Tiffany Palumbo

warrant such extreme measures. Logically, it is impossible. But their behavior was so frighteningly illogical that twenty years later, I still cannot comprehend their lack of response. I cannot understand why two people—especially two people with a new child of their own— would watch someone die with the same detached, passionless expression people have when they watch paint dry. I can’t explain it logically, so I have to ask myself: what is the alternative? Maybe there was some cosmic significance in that moment, maybe they were time travelers, or the spirit of the erupting volcano offshore as it hungered for a human sacrifice. Maybe they were just psychopaths. The tide began to suck itself back into the ocean, and I abandoned any attempt of swimming against the current. Experts say to always let the current pull you out to sea, then swim parallel to the shore to escape the riptide, but this was years before I’d heard that. The complete futility of trying to resist the thousands of gallons of icy water crushing my chest and dragging me away shouted down the instinct for self-preservation that screamed its way through my body. I knew I was in the ocean’s hand, and that the way out was not through force, but by random chance.