Under Water

The novel alternates between two timelines: a Sunday and Monday in New York City on October 28–29, 2012, as Hurricane Sandy approaches, and events in Thailand on December 25–26, 2004, culminating in the Indian Ocean tsunami. Marissa narrates in the first person.

The story opens with a nightmare in which diners at an upscale restaurant choke up human body parts; Marissa coughs up a single brown eye. Waking in her New York apartment, she eats a chili from her windowsill plant, a daily ritual of intense burning that connects her to an island in the Andaman Sea, off the coast of Thailand, where she grew up. She examines two scars from an event not yet named and heads to her job at Cortés, a luxury travel magazine where she writes promotional copy while secretly researching the laborers, sex workers, and pollution each destination conceals.

The narrative shifts to Christmas Day, 2004. Marissa and Arielle, her closest friend, are both sixteen. They spend the afternoon on a secluded north-coast beach on their island. Their bond runs deep: At age seven, when Arielle learned Marissa's mother had died, she declared, "You can share mine" (15). Arielle's home life is troubled. Her wealthy Thai grandparents had bought her parents a hotel as a wedding gift, but Arielle's mother, Mae, does all the work while her English father bullies the staff. Over nearly a decade, the girls split their time between weekends on the island with Marissa's father and weekdays at the hotel.

Walking through Central Park, Marissa recalls her mother, who was struck by a delivery van when Marissa was six. Rosalind Watkins, known as Rosie, her mother's academic adviser and a renowned marine biologist, invited Marissa and her father, Isaiah, to her research station on an uninhabited island in the Andaman Sea. Isaiah set aside his own work to continue his wife's manta ray research; twenty years later, he is still there. Matthew, a photojournalist from Goa, India, and Anurak, a local fisherman who taught Marissa to swim as a child, completed the small community. Arielle was not her sister, Marissa insists: "You don't get to choose your sister. We chose each other" (30). She resents the expectation that grief for a friend must have an expiration date.

In Thailand, the girls snorkel on the reef and encounter manta rays, each identifiable by unique markings the girls have named. Three of the rays are pregnant. Returning by kayak, they find three dead mantas on the beach with gills cut away by poachers. A simmering argument surfaces: Arielle wants to stay on the island for the next morning's dive, when pregnant mantas will be tagged, but Marissa insists on a night out on the mainland. An extraordinary afternoon dive resolves the conflict when dozens of mantas appear in a mating chase, the largest gathering anyone has ever seen. Arielle rests her head on Marissa's shoulder afterward, exultant: No dive tomorrow could match this one.

On the mainland that evening, a drunk tourist at the hotel restaurant grabs Arielle's wrist and asks, "How much?" (108). Arielle calmly unhooks his grasp, then takes quiet revenge by grinding whole chilis into ketchup and switching it onto his dinner tray. Later, at a bar with school friends, a man grabs Marissa's waist, and Arielle confronts him: "If you touch her again, I'll fucking kill you" (121).

In New York, Arielle's ghost accompanies Marissa through the city, sometimes walking beside her, sometimes skipping ahead. The haunting lifts only when Marissa takes a man to bed: "I spend so much time alone so that I can be with her. I sleep with so many men so that I can get some time to myself" (91). Memories deepen the portrait of Arielle's home life, including the moment Marissa found Mae at her dresser with a bruise on her cheek, mixing foundation to hide it: "Please. Don't tell her" (130).

The second part opens on Monday morning. Marissa wakes in a hotel room beside a stranger who thinks her name is Tess. The Thailand timeline reaches December 26, 2004. Arielle wakes Marissa before dawn; Marissa, hungover, refuses to get up. "Why don't you ever do what I want?" Arielle says (142), and slips outside alone. When Marissa wakes again, animals are fleeing: A dog tries to pull her by the sleeve, birds are silent, an elephant bolts from the sea. On the beach, the ocean rapidly pulls away from shore, exposing sand and coral never seen before. Then a roar fills the air, and the sea on the horizon lifts into a black wall.

Marissa turns to run. Arielle does not move. She stands tall, shoulders relaxed, eyes on the crest of the wave. "The sea swallows her whole" (161). The wave overtakes Marissa, plunging her into darkness and tearing into her stomach. Underwater, Arielle appears and beckons with their shared three-fingered wave, helping Marissa orient toward the surface before vanishing.

Marissa surfaces into devastation. She wakes miles inland, her stomach sliced open. A stranger tears cloth from a fallen Thai flag and presses it into her wound. At the hospital, she spots Safia, one of the twins from their school group, searching frantically for her sister, Zara. A nurse sees Safia and freezes, glancing toward a sheet-covered body. Safia walks to it, pulls back the sheet, and crumples to the floor.

In the aftermath, Marissa volunteers at a temple that monks offered as a makeshift morgue, arranging bodies so survivors could search for loved ones. On the island, the tsunami destroys the cottage and lab; Matthew, who had stayed behind to write, is killed. The researchers who were diving offshore survived. International forensic teams arrive to identify the dead.

In New York, Marissa meets Safia at the Soho Grand during the storm. Safia confides that she has told no one in London she is a twin: "Sometimes I catch myself thinking in wes . . . And then I remember there is no we. I am an I now" (181). After the power goes out briefly, Marissa insists on leaving. She walks into the storm, where Arielle's ghost beckons from across Canal Street. A police officer forces her into his car and drives her home.

In her apartment, Marissa paints a wall and watches a documentary about extinction. Her anger erupts as she confronts Arielle's ghost: "Why didn't you run with me?" (202). Arielle does not answer. Then Marissa acknowledges what she has carried for eight years: It was not Arielle's fault. Arielle had not wanted to return to the mainland. She wanted to stay on the island, to dive the next morning. Marissa insisted; Arielle relented because she did not want to fight. If they had stayed, Arielle would have been on the dive boat offshore. Marissa sobs and repeats, "I'm sorry."

When she wakes, Arielle sits at the foot of her bed. "Come home," she says. "It's been too long" (203). The final section takes place on December 26, 2012, eight years after the tsunami. Marissa returns to the island. Isaiah and Rosie wait on the beach. She takes Arielle's red kayak to their north-coast beach and dives in. The reef hums with life. From the deep, three manta rays soar toward her: Lizzie, Lily, and Anna K. They come so close she can look into their eyes, swimming in circles around her. She stays with them for as long as she can hold her breath.