Free Escape by M.K. Elliott Page B

it’s shallower where the coral is .”
    She wasn’t convinced.
    “Hey, if it’s too much we can head inland a bit. I just really wanted to show you the wall. You get so much more here than a few tropical fish.”
    It was the thought of all the things she couldn’t see that made her nervous. Images from the first Jaws movie flashed through her head. But she didn’t want to be a wimp in front of him, so she shook her head and forced a smile.
    “No, its fine,” she said. “As long as you don’t shout at me this time.”
    He had the decency to look embarrassed. “I promise, he said, holding up one hand as though he was swearing an oath. “No shouting.”
    Rudy helped her with her gear and then put his own on. They did the safety checks needed before a dive: air levels, straps, weights. He handed her a set of mask and fins, and she eyed-up the fins in mistrust. Those things were purely designed to humiliate her.
    Rudy saw her misgivings. “Why don’t you jump in and I’ll hand them to you? You can put them on in the water, some people find it easier.”
    “What if I drop them?”
    “Then I’ll get you another pair.”
    She didn’t like the idea of being in the water alone, but she liked the idea of falling overboard in the fins even less, so she allowed Rudy to help her to the side with her oxygen tanks. Still feeling huge and awkward, she jumped in.
    The water was cooler here and she plunged beneath for a moment befo re bobbing back to the surface. As soon as she was in the water, the awkwardness of the heavy tanks disappeared. She pulled off her mask and spat on the plastic, and then rinsed the mask out. Spitting in front of good-looking men was not something she wanted to get into the habit of doing, but in this case—if she wanted to stop her mask fogging up and be able see something—it was unavoidable.
    Rudy didn’t seem to mind. He leaned over the side and handed her the fins . She reached down into the water and slipped the m on her feet. She still didn’t like the feeling of bobbing around in the deep ocean like this, the thoughts of thi ngs swimming only inches below her feet haunting her, but then Rudy jumped in beside her and her worries vanished.
    He bobbed back to the surface. Water droplets hung from his eyelashes, his hair darker and sleeker, wet. She wondered for the millionth time what he was doing out here with her. His type didn’t like girls like her—she wasn’t flirty or sexy. She took things seriously and had never rebelled in her life.
    Except for now.
    Rudy took his regulator out of his mouth. “We’re going to use the anchor rope to go down on. If you’ve got any problems, signal me. We’re going a bit deeper than last time so you might feel a bit more pressure and pain in your ears, but remember to keep equalizing, okay?”
    Lucy took a couple of steady breaths and used the rope to slowly pull herself under. The underwater world enveloped her; the light fractured by the surface, sound traveling more quickly in its tightly knit molecules.
    Rudy, with his vast experience, went down with her, not needing the rope to pull himself under. He just held on loosely with one hand. He kept eye contact with her, using his free hand to form the hand signals to ask if she was okay.
    At fifty feet down, he signaled her to stop.
    Together they swam away from the line toward the coral wall. The wall looked like a cliff face in front of them. The precipice dropped into the depths, its height somehow dizzying, even beneath the water.
    The wall teemed with life.
    A cloud of bright blue and yellow fish swirled like a fast moving, colorful fog in front of her eyes. Pink and orange sea anemones clung to the surface of the rock, their fat tentacles swirling in the current like fingers. A huge spindly crab walked across the coral, unsteady on its stick thin, multi-jointed legs.
    They swam up the wall, toward the coral reef. The light penetrated further now they were in shallower water, and the