The Depths
Also by
NICOLE LESPERANCE
The Wide Starlight
The Nightmare Thief
The Dream Spies
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York
First published in the United States of America by Razorbill,
an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2022
Copyright © 2022 by Nicole Lesperance
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Ebook ISBN 9780593465370
Cover art © 2022 by Tara Phillips
Cover design by Kristin Boyle
Design by Tony Sahara, adapted for ebook by Michelle Quintero
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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CONTENTS
Cover
Also by Nicole Lesperance
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
For Ciaran.
Chapter
1
THERE’S A VIDEO OF me dying on the internet, and I can’t stop watching it. My mother says it’s morbid and I need to stop. I know she’s right, but every night before I sleep, I pull the blankets over my head, turn my phone’s volume whisper-low, and curl my body around the tiny screen. I only need to type the first letter of my name; it fills in the rest.
Adeline Spencer freediving accident
A boat crowded full of people sits rocking beside a square of ocean, cordoned off by white PVC pipe. It’s a perfect tropical day, the sun glinting off the flat aquamarine. I’m just about to complete an underwater dive of sixty-three meters, as deep as a nineteen-story building is high. No weights, no fins, nothing but my own body to propel me.
Everyone is screaming.
Not cheering. Screaming.
Droplets of water fleck the camera lens. Three divers—my safety divers—break the surface, cradling me among them. My eyes are open and flat; my mouth is slack.
Breathe, Addie, breathe, they’re shouting.
But in the salt-spattered video of water and panic, I don’t breathe. The camera pans closer, zooms in on the pink foam slipping down the side of my jaw. The trickle becomes a burst, pink turns crimson, and everybody on the boat falls silent. In her flowered sundress, my mother leaps into the water and thrashes toward me. Her wide-brimmed hat floats away into the open sea.
One of the safety divers wipes away my bloody foam and presses his mouth to mine, blows a sharp exhale through my teeth.
Breathe, yells everyone on the boat. Addie, come on. Breathe!
I hear them now, but I didn’t then. That’s the part I can’t wrap my head around. That’s why I keep watching this. I see myself—I see my body, but I don’t think I’m in there. I don’t understand what it means, where I went if the inside part of me left my body. All because of a silly mistake I made, pushing through pain instead of turning around like I should have.
The video ends as they’re pulling me onto the boat. For eight and a half minutes, they say, I was dead. But I don’t remember bright lights or long tunnels or warmth or unconditional love, like people say is supposed to happen. There wasn’t any heaven or hell or anything in between. Five hundred and ten seconds of my existence are just gone. I keep pressing the replay button, cycling through the video over and over, but I never get any closer to understanding. It haunts me, this question I’ll never be able to answer.
Where did I go?
Chapter
2
EULALIE ISLAND IS crescent shaped, its inner edge a powdered sugar beach lined with swaying palm trees. Beyond the palms lies a forest so lush and vibrant that the word green doesn’t feel adequate to describe it. The scent of dead seaweed and tropical flowers floods my nostrils and lungs, filling them with an itchy need to cough.
Beside me, the seaplane bobs, tethered to the dock. It was a long journey from Saint Thomas, soaring over islands and islands that grew smaller and flatter until they were just sandbars, then gone. For a long time, we floated through a cloudless sky over an endless ocean, and there was nothing but blue. It took every ounce of my strength to not yank the plane door open and dive into that blue.
But I didn’t. And now we’re here. At the private island that’s going to be my private prison for the next two weeks. I’m the third wheel on my mother’s honeymoon with a man who wears pressed khaki shorts and belts with little whales on them. She was too afraid to leave me alone with my injuries after the accident, and I’d never admit this out loud, but I’m glad she didn’t.
“Come on, sweetie!” She waves from the beach, her other arm wrapped around David’s waist. It doesn’t feel right that one twenty-minute ceremony can make you someone’s daughter, step- or not. But she’s been planning this honeymoon for almost a year, and I am not going to ruin the trip for her. I pull an elastic off my wrist and twist my sweaty, light brown hair into a knot on top of my head.
“Go ahead, Addie.” Ken Carpenter, the island’s bearded caretaker, leaps onto the seaplane to help the pilot with our suitcases. “Melinda will get you folks settled in at the house, and we’ll bring your bags up.”
“You’re going to love it.” His wife, a woman in a billowing caftan with silver-streaked hair, gives me a sympathetic smile. Everyone here seems to already know about my accident, which is both embarrassing and a relief because I won’t have to explain why I unexpectedly cough up blood sometimes. Leaving the seaplane—and that gorgeous turquoise water I’m not allowed to dive in—we head for the beach. A stone jetty stretches out even farther than the dock, with a white lighthouse at its end.
The scent of flowers is so strong I can taste it, sweet and cloying and tinged with something almost rotten. It thickens as we approach the forest, and I swallow hard, then take a shallow breath.
Don’t cough.
“Isn’t this spectacular?” says my mom as we join them on the beach. I plaster a smile onto my mouth and nod.
“Just wait until you see the rest,” says David, though he’s never been here before either.
Melinda leads us onto a packed-dirt path that cuts through the woods, and as we pass under the leafy canopy, it takes a few seconds for our eyes to adjust to the dimness. My mother grabs my wrist.
“Oh, Addie, look!”
White flowers bloom absolutely everywhere: hibiscus and lilies and amaryllis and so many more that I don’t know the names of. Crowding the bushes, peeking out of the shrubs underfoot, climbing the trees in slender vines. Not a single blossom or bud that isn’t white. I take a slow, soupy breath, willing myself not to wheeze. I am not going to ruin this trip. Not after I almost made her miss her wedding.
“So pretty,” I say.
Melinda swats a bug from her face. “It gets humid down here, but don’t worry. There’s always a breeze up at the house.”
Sunlight sifts through the giant ferns overhead as I stop to catch my breath. A thousand birds are shrieking, though I can’t see any of them. I wond
er if they’re all white like the flowers. As beautiful as this is, I can’t wait to find the house and the breeze so I can get this floral stench out of my lungs.
Ahead, Melinda, David, and my mom are climbing a set of stone steps, but I don’t think I can make it up just yet. My face is hot and cold at the same time, and black specks flit in my vision. Bending low, I brace my hands on my knees. If I can train myself not to breathe for seven minutes, I can train myself not to cough. And I can train myself to heal. It’s just a question of control. Mind over matter. Slowly, the need to clear my lungs eases, and I lean back against the trunk of a huge old tree.
Shutting my eyes, I breathe, gently breathe, and let it all settle. I try to find my center, my inner silence, but lately whenever things get quiet, my brain circles back to the accident. The same nagging thoughts circle like flies, constant reminders that everything is different now. That I’m different now, even though I still have no understanding of what happened to me when I died.
Something pulls me out of my thoughts, bringing me back to the flower-filled woods. It’s too silent, I realize. The birds have stopped screeching. The insects are no longer buzzing. Then something rustles behind me, and a child’s laugh plinks like a music box.
“Hello?” I call.
The back of my neck tingles like someone’s watching me, but if they are, they could be anywhere in this chaotic jumble of plants and trees. They could be hiding an arm’s length away and I’d never know.
“Hello?” I repeat. “Is somebody there?”
Again, that laugh, high-pitched and the slightest bit broken, and it sounds nothing like a bird. That sound is human.
Leaves rustle suddenly, and I jolt as a black cat slinks out of a white-flowered bush. It swishes against my shin, and as it dashes away up the steps, I have to bend over again to catch my breath and let my rocketing heartbeat calm.
“Kylo, you naughty thing! How did you get out again?” Melinda’s voice floats down through the eerily still trees. Slowly, my panic fades, but the crawling sensation on my skin does not. That laughter definitely wasn’t a cat. I’m sure it was a child.
“Is someone there?” I call.
The forest is silent.
Chapter
3
THE HOUSE—IF you can call the cluster of round, thatched-roof bungalows connected by covered walkways a house—sprawls on a cliff overlooking the ocean at the island’s southern point. On the forest side is a pool surrounded by lounge chairs and potted plants that are even more exotic than the ones in the woods. All white flowers too.
David owns a chain of luxury hotels, and instead of spending their honeymoon at one of his properties, he and my mom decided to skip all things hotel-related so he wouldn’t think about work. I’m not sure how they even found this island—apparently it’s one of those places where you need to know somebody who knows somebody to rent it.
It’s strange having this much money all of a sudden. I’m still getting used to the massive, eco-unfriendly house we now live in, David’s collection of gas-guzzling vintage cars, the way he just pays for anything without ever asking how much it costs. And somehow, this tropical retreat—or island oasis, or whatever people call these things—hits me fresh. David’s not my dad, and I don’t want to get too comfortable in this unreal, wasteful lifestyle. I’m only borrowing it until next year when I turn eighteen and make my own life. Whatever that’s going to be now that everything’s turned upside down.
My fingers find the silver medallion hanging around my neck, tracing the raised shape of Saint Brendan. I’m not religious, but he’s the patron saint of sailors and divers. It used to be my lucky charm. Now it’s just a reminder of what I can’t do. My doctors say I’m not allowed to dive until my lungs are fully healed, and that could take months, maybe a year. Maybe never.
“Addie!” Melinda beckons from the open doorway of one of the bungalows. Inside, a pillowy white barge of a bed floats on a sea of blue tile. French doors framed with gauzy curtains open onto a cliffside patio and the endless ocean.
“Your mom told me blue is your favorite color.” She adjusts a vase of white lilies the size of my head. “We thought you’d like this bungalow best, but let me know if you’d prefer a different one and we’ll bring your things there.”
“It’s perfect.” I slip off my flip-flops and let the cool of the tiles soak into my feet. “Do you have a house on the island too?”
Melinda beams. “We live in the lighthouse.”
“Wow, that sounds amazing.” It never occurred to me as an option, but suddenly all I want in the world is to live in a lighthouse, surrounded by water and sky.
“We love it,” she says. “Come over anytime, and we’ll show you the view from the top.”
A gust of wind sends the curtains billowing. Beyond the bungalow’s open back door, bushes rustle and leaves crunch. A sudden pain shoots through my chest. Both hands fly over my mouth to stop the cough from barking out, but it’s too late. Flecks of scarlet land on the blue tile. Melinda is busy arranging the flowers, and I step on the blood to hide it.
“Do you have . . . any kids?” I wheeze, thinking of the laughing child in the woods.
“Two boys.” Melinda plucks a browning petal from one of the flowers and sighs. “Billy’s fifteen, and he should be here with your bags any minute. As for his older brother, Sean, well, I hope he’ll put in an appearance at some point, but it’s impossible to drag him away from his video games. You know how it is.”
I don’t have time to play video games or watch much TV—correction: I didn’t use to have time—but I nod anyway. “And there’s nobody else on the island?”
“No one,” says Melinda. “This is your own private paradise while you’re here.”
I cringe at the word. Paradise is one of those places I might have gone after dying, but didn’t. And as gorgeous as this island is, it’s not my idea of paradise if I can’t dive. Not to mention, no paradise would have that inexplicable, creepy laughter I heard in the woods. It must have been a bird—there are probably lots of strange species on an island this remote—but I still don’t love the idea of that laugh following me around for two weeks.
A skinny, blond-haired boy appears in the doorway with my suitcase. He’s a couple of inches shorter than me, and he seems unsure of where to stand, his bare feet shuffling left and right.
“There he is!” says Melinda. “Addie, this is Billy.”
“Nice to meet you,” I say.
His tanned, freckled cheeks flush. “You too. Where should I put this?”
“On the bed is fine, thanks.” I’m not used to people waiting on me, and I don’t know if I’m supposed to give him a tip, but that seems somehow wrong.
Billy strains to lift the suitcase, then dumps it onto the bed with a thump that squeaks the springs. He swabs his forehead dramatically. “What did you fill this thing with, rocks?”
“Billy!” says his mother, but I let out what feels like my first genuine laugh since my accident.
Don’t cough.
“Actually, that’s my blacksmithing equipment,” I say with a grin. “You have anvils here, right?”
Billy laughs. “Of course we do! They’re down by the squash courts.”
“We don’t have squash courts or anvils, Addie.” Melinda rolls her eyes. “I hope that’s not going to be a problem?”
“Definitely not.” I couldn’t make it through two minutes of squash without coughing up pieces of my lungs. “And as for the suitcase, it’s just some projects I brought to keep me busy since there’s no internet here.”
My therapist says I should think of this trip as an opportunity to find out who I really am—the me who isn’t a freediver. I’m not sure there is a me outside of diving, but I brought along some activities I’ve never had much time for. A journal and multicolored gel pens. A half-finished embroidery project that makes me feel like a character from a Jane Austen book. Introductory French, Dutch, and Mandarin workbooks. An origami kit. A book about gardening. The problem is, I’m not very good at any of these things, and whenever I try to do them, my anxiety ratchets up instead of settling like it’s supposed to. My mom says I just need to be patient, but then I feel terrible about not being good at being patient.