Deep Water

After helping her father secure the anchor, Julie and the Jordans begin strapping on their dive equipment: the breathing apparatus, called the regulator, weight belt, and most importantly, an inflatable vest called a buoyancy compensator device, or BCD. Gibson announces that Julie will be guiding the Jordans since he is not feeling well, and Mr. Jordan expresses annoyance that “some kid” (11) will be guiding them.

However, since the alternative is to head back to land, Mr. Jordan grudgingly agrees to continue with the dive. Julie notices that the Jordans’ diving gear is brand new and high quality. She also sees them strapping on pony tanks, additional small air tanks, and realizes they plan to stay down longer than recommended. After going through safety checks, Gibson tells everyone how long to stay at the bottom and how to time their ascent, although he acknowledges that the Jordans may choose to disregard those recommendations at their own risk. He pulls Julie aside and tells her she must limit herself to “20 minutes’ bottom time […] No matter what’s going on” (15), and she agrees.

The Jordans do not wait for Julie to begin their descent, already ignoring the safety rule that divers stay together. Julie knows that staying longer than the recommended time puts them at risk of developing the bends, formally known as decompression sickness—a painful illness that can occur if a diver ascends too quickly without stopping, which can cause excess nitrogen gas bubbles to release in the blood and muscles, potentially leading to paralysis, fatigue, and dizziness, among other symptoms.

As Julie descends, she notices the strong current and experiences a moment of anxiety before seeing the tanks come into view. When she notices the anchor resting precariously on a thin lip of metal, she faces a dilemma. If the anchor pulls away, the boat will drift in the current, and Julie and the Jordans will have no line to follow to get back to the boat. She needs to resurface and reset the anchor, but since it would not drop in the exact same place, the Jordans would not be able to find it. If the Jordans were within sight, she would immediately call off the dive and resurface. In their absence, all she can do is keep an eye on the anchor and hope for the best.

Even on the ocean floor, the current is strong. To find her way to the south tank where the Jordans are, Julie must stab her knife into the sand and pull herself forward. The tank is swarming with fish, and Julie can see Mr. Jordan and Shane spearfishing and filling their fish stringers. Julie makes her way to Shane and signals that seven minutes remain in their bottom time, but he ignores her. Julie uses her compass to give herself an accurate heading back to the tanks, but she soon realizes the current is moving against her trajectory. As she fights her way toward the anchor, she realizes the effort is using up precious air, and that she likely will not make it back to the anchor within the four minutes that remain on her watch. She reminds herself to stay calm and eventually makes it back to where the anchor should be, but the anchor is gone. She can see drag marks in the sand that tell her the anchor pulled away as she feared.

Thirty minutes have passed, and only one-fourth of her air remains. She starts her ascent and reaches the point of her first safety stop, where she pauses for 10 minutes to allow the nitrogen to leave her bloodstream. Without the anchor rope to hold onto, she knows the current is carrying her farther from the dive site. She ascends further and makes another stop, but this time, she only has enough air to pause for eight of the 20 minutes that she needs. When Julie arrives at the surface, she is relieved to find that her joints feel normal and she does not have the bends. However, her father’s boat is nowhere in sight. She drops her weight belt to increase her buoyancy and then inflates her BCD to keep herself afloat. All she can do is watch for the Jordans and hope to see her father’s boat.

Julie fights to stay calm and runs through possible scenarios of how far the boat may have drifted. She flashes back to three years ago, when a man named Dr. Malzon hired her dad to drop the Malzon tanks into the water to create an artificial reef. Julie and her mother accompanied Gibson to drop the tanks, and the deal was that the coordinates of the tanks’ location would be kept secret and delivered to Dr. Malzon. However, shortly after the coordinates were delivered, Dr. Malzon died suddenly.

Since Julie’s father is a man of his word, he did not keep a copy of the coordinates for himself. In the years that followed, he searched endlessly for the tanks, and his obsession contributed to the unraveling of his marriage to Julie’s mom. They divorced, and Julie went to live with her mom in Atlanta during the school year, returning to Alabama only in the summer to see her dad. The first summer she returned, she found that her father had changed. He was thin, forgetful, and anxious, unlike the passionate and happy-go-lucky father she used to know.

Julie thinks back to the moment a few days ago when her dad called her mom’s house in Atlanta to announce that he located the Malzon tanks. He was elated, but Julie’s mom did not share his enthusiasm, so Julie hid her excitement. Since the divorce, Julie’s mother joined a law firm in Atlanta; her long work hours create stress and leave little quality time for Julie. Since Julie would be going to spend the summer with her dad in just a few days, she told him on the phone they would talk about the tanks in person.