Olivia Brooks - Editor
Nabrey keeps flicking the little dials on the submarine console, not enough to turn them or anything but just to defuse his abundant nervous energy.
“You alright?” I ask again.
“Perfectly peachy, man,” Nabrey counters and reaches to tap the depth gauge.
I catch his grimy sleeve between my pointer and thumb, stopping the tic, and he stares at me, his wide eyes blinking at different times. I see the fear that flicks through his irises, dilating the pupils, and I know he’s remembering the fact that I didn’t come to military school out of one of those posh academies, but clawed my way up from the lowest rung of society in a way that’s rigged to be impossible.
Nabrey licks his lips, his mouth widening just enough to give me a whiff of the gourmet jerky he eats in lieu of the rations we’re supplied in powder form. A beeping sound breaks our staring contest and Nabrey whips away his hand, rubbing his bony wrist as if I pinched him.
“Reaching destination in approximately ten minutes,” the British sounding computer voice informs us.
“Finally,” I murmur, and peer through the foggy windows to see what slumbers in the water deep, miles beneath automobile exhaust and outlet malls and all the mundane paraphernalia of life you don’t really care about till you’ve spent 74 hours in foreign territory.
A tremor shakes the sub and my fingers fly over switches to steady us out, so fast it’s as if my fingers have a life of their own, and maybe they do; when I’m working, I stop thinking about the how and just go.
Nabrey wanders about the cabin in the meantime with his diving suit slung halfway across his shoulders, looking lost and disoriented. I listen to him mumble fortune cookie mantras for a few vexing minutes, then throw on a headset.
It must’ve been the Admiral’s infamous sense of humor that possessed him to pair us up. A politician’s scrawny son who has panic attacks when he loses a pen and a boy from the streets who learned gunshots and drug deals before basic arithmetic.
Like a blasted fairy tale.
“They wouldn’t let us die on our first mission, would they?” Nabrey’s biting his already bitten fingernails.
“They wouldn’t let you die.”
He hmphs like he’s ready to start another argument about privilege, but thankfully he settles down. We stare out into the watery gloom together. There’s something terrifying about being this deep, suspended in space like an elliptical balloon with only a few layers of titanium securing you from drowning or perishing in the jaws of some monstrous sea creature.
Not immune to that oppressive feeling, Nabrey starts humming, bopping his head to a slow, mellow tune.
“Is that...” I glance at him, “Is that Jimmy Buffet? Mermaid in the Night?”
Nabrey grins and throws me a wink, starts singing, “She's covered in green / She’s got little scales upon her / She's larger than life…”
We finish the chorus together, “She’s a mermaid in the night.”
He gets his voice up an octave on the word night and the way he closes his eyes when he does it, the way his hands tremble as if bracing themselves over an instrument, I get the feeling his passion runs through a vein of music, not naval expeditions.
Then the vessel shudders again.
“Three minutes,” the computer reminds us.
We spring into action.
I glance behind me during a lull in steering and jamming buttons. Nabrey’s got his diving fins tangled in a length of rope and is staring worriedly at his disassembled oxygen tank. Rolling my eyes, I turn back to the window and the water.
Nabrey’s a useless sub partner, but if we make it out of here in one piece, maybe I’ll buy him a ukelele or something. The thought makes me chuckle.
“What’s so funny?” Nabrey demands.
“Nothin.’ Now look alive, man. It’s showtime.”