One Hundred Feet Below

One Hundred Feet Below

By Desmond Grace

This book is dedicated to my little parrot Mango

who was always there to help me

out when things got hard

Maple Leaf Writing Project Brattleboro, VT Copyright 2019

As I opened our apartment door a waft of warm air hit me. Light from my house flooded the dark, cold street, like somebody had turned on a mega flashlight.The smell of good food greeted my nose welcomingly. I walked across our mini living room into the kitchen were Mom was making dinner.

“Hi Sahan” she said without looking up. She had a way of doing that. Even if you were really quiet, she would hear you. Maybe it was because she was a park ranger so she had super good ears. Or maybe she was a secret ninja in disguise with super senses like the one I saw in that movie last week. Either way, she was a good cook and I was hungry.

“What's for dinner?” I asked “milk rice” she said as she cut the sticky rice into perfect little squares (another ninja skill) “Can you go tell Hiruni that dinner is ready?” Mom said “It’s her turn to set the table.” Our family only had enough money to rent this small apartment so me and my sister share a room. I walked back across the living room. Halfway there and I could already hear pop music drifting out. I opened the door.

Mom always said that our room looked like it had been cut in half, and I understood why. One side ,my side, had so many posters that you couldn’t even see the wall. Books and comics littered the floor around my bed. On my red night stand stood a picture of my favorite uncle. Not to be mean but he just seemed to understand me best.

Uncle Hashan was a geologist. He always told me about a big theory he had, “there’s a sunken island under sri lanka.” he would say “when tectonic plates were moving it sank” he had some complicated reason why he knew it was there but nobody believed him. Hiruni’s side was the exact opposite. She had pictures of famous pop stars all over her walls. A bright pink dresser sat next to her bed. It was so vibrant it could have acted like a decent night light. Hiruni was lying on her bed listening to Selena Gomez on her iphone. “It’s your turn to set the table.” I said.

“k’ey,” She sighed “I’ll be right there.” Me and Hiruni were always trying to convince Mom to open a restaurant because she was such a good cook but she liked being a park ranger. “Besides,” she would say “I care more for the environment than food,”

Rain pattered on the roof like little fists trying to get in. I was having A dream about waffles with syrup and strawberries. I didn’t want to wake up but finally my alarm clock rattled me awake. When I opened my eyes I found that what I thought was waffles just a second ago was actually a pillow. I opened my window enough to let some fresh air in. The sound of cars rushing past, the old lady who lived in the apartment below us yelling at the people on TV. The smell of tasty food from Sri Lanka's best bread, the bakery, it was across the but the sweet aroma still made my mouth water. The cool breeze that fresh'nd my mind every morning. It was a normal Saturday morning. I left my pajamas on just because I could. I went downstairs where Mom was already making milk rice. I flopped onto our couch to watch the news. I turned the TV on. A woman in high heels and a black jacket stood by a wrecked house. In a staticky voice she said “There have been abnormally large waves surrounding Sri lanka. Twenty three people have already been hurt and five killed due to tsunamis. If you live within 10 miles of the ocean it is advised to take caution. Or leave until it is calm again.” then it changed to a corus of guys singing about some toothpaste.

I turned off the TV. Suddenly my luxurious Saturday morning didn’t feel so great. Mom called us to the kitchen for breakfast. I wasn’t very hungry that morning. I don’t know why I was so scared, twenty eight people was a small number for a tsunami. I tried to assure myself with that but my stomach still didn’t agree.

The phone rang, I got up to go get it but Hiruni was there like a super magnet. She was probably hoping that it was one of her school friends so she could talk about lipstick and boyfriends for three hours. But when she came back in she had a puzzled look on her face. She said it was a man who wanted to talk to mom. Mom took the phone and went into the livingroom to talk with the man.

I finished my milk rice and was about to go check on mom when she came back in. The expression on her face, Made it look like she just got fired, then told that the only job open for her was a pooper scooper at a museum. “We need to have a family talk”

“Hiruni, Sahan, I’m not going to sugar coat this because that’s unfair.” she took a deep breath then in a shaky voice said “Your uncle Hashan was killed in a tsunami yesterday.” My first thought was, she's joking. Then I noticed that she wouldn’t joke about that. Then I felt like sticking my head into a hole and never taking it back out. I was too stunned to cry or even move. Apparently Hiruni wasn’t, she ran to her room sobbing. Mom came over and hugged me. I sat there for five minutes trying to register the news. I’m gonna go read. I mumbled.

I tossed and turned for hours that night in bed. When I finally got to sleep I had troubled dreams about uncle Hashan. One dream I had was me and Hashan walking on the beach together. Suddenly a massive wave rose up out of the water and came down closer and closer to Hashan, I tried to push him out of the way but I was too late the dream ended right as the wave was about to hit him. I woke up yelling “Move hashan, move!”. My heart was beating a hundred miles an hour and I was really sweaty. Mom rushed in and sat down on the edge of my bed telling me I was safe and at home. The rest of the night I just lay in bed. Waiting for the sun to rise.

The drive wasn’t long, only ten minutes, but it felt like a thousand years before pulled into a long driveway. I had never been to my uncle’s house but when we got, there I felt like I had been missing out my entire life. In front of us stood the most amazing house I’d ever seen. It was a huge gray mansion with a balcony and a huge yard. The house had a very old feeling to it with it’s big wooden door and shiny brass knocker. “This is where your uncle’s funeral is going to be.” Mom said. I got out of the car happy to stretch my legs.

“Who else is coming?” I asked Mom “I don’t know”

Mom said. “Here comes somebody now”. Behind some trees I could see the front of a rusty, brown mercedes benz coming up the long driveway, if you could imagine a radio trying to pick up a station across the world, then put it on bass mics, you basically had the sound of this car In the mercedes was grammy and grampa. In the outback was a man and a woman who I had never seen before with a little baby in the back. They parked next to us and got out of the car. In the next ten minutes everybody was there.

We all walked onto the big rickety old porch as quiet as deer in the woods. As we walked into the house I noticed that everybody was wearing black or white in respect. I felt awkward because I was wearing blue jeans and a green and black shirt, but nobody seemed to notice. We all gathered in a big room with two big windows and a couch. There at the front of the room was a big black coffin

When I saw it my stomach hit the floor. Knowing that your uncle was lying in a big black box was not fun at all. A man in a white tuxedo stepped up behind the coffin, he had two men on either side of him. He cleared his throat, the room fell even quieter than it was before. The man began to speak, in a high voice he said “You might think that we are here today to mourn the loss of Hashan Erajh Peiris. But if he were here right now he would want us to celebrate the life that he got!” the man gave a very long justice speech about Hashan that felt like an eternity, most of which I didn’t remember, but I did catch one part were the man said

“As you might know, Hashan loved going boating on the ocean. In honor of that, his ashes will be thrown into the waves so his soul may rest where it was happiest.” When he had finished talking, the four men at his side came up to the coffin, each taking a handle. They started walking towards the door. As they went the crowd split to make a path. Once they were out of the door, the group followed. Like a blob of black ink we followed the men.

.

We walked through a path in the forest with the coffin up front and all the people following behind like a really sad perade. We walked like this for awhile until we came out at the waterfront. The ground was a mix of rocks and sharp pieces of seashells. There was a long wooden dock with a big boat tied to it. The man that had given the speech earlier stepped to the front and said “ this is a rented boat so please treat it nicely.” he walked to the end of the dock, climbed a small latter up to the boat and got in. Then he turned around and motioned for the men to get with the coffin to get in. They walked to the boat, two of the men got into the boat and the other two lifted Hashan up to them. Then we all climbed up the latter still all of us still silent. Once we were all in, the man stepped up to the weal and revved the engine, the boat maid a smooth humming sound like a cat that was getting a luxury scratching behind the ears (yikes I hate cats). Then he hit the gas and we were of. We didn’t go very, fast only about 10 mph. The boat cut through the icy water like butter. Usually I would love doing this, but right now this was about the last place I wanted to be. I watched the water go by. Then I saw something that caught my attention. It looked like a massive island with grass and a rocky ground. But instead of grass there was seaweed and it was completely sunken under the ocean.

The island receded back into the ocean as we went on. I didn’t know what but something was so unusual about the thing that I couldn’t tear my eyes away from it. I thought about it for a long time but I couldn’t figure it out. The rest of the way I thought about it. During the ceremony I was Only half paying attention. It was like my eyes were watching but my brain was thinking about the sunken island. On the way back I decided I would look for the island again. When the boat chugged past again I studied it as hard as I could. Then something clicked in my head, about a hundred feet below the water the island was slowly rising to the surface. .

.

And it was headed straight for Sri Lanka.

I flipped through the pages scavenging for anything that might be helpful. I was just passing a page about a rock formation when something caught my eye. It was a page that was titled tectonic plates. As I read on I found out that tectonic plates were big slabs of rock under the earth’s surface that helped trap CO2 which helped make our planet habitable. Tectonic plates would shift about two to five cm a year. When they shifted, they caused landslides, volcano eruptions and big waves. There is even a theory that there used to be an island between Sri Lanka and Madagascar. When tectonic plates shifted, the island sank to the bottom of the ocean. I couldn’t put my feelings into words, I was confused, understanding, scared and excited all at the same time. I closed the book and put It back on the shelf. Was that the island that Uncle Hashan was talking about?

As I walked home I went over the things I had just read. It all made perfect sense. The tsunami was caused by the island floating to the surface. The island was floating to the surface because tectonic plates were moving again. I walked into our door and went to the couch were Mom was sitting.

“Mom I have to tell you something.”

“hmm? Oh sure” she had never been the same after her brother died “On that boat ride, I noticed something in the water” “mhm” she nodded still staring at something non-existent, obviously only half paying attention, but I told her the story anyway. Uncle hashan’s theory about the island under the ocean. And tectonic plates and how I saw it moving and that it would hit Sri Lanka and that people had to leave really soon. When I heard myself talk about it it sound pretty. So did Mom apparently because she just looked up at me her sad green eyes full of melancholy sadness and said “I think we should limit How long you get to watch TV Sahan” “okay, you don’t believe me? I’ll show you tomorrow”

“Sahan, I have to work and you have school. And where would we get the boat?” I hadn’t thought that over yet. But I new she really needed to see this or else it could get bad and nobody would know until it was to late.

“I’ll show you after school. And I think you can see it from the shore. “Fine” this is how Mom was amazing. And, being a park ranger, she also cared more about it then if she was a cook. She would drive ten minutes just to see something that her ten year old son told her about, even though she didn’t even believe in it.

The water was constantly moving only the tiniest bit. I guessed it was the sunken island moving. If you shaded the sun from your eyes and squinted into the water just right, you could see the eary outline of it. Moving so slowly you almost couldn’t see it. The landmass had moved a lot since the boat ride. I predicted that it would probably hit the next day. “Well” I said “believe me now?”

“You won” Mom said. “But this isn’t good, we need to tell people” I gave her a look, like yeah mom no joke. “Let’s go back home” she said, we have some calls to make.

First we rang mom’s boss, who said he would check it out. We waited to see what he said. The phone rang, Mom waited until the second one before picking up so it wouldn’t sound like we were waiting for it, witch we were. The boss said that it was a threat to people and he calculated it would hit at around four o'clock. He also said that he would call the mayor and warn him, and then he hung up. Hiruni, having an A+ in nerdothology, told us that if an earthquake occurred you should go to the center of the building, climb under any heavy furniture or stand in a doorway. If you're outside, stay in the open where nothing can fall on you. We decided that we would go door to door telling people what Hiruni had said. Having a nerd for a sister wasn’t always bad.

They broadcasted the news over radio, newspaper and TV until everybody new about it. I had trouble sleeping that night because I was so nervous. I tossed and turned until I finally drifted off. The next morning I didn’t have much of an appetite. I'd never been in an earthquake before. Would the entire building collapse around us like in the movies? Time went really fast and slow at the same time. Four o’clock came to quickly. I got under mom’s desk, mom stood in the doorway from the kitchen to the living room acting very calm, Hiruni in our bedroom door trying to distract herself with her phone. I had a clear view of the window, the streets were abandoned except for a few pigeons hoarding some seeds.

Then it began, just a light shiver at first, only enough to make the pigeons flutter off the ground. Then it got bigger, like a car on a bumpy road. Bigger and bigger until it felt like the building had grown legs and was now proceeding to play hopscotch. A telephone pole fell over, but it didn’t burst into flames witch I found mildly disappointing because that meant all those movies were lies. Then the rumbling started, a menacingly low sound rumbled up to us. In the street, cracks branched out. But it got no further. It started to die down again until it was just a light shimmer. I was pretty shaken up. luckily The building did not collapse. I waited a few seconds then got out from under the desk. Mom walked to the window and looked outside, and Hiruni ran to her room probably to text her friends about what just happened. I felt proud that I had warned people and maybe stopped injuries . Maybe someday I would do more of that.