“Gonna be a little hard to call this a coincidence now,” Mica said, pacing up and down so fast the ancient boards creaked louder than the water.

Only a week later, Darwen had had an accident like Shay’s. He was in a coma too.

The last bits of burnished red faded over the bay, bringing in all the sounds of night on the water. I sat with my legs dangling off the dock, steeling myself against the slight chill in the air that was so unusual for this time of year, but seemed so appropriate given the mood of everyone around. Mica had built a fire in the fire bowl on the deck for the two of us, and the snap and crackle sounded slow and lazy, like it was missing energy. I felt the same way.

Cool winds blew the reeds on the river dunes, whistling and whooshing, making them sound alive. Off in the distance, I heard the calls of the dolphins. They sounded sad tonight, but maybe that was just me projecting my feelings onto them. I desperately wanted to go for a swim to clear my head, and with my stitches finally out I’d finally been given the all-clear to get wet, but the beach was closed for the day.

I chimed in, “The Guard will have to get more involved now that Darwen…” But I stopped, because I was feeding Mica’s anger, which upset me even more. I couldn’t take on his feelings just then. I had far too many of my own to process. Luckily, he took the hint and went inside the house, taking his mad with him. Yesterday, they’d finally found the body of the boy who went missing at the Ocean Swim. He had turned up in the middle of the main beach along with ten dead dolphins.

We hadn’t had an accidental death from drowning on Pinhold in over twenty years. It was only the beginning of July and we’d already had two. It called our commitment, and our abilities, into question. While the boys’ deaths were labeled accidents, they’d happened during competition. So there was talk from the state about changing Surf Carnival regulations, which may have made sense but offended everybody here.

What no one wondered, at least out loud, was if Shay’s coma was somehow related to the death of the boys. Since she was technically still alive, her case hadn’t really been studied by anyone but local doctors. Mica seemed convinced that there was a link, which Doc knew, and that he was hiding something.

I was sure he was wrong, until today, when Darwen had nearly drowned as well. Now he was in the hospital bed next to Shay and it seemed impossible to think all these events were completely random, considering it all happened in one ocean, in our small part of the world. I’d been in the office getting my stitches out when word had come in. I’d asked, casually, if it was the same thing that had happened to Shay, and Doc had dismissed the notion so fast I wondered if he’d even heard me. So, I repeated it again and realized, he was deliberately ignoring me.

According to the onlookers who had notified the The Guard, Darwen had disappeared from the surface and hadn’t come back up again. Like Shay, he went down without the usual physiological signs of drowning. He simply disappeared below the surface of the ocean.

Because it was dusk, no one had noticed, immediately. In fact, the Guard had had a very difficult time locating him in the ocean. They had searched for at least a half hour before his location was identified by a pod of dolphins, keening sadly, like they had lost one of their own.

While they weren’t using words, I knew that they were talking out their pain. I so badly wanted to join them in the water, so I could do the same. I felt a yearning to see the white dolphin from the other night. After my rescue, she felt special to me, and I’d been more relieved than was right when her body was not one of those found lifeless on the beach. Feeling connected to a specific dolphin wasn’t unheard of on Pinhold—that’s how it used to be when there were more dolphins than people.

Old Island legends, said everyone who lived here had their own dolphin twin who guarded the sea, as we guarded the land. But, after the oil spill in the 1960s, that changed. By the time my mom was born, the dolphin population had dwindled so dramatically that most of the people never even swam with the dolphins, much less found their dolphin twin. That broke the connection for so many people my mom’s age, that they didn’t seem to have any spiritual relationship with the ocean or the dolphins. Those who still lived here focused more on the tangible, visible elements of Pinhold life. The rest had left the Island entirely.

I had never counted on having a dolphin twin, but it was beginning to feel like I did, when I suddenly spotted the albino who had rescued me with her pod not far from the dock at my house, right in front of me.

She swam up now, skin shining in the dimming light. A fresh scar by her eye was more pronounced than the others that dotted her otherwise smooth back and I knew she’d gotten it saving me.

Circling the reeds, her clicks and whistled called to me. She somehow made sense to me on a day when not much else did. So, I listened to her.

And then, I dove in head first, approaching her slowly as I came up for air. My entire body seemed to sigh with the relief from finally being back in the water, as well as the proximity to my dolphin. Closer up, her skin had a sheen I hadn’t noticed before. It almost seemed iridescent and I couldn’t resist reaching out. She turned her head to me, intentionally or not, giving me a clear view of the multiple raised bumps that made up her latest scar. Lots of small cuts appeared as dots close up, together they made a swirled crescent that almost looked like a tattoo.

Her huge silver eye stared into mine, and it felt like I was looking into a mirror; The color the same as mine. She nodded her head and dove underwater. Like I had done on First Night, I followed her.

She held back speed as we made our way through the reeds, rocking her fluke casually through the water. At first, I struggled with a traditional breast stroke, arms spreading out and legs following behind. Slowly, though, I changed the position of my legs, keeping them together and mimicking the movement of her body. Soon, I needed my arms only for navigation, or an occasional burst of speed. They worked to propel me from the water, whenever I needed air.

Quickly, we joined her pod of five, and I swam faster than I ever had in my life in order to keep up. I soon found myself hundreds of yards from home, in the dark, out of breath. I stilled, treaded water, and panicked.

My heart sounded louder than the waves, crashing way too far away on the shore. The lighthouse, partially dimmed by a layer of fog, stood in the distance, and—thinking of the dangers to Shay and to Darwen—the tears I’d held in all day burst like a hurricane-ruined dam.

The white dolphin called out a bunch of sounds, and the others came back and circled around, so quickly that the water around me became like a whirlpool, and I had to fight to keep from slipping down. Her friends went away, leaving her and I alone. She circled me, calming me until my panic subsided, and she led me back toward my house where I saw a figure waiting for me in the shallows.

It was Blake, and I recognized him not as my best-friend-turned-boyfriend, but as  another being belonging to the sea.

There was a dolphin there with him, in the marsh, and we all stared at each other.

“Cami! You’re okay?” Blake asked from ten feet away where he treaded water.

“Better than,” I chirped, the excitement in my voice sounding much like the dolphins on their happy days. My dolphin seemed to smile at me, and I watched Blake’s eyes go wide as the dolphin he swam near did the same thing.

I giggled at their similar expressions, which seemed to break the odd tension of the situation. Reassured that I wasn’t in danger, Blake relaxed as much as anyone could when swimming less than ten feet from an eight-foot long, five-hundred pound creature.

“I’m glad to hear you happy,” Blake said, appreciation for my changed mood all over his face. The moonlight glinted off his teeth, exaggerating his smile, and the dolphin flashed his teeth as well; all twenty rows!

Blake and the boy dolphin traded megawatt smiles back and forth, making me laugh so hard I snorted. My girl shook her head at the noise, like she was surprised, and the movement rippled through the water, splashing me and making me snort water out of my nose.

That became the new game: splash the human to see if it would make the snorting noise again. Over and over, they experimented with us, and even successfully imitated the sound. While we were all highly amused, the extra splashing made me cold, and treading water wasn’t enough to warm me up again. It was time to go in.

The boy and the girl dolphin stayed by us until we got safely back on the dock and then turned to swim away. Then they turned around, ducked under the water, came back out, and snorted through their blowholes, as if saying goodbye. I realized that, while nothing changed in my world outside the water, they had completely changed my perspective.

Popping wood and crackling sparks filled the silence as Blake and I sat on a bench together, borrowing heat from the fire that Mica had built just a few hours earlier. When I shivered, he pulled me closer, threading my legs through his. This comforting cuddle was completely new—scary and right at the same time, the way everything with Blake had become lately.

 The curling smoke shifted, turning directions a split second before I felt the wind change on my skin. The pounding waves slowed as the chatter of the dolphins quickened. They were far off now, in the distance, but somehow I felt like they were still connected to me—to both of us. And they were definitely cheering me on.

 I could feel every hour of swim practice in those muscles that suddenly pressed against mine. I never knew I had so many nerve-endings going up and down my side, but I was feeling all kinds of buzzing in places that never seemed all that important before. And then, his fingers started moving.

He explored a single millimeter at a time, chasing the shadows of fire that danced along my skin, while I tried to remember to breathe. Pulling me higher onto his lap, he pulled my back against his front until he absolutely surrounded me. For the life of me, I could not figure out why it had taken me this long to learn that his skin was softer than mine, or that he smelled like the sea pine that was right outside of my grandparents’ home.

My shivers intensified when he put his mouth to my ear and whispered, “You are so beautiful.” He had said it so quietly, I asked him to say it again.

Emboldened by his whispers, I leaned my head back on his shoulder, barely trailing my lips along his neck until I found the pulse point right below his ear. There, I lingered just long enough to feel his heartbeat quicken.

And then, I kissed him again.