[Breathing Under Water] [By

[Breathing Under Water] [By Plot Summary

Introduction

The ocean calls to Grace Walker before dawn, its voice cutting through the summer air like a promise and a threat. She moves through the darkness with practiced silence, wetsuit clinging to her seventeen-year-old frame, surfboard balanced against her shoulder. Behind her, the white house on Walker Street sleeps, unaware that she carries half its heart toward the waves. Nineteen minutes and eleven seconds—that's all that separated Grace and her twin brother Ben at birth, but it might as well have been a lifetime. Ben emerged screaming, claiming his place in the world with fists and fury. Grace followed in his shadow, quieter, smaller, forever catching up. Now they paddle out together into the pre-dawn darkness, two halves of the same whole, their heartbeats synchronized to the rhythm of the tide. The water embraces them like a second home, and for these precious hours before the world wakes, they are invincible. But the ocean that gives life can just as easily take it away, and on this particular morning, Grace has no idea she's about to lose everything that matters.

Chapter 1: The Shattered Mirror: Life Divided When Ben Disappears

The phone rings at 2:47 PM on a Saturday afternoon, cutting through the lazy weekend silence like a blade. Grace stands in the kitchen of their Marlow home, still tasting salt on her lips from their morning surf session, when Constable Griffin's voice crackles through the speaker. The words don't make sense at first—accident, hospital, come quickly—until the world tilts sideways and everything familiar becomes foreign. Ben and Mia had driven to Port Lawnam to collect raffle hampers for the school fair. A simple errand. Twenty minutes there, twenty minutes back. But somewhere between the charity office and home, another car ran a red light. Grace learns this later, in fragments, through whispered conversations and newspaper clippings her aunt tries to hide. What she experiences first is the absence—the sudden, violent silence where Ben's laughter should be. At the hospital, Grace sees Mia first, broken but breathing in room 15C. Her strawberry blonde hair is matted with blood, her right arm suspended in a sling, one eye swollen shut. When Mia opens her remaining eye and sees Grace, the words that escape are barely human: "He's gone, isn't he?" The question hangs in the antiseptic air like smoke from a funeral pyre. Grace climbs over the bed rail and lies beside her best friend, their fingers interlaced, both understanding that the world they knew ended somewhere on a stretch of country road between Port Lawnam and home. The funeral director's office smells of lilies and industrial carpet cleaner. Grace sits between her parents as arrangements are made with the casual efficiency of people who do this every day. Mel Walker hasn't spoken since the hospital. Ray Walker chain-smokes outside, his surfboard empire suddenly meaningless. The town of Marlow prepares to say goodbye to its golden boy, but Grace isn't ready to let him go.

Chapter 2: Midnight Surfing: Chasing Ghosts in Dark Waters

Sleep becomes impossible after Ben dies. Grace lies in her childhood bed, staring at the ceiling where glow-in-the-dark stars once mapped their shared dreams, listening to the house settle into its new, emptier shape. Three weeks pass before she can't bear the silence anymore and creeps out into the night, dragging her surfboard toward the moonlit waves. The ocean at midnight is a different creature entirely—wild and unpredictable, speaking in tongues only the desperate understand. Grace paddles through silver-topped swells, her wetsuit thin armor against the cold that seeps into her bones. She should be afraid. Any rational person would be. But fear is just another emotion she can't access anymore, sealed behind the same door that holds her grief. The first time she sees him, she assumes it's hallucination born from exhaustion and salt water. Ben sits on his board fifty meters away, moonlight painting his shoulders the same shade of pearl they've always been. His smile is exactly as she remembers—crooked, confident, infinite. "Hey, Gracie," he says, and his voice carries across the water like it always has, like death is just another wave to duck under. She knows it's impossible. The rational part of her mind, the part that still functions, reminds her that Ben's ashes were scattered into this same ocean three weeks ago. But rationality is a luxury she can't afford anymore. If madness means she gets to surf with her brother again, she'll choose madness every time. They catch waves together until dawn threatens the horizon, and when the first birds begin their morning songs, Ben fades with the darkness, leaving Grace alone to paddle back to shore. Night after night, she returns to the water, and night after night, he's waiting. They don't talk about his death or her life without him. Instead, they surf like they always have, like time stopped that Saturday afternoon and never started again.

Chapter 3: The Spiral: Dancing with Destruction and Escape

Jake Morrison has always been the wild card in their group—the boy who lights fires just to watch them burn. Now, with Ben gone, he becomes Grace's partner in self-destruction, and together they discover how many ways there are to disappear while still breathing. It starts with cigarettes behind the school gym and evolves into stolen bottles of vodka, pills that make the world soft around the edges, warehouse parties where nameless faces blur together in strobing light. Grace's grades crater. Her parents, drowning in their own grief, barely notice when she stops coming home for dinner or sleeps through entire school days. Mia tries to intervene, pleading with Grace to remember who she used to be, but Grace has no interest in resurrection. The girl who studied marine biology and worried about final exams died with Ben. What remains is something else entirely—a creature that feeds on chaos and finds comfort only in the numbness that comes from pushing too far. The first time Grace blacks out completely, she wakes up in an alley behind a nightclub in the Palms, her dress torn and her memory scattered like glass. Jake sits nearby, his nose bloodied from a fight he can't remember starting. They stare at each other in the gray dawn light, two lost souls who have finally found the bottom they were searching for. "Low point," Grace observes, and Jake laughs like it's the funniest thing he's ever heard. But even rock bottom has a basement, and Grace is determined to find it. She stops eating regular meals, surviving on whatever she can steal from her mother's increasingly desperate cooking attempts. Her clothes hang loose on a frame that grows more fragile each day. In the mirror, she sees her brother's eyes looking back—the same blue-black depth, but emptied of everything that made them beautiful. The night of her eighteenth birthday party, Grace floods the family home with strangers and watches them destroy everything her parents have built. Police sirens wail in the distance as she stands on the roof, surveying the chaos below like some demented queen. When Jake gets arrested and her father arrives to find his sanctuary violated, Grace feels nothing but a hollow satisfaction. If she has to live in a broken world, she'll make sure everyone else does too.

Chapter 4: Mending Bridges: Reconnecting with Those Who Remain

The morning after the party disaster, Grace wakes to find her grandmother Sasha in the kitchen, armed with yellow rubber boots and the kind of determination that rebuilt Australia after the war. Sasha doesn't coddle or lecture; she simply rolls up her sleeves and starts picking up the pieces, literally and figuratively. "No point crying over spilt milk," she declares, though the spilt milk in this case includes vomit-stained carpets and a hole punched through Ben's bedroom wall. Grace's mother Mel emerges from her months-long hibernation like a bear shaking off winter. Together, they clean Ben's room, packing away his clothes and surfing trophies with the careful reverence of archaeologists handling ancient artifacts. It's the first time Grace has been in that space since the funeral, and she expects the memories to overwhelm her. Instead, she feels something unexpected: relief. Ben's room was never meant to be a shrine. He would have hated the stillness, the careful preservation of a life meant to be lived. Mia, meanwhile, circles Grace's recovery like a cautious cat, offering friendship without demands. She brings fairy bread and childhood memories, reminding Grace of who she used to be before grief carved her hollow. When Grace finally apologizes for spitting on her at the party, Mia's forgiveness comes without conditions. "We're all hurting," she says simply, and Grace realizes that her pain, while enormous, isn't unique. The reconciliation with her father takes longer. Ray Walker has spent months hiding in his surfboard factory, crafting wooden dreams while his family fell apart. When a heart scare forces him home, he arrives with breakfast and apologies, but Grace isn't ready to forgive the man who abandoned them when they needed him most. It takes time—weeks of awkward conversations and tentative gestures—before she can see past her anger to the broken man underneath. Slowly, impossibly, the pieces of their shattered family begin to fit together again. Not the same way as before—that configuration is lost forever—but in a new pattern that might, eventually, hold.

Chapter 5: Floating Again: Learning to Navigate New Currents

Summer arrives early in Marlow, bringing with it a kind of softness Grace hasn't felt in months. The ocean warms, the days stretch longer, and something inside her chest—something that's been clenched tight since October—finally begins to loosen. She passes her final exams, barely, but passing feels like victory enough. More importantly, she begins to surface from the dark water she's been drowning in all year. Harley Mathews has been circling the edges of her story since the beginning, bringing food his mother didn't make, waiting with the patience of someone who understands that healing can't be rushed. When Grace is finally ready to see him—really see him, not just the blurred outline of a boy-shaped regret—she finds someone worth surfacing for. Their first real conversation happens on the roof of his van at Tarobar Beach, salt drying on their skin and honesty sharp between them. "It wasn't my place to fix this for you," he tells her, and Grace realizes he's been waiting for her to fix herself. The realization is both terrifying and liberating. For the first time in months, she wants something beyond numbness. She wants to travel, to study, to build something meaningful from the ruins of her old life. With Ben's inheritance money—a fortune she never knew existed—Grace makes plans. University can wait; first, she needs to remember how to be human again. She'll travel through Europe, maybe Asia, following coin flips and instinct rather than carefully planned itineraries. Harley will join her when he can, and together they'll write a new story that honors the past without being imprisoned by it. The night before their first road trip together, Grace goes to the ocean one last time to find Ben. He's there, as he always is, sitting on his board in the moonlight. But something has changed. He no longer looks solid, permanent. He's becoming translucent, like morning mist beginning to burn off. "You don't need me anymore," he says, and Grace knows it's true. The grief will always be there, carved into her bones like her own name, but it no longer defines her.

Chapter 6: Horizons: Charting a Course Beyond Grief

The van coughs to life on a perfect summer morning, loaded with camping gear and possibility. Grace's parents wave goodbye from the porch, no longer the broken people they were eight months ago. They've learned to carry Ben's absence together, distributing the weight between them so no one has to bear it alone. Even Jake has found his footing, working at the surfboard factory and slowly building something that looks like a future. Grace and Harley flip coins at every intersection, letting chance guide them toward unmarked beaches and forgotten forests. They swim naked in deserted coves and sleep under stars that seem close enough to touch. For the first time since Ben died, Grace laughs without feeling guilty about it. Joy is no betrayal of grief—she's learning they can coexist, like sun and shadow on the same stretch of sand. At a remote campsite overlooking the Pacific, Harley asks Grace what she thinks happens when people die. She considers the question while watching the sun set into the waves, painting the horizon in shades of gold and crimson. "They go home," she says finally, remembering Ben's words from their last midnight surf session. But now she understands what he meant. Home isn't a place—it's the love that survives loss, the memories that refuse to fade, the way the ocean keeps singing even when no one's listening. That night, Grace dreams of Ben one last time. He's seventeen forever, golden and laughing, catching the wave of the day while she paddles out to join him. When she wakes, the dream doesn't fade like most dreams do. Instead, it settles into her chest next to her heartbeat, a permanent reminder that some bonds can't be broken by something as small as death. The van carries them north toward tomorrow, toward all the tomorrows Grace thought she'd lost. Behind them, the ocean continues its ancient conversation with the shore, speaking the same language it's always spoken—the language of persistence, of renewal, of hope that rises with each tide.

Summary

In the end, Grace Walker learns that surviving grief isn't about letting go—it's about learning to carry the weight differently. Ben remains with her, not as a ghost haunting midnight waters, but as part of the foundation she builds her new life upon. His laughter echoes in hers, his fearlessness guides her toward horizons she never imagined exploring. The twin who was born nineteen minutes behind him finally steps forward to claim her own place in the sun. The ocean that took everything from her also gives her everything back—not the same way, but transformed, like sea glass tumbled smooth by waves and time. Grace drives toward an uncertain future with steady hands and an open heart, knowing that the boy who taught her how to surf also taught her how to survive. Some gifts, she realizes, are too powerful to be diminished by death. Some love is too deep to drown.

About Author

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sovvilu

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