A glance over at Mandy tells me that I have successfully confused the crap out of her about where we are going. I can actually see her frustration fading as it registers just what is happening.

Morris Cove is not a place that most teens go, even the spoiled ones like us who live near the beach every day. Dad and I have come here many times in the past, most often from the water, as a place to get some reprieve from each of our lives. On occasion we would come by car and bring Mom along. Needless to say it was a well kept valley secret.

The road widens out to a “parking area” where I whip the car into a 180 and back the trunk to the beach. I get out, pausing to sniff the salt laden air, to smell the seaweed, and living things that exist here. Somehow that smell is always better here than at the house. I think it has something to do with the freedom that accompanied any visit here.

Mandy joins me as I open the trunk, her eyes alight and sweeping the sights that greets her.

“This is beautiful, Mike!”

I beam at her a moment, pulling the burden weighing down the trunk, “Wait until you see what is beneath the waves.”

I raise my brows at her, lifting the Buoyancy Control Device in one hand and the rebreather tank in the other.

“Oh my God, Michael!” She says, a totally shocked look on her face, “You’re taking me diving?”

I nod enthusiastically, “Are you interested?”

“You know I am!” she responds, closing the distance and grabbing the BCD from my hand.

“It was Mom’s, so it should fit you. You two are about the same size.”

She pushes up and kisses my cheek. “This is the best surprise!”

I grin crookedly at her as she bounces away toward the surf with the BCD in one hand and her bag and towel in the other. I grab my stuff, setting it aside as I close the trunk, and then head with my things over to the spot where Mandy has come to rest, if only for the moment.

She stares enraptured at the sight of the water, its light waves breaking against the shoreline, pushing mica and other light bits of debris around, and teasing it with a rest on the sand. The mountain fingers curl around the pool almost but not quite enclosing this section, cupping the cove and casting the water in deep blue shadows.

She smiles back at me as I approach her again.

“We should probably leave most of this up the beach. Tide’s coming in…wouldn’t want our stuff meeting us down there.”

She laughs as if none of the conversation on the way over here happened. The change is something I am more than glad for, and my own spirits lift grandly at the thought that the day might just be salvaged.

We walk together, setting our things by a rocky protrusion through the sand, and then take the gear back to the edge of the sea.

She is quick to get into the wetsuit I have provided for her, letting me aid her in getting the last of the zipper done up to her neck. Mandy is a little more rusty with the rest of the gear. I leave her some space, because she seems to want to do this herself, growing antsy as I watch her unaccustomed hands try to get all the hoses and monitors in order. Finally she implores me with her eyes to give her some help.

“I’m sorry. I’ve never done this before!”

I step in, grateful for a chance to speed our process a bit, “’S’ok, I only know because I had to use it when I was younger.” I shrug as I pull hoses out from under a shoulder strap where they had been trapped when she had thrown the rebreather over her wetsuit. With well practiced ease I hook her emergency second stage to a waiting clip, pull the monitor over her shoulder and allow it to dangle next to her left hand, and then aid her in donning the sealing ring over her head.

I frown as I note that her hair is still down, “Um, you got something to put your hair up with? I don’t want to tear it out getting the mask on.”

“In my bag,” she looks as if she hadn’t thought of that.

I leave her a moment and rummage through her stuff, feeling just a little self conscious as I do, before I find the scrunchie. I place her remaining towels and such in some semblance of order, before stepping back over. Her face has started to turn red, and I grimace, realizing that either the heat of the wetsuit or the weight of the rebreather is the cause.

“Okay, now I am even more ready to get into the water!” She moaned, “I didn’t realize it would be so hot.”

“Trust me, you won’t think its enough when you get down there,” I reply.

She only looks at me funny.

“Spit on the faceplate,” I tell her next.

“Why?” She looks as near disgusted as I have ever seen her.

I smile, “If you want to see anything down there you’d better spit on it. It will fog up otherwise.”

“Oh,” She replies and I watch, trying not to laugh as she musters the needed moisture. Her jaw slides around, pulling her skin tight, before she finally is able to accomplish the task.

“Now you want to rub it all over the surface of the glass.” I instruct her.

She follows my instruction, the slight tinge of disgust still tainting her pretty features.

I grab her fins and motion her to the water, “Now rinse out the inside of it.”

I have to hold her when she nearly falls over from the weight on her back, “How do you do this without killing yourself.”

“Carefully,” I laugh. “Don’t think I never went face first into the water either.”

She peers over at me as I help her straighten, as if she is seeing a disparity that she hadn’t before. I keep forgetting that the last time we swam together, I appeared a lot more...human than now. I think suddenly that the look on her face is a mirror of my own thought. I wasn’t able to dive before without the aid of the rebreather pack.

I help her straighten, taking the mask from her hands and allowing the excess moisture to dribble out before placing it over her head. I twist it as it engages the locking teeth and then hook up the feed hose to the first stage of the “octopus.” I double check to ensure her system is booted, and then coax her out deeper into the surge.

Handing Mandy the fins, I brace her while she dons and adjusts them to fit her smaller feet.

One last item I pull out is the node that will allow me to hear what Mandy is saying while we are down there. I tilt my head to one side as I press the device into my ear canal, making certain it is snug before I regard her again.

“Are you ready to go?” I ask her. “Is the feed working?”

She nods looking excited and uncertain all at the same time.

I grin reassuringly. “You’re gonna love this.”

Bending at the knees I allow myself to be swallowed by the surge, sitting back and allowing the brisk water to kiss my bare skin. I turn to face Mandy before I allow my head to disappear, ensuring that she is following my lead.

She leans forward allowing the water to support the extra weight of her gear, and experimentally kicks to close the distance between us. I don’t miss her sigh of relief as the cool water seeps into her wetsuit.

Smiling, I slip under the water and head deeper.

“Mike?” I hear Mandy in the receiver, “You want to slow it down?”

Chagrined, I twist my body to look back at her, seeing that I have left her some ten feet behind me. “Sorry ‘bout that,” I reply, “You doing okay?”

I catch her eye as she awkwardly lifts her head up to look my direction, “It’s not so bad now.”

She still has that look of incredulity underlying her features. I’m not sure whether it is the steadily changing view below us or me. I don’t ask it. I roll over in the water and start down, seeing the formation I want to introduce to her first.

I take it slow, knowing that a wetsuit clad diver was going to be no match for me swimming. Knowing this was not a race, the last thing I needed to do was leave her in my silt.

I arc my body over, coming to rest on a nub of rock sticking up through the silty bottom, waiting patiently for her to join me. She isn’t far behind and soon comes settle awkwardly on her knees just in front of me.

“I thought we might start here,” I say, grinning, and I lean to one side, pointing out a small crevice in a larger formation of rock to my right. I produce a small piece of fish from one pocket of the waist pack I carry when I come down here, waving it in front of the crevice.

“What are we...” a small gasp follows the statement as a suckered tentacle slithers out of the impossibly small crack in the rock.

I straighten, smiling at her growing delight. More tentacles shove out of the hole as I retreat with the strip of fish, until about three feet of the suckered limbs are twisting and searching through the water for the food it can sense. As if in frustration, the octopus oozes free of its protection, and I push off with one hand to give it room enough to spread out to its eight foot length. Inhuman eyes stare unfocused at us, as tentacles still move toward the morsel I have promised it. The color of the creature was a rusty brown when it had appeared and it quickly changes its shade more accurately matching the sandy bottom it now rests on, a light yellowish brown with spots of black and ochre spotting its surface.

“Oh wow,” Mandy exclaims softly.

“Beautiful isn’t he?” I say, grinning madly to see how excited she is about the first creature she has seen like this.

“Beautiful,” she moves closer.

“Careful,” I warn her, giving the tentacle nearest me the strip of fish to keep the creature’s mind off Mandy’s proximity. “They’re really strong, and I don’t want to make an emergency ascent because he likes your mask better than you do.”

Caution creeps into her eyes. “I will be,” she says and turns her gaze back to the creature. She reaches out a hand and gently strokes the smooth undulating skin of the octopus, smiling as it curls and draws away, and then reaches out as if to return the contact.

After a while the octopus decides we are no longer of interest and squeezes itself back into the crack it had come from. Incredulity reflects in Mandy’s face at the feat.

“How in the world did such a large creature come out of such a small space?”

I laugh. “Crazy isn’t it. C’mon there’s more to see.”

We move on through the blue twilight around us as I point out some of my favorite spots to her, and she discovers some new ones I hadn’t seen before.

We float serenely, watching vortexes of baitfish, barracuda, and jacks all swimming within feet of each other like three hurricanes trapped under the surface of the waves. I drag her with me as we swim up through the circling barracuda, both of us awestruck as the sheer numbers of fish create a wall so thick, the water beyond them is not visible.

Circling around, we explore more of the sea floor to find colorful sea slugs and sea cucumbers; reef sharks patrolling at the feet of the mountains above us for some wounded fish or other easy meal.

Mandy discovers a colorful lobster tucked away in a cubby of rock, white with bright red spots over its body. Its long antennae wave searchingly through the shifting currents either to identify enemies or determine a food source close by. Swimming up over the rock I find the other end to the cubby and goose the large crustacean out of its hole. It is nearly as long as my arm and twice as thick, and the claws, both larger than my hands, give it away as a male.

I smile at Mandy who is watching the deliberate march of the creature as it searches for its hole again.

Almost as an after-thought, I check the time, realizing that we have now been down almost an hour and a half. My gaze strays to Mandy who is head down with her face stuck in another crevice, and her feet swinging lazily to maintain her position.

I swim over, settling like a skate on the bottom. “How are you doing?” I ask, seeing her jump.

She looks up at me, her eyes alight and her face enraptured, but her lips are quivering and slightly blue.

I grimace. Lifting her monitor I check her air. It is good, but the chill of the water has obviously gotten to her. I try to sound nonchalant as I say, “We should head back now.”

“But Mike,” she protests, the shiver in her voice as well as her body, “This is so cool.”

“And you’re cold,” I answer pushing up from the bottom and pulling her by the shoulder to face me. “You’re dad would never forgive me if I allowed you to get sick because of this.”

She frowns, as if mention of her dad was the last thing she wanted to hear, but she reluctantly nods at me. “Okay...but promise me we can do this again?”

“You bet,” I agree.

It takes us nearly twenty minutes to return to the beach, tide helps, nearly at its height of rush toward the shore, but for every five feet forward, we are pulled back two by its power.

I am nearly out of energy by the time I reach the shoreline, and I know Mandy has to be drained. I tell her to lay still face first in the shallows as I strip her out of the fins, and unlatch the rebreather from her slight body.

She automatically rolls over to sit up, nearly bowled over again by an incoming wave. I unseal the helmet, pulling with shaking arms the unit and peripheral gear out of the surf and nearer the car. She is still sitting there, allowing the sea to wash over her in intervals, smiling blissfully at the serenity around us.

I return, pulling her gently to her feet and helping her over to where I have the housing and the rest of our gear settled.

Unexpectedly she reaches over and kisses me, full on the mouth. My body reacts even when my brain freezes over, returning the kiss with one as deep and passionate as hers. She breaks off, leaning back in my encircling arm. “That was so wonderful, Michael.”

I grin. “I’m glad you liked it.”

A/N: I got to tap into some of my experiences about diving for this chapter. The part with the octopus? I had one steal my dive light before, we have video of my fight with it to recover the light (I was night diving for heaven's sake!). So I really love how this particular chapter came out!

NEXT UP: Comparing Notes

As Michael and Mandy enjoy the end of their day out, more serious matters come out...