive. They donated bodies to science, it's all above-board."

The hull lurches. Something big swims past the window, the sub butting against a rock formation. Like this, a light from the sub I didn't know was there reflects dully against it. Orange. Repeating. 

Loading. Loading. Loading. 

"Georgie," Willow says uneasily, "you're not breathing."

The orange lights go dark. 

640 feet below sea level 

The sub is black when I wake, red emergency lights flashing silently every ten feet or so. My head hurts and my mouth tastes like acid. 

I stumble down the hallway until I'm back at the Bait Shack, leaning heavily against the wall. Willow is there, slumped on the ground in front of the pirate wheel door with a bright pink handprint stinging against her cheek. There is no Bait Shack beyond the steel door anymore. It's all water. There's a large wrench in Willow's lap. 

"I couldn't-" she stammers. "Something got inside-"

I choke, yanked back by my shirt collar. My fingers claw against a slimy tentacle, back dragging roughly across the ground. 

Willow sprints after me, eyes wide and frantic. She brings down the wrench on whatever's behind my head—once, twice. Blood speckles us with a squelch and then the wrench meets hollow steel ground, the vice around my neck gone. I skitter upward, but there's nothing there. Nothing but Willow and me and a couple droplets of blood on the ground. 

I clutch my throat. 

"It- it's not right," she whispers. "It…phases. Uncle Toby said." 

She looks at me, blue eyes glistening. 

"It's all wrong."

630 feet below sea level

We stumble upstairs back-to-back, steering as clear as possible from the emergency lights. We run into Maslow and Uncle Toby in the dining room, both of their faces and arms scratched to the point of blood. Willow clutches her wrench, glaring. 

"We don't have time for this!" Uncle Toby tsk's, shoving her towards Maslow. "We need to seal the rooms. Now."

So we do. Each door bolted and tightened, some sort of sealant sprayed around the edges. When Willow and Maslow rush through the open arch to protect the attached kitchen, Uncle Toby grips my arm.

I bite down on the urge to puke. 

"George," he says. "Come on. To the escape hatch." 

Even though I can't see her, I turn toward the kitchen wall. 

"There are just the two seats," he says.

"Right," I say, swallowing roughly. "Right, but…she'll get suspicious, so let me just…"

"Quickly now."

"You have to be really loud with the sealant," I say. "In here. Until I come back. Otherwise she'll know we're gone."

"Smart lad."

I stagger into the kitchen. "We need an extra hand," I lie, but Maslow barely spares us a passing glance, his frenzied focus glued to the porthole window.

I tug on Willow's arm, placing a finger over my lips. 

Uncle Toby has his back to us, spraying a door we've already gone over. Willow and I tiptoe quickly over the carpet and up the stairs to the deck. He doesn't see us until I've already entered the code. 

Willow's breath catches when I open the escape hatch and take one of the two seats. It's auto-programmed to take us to the surface back near Gummer's Wharf. Outside the steel door, the red lights are still flashing, Uncle Toby and Maslow illuminated in bursts as they run up the stairs, shouting madly. There won't be enough sealant left for the kitchen doors now. I don't know if that's my fault. 

Willow slams the eject button. 

We race to the surface in a swirl of bubbles until the sun comes back, wobbly and in-pieces. 

204 feet above sea level 

"Our uncle's lost at sea, you know," Willow says, leaning against her palm at the lunch table.

I slide my tray next to hers and offer the wide-eyed girl across from us an apologetic smile. To Willow, I mutter, "Stop telling people that. They never know how to react."

"Oh yes they do," Willow says, turning towards me. She squeezes my arm beneath the table. 

In thirty years there will be new legislation and protections, new books on the shelves, most of it funded by Uncle Toby's trust. At night we will still hear them singing. 

For now, Willow smiles and it's brittle. 

"In their minds, they think: thank god it's not me."