One in the Same //Jefferson lake One Shot

McKenna's POV

For once I thought I could beat Lee Adams at a game. Especially a game with the name of "say a color without the letter E in it." I had this.

"Pink." Lee said smugly.

"Purple." I rebutted with a smirk. Take that Lee!

"Purple definitely has an E in it," Lee said pointing out my obvious mistake.

"Dammit. Okay your go," I tell him. That was a stupid mistake. C'mon McKenna... Get your stuff together!

"How did it feel when Elizabeth died?" He replied almost immediately. I stared back at him like a deer in headlights, not knowing exactly what to say. This isn't a subject I liked to frequent. I try to keep it in the back of my mind, but somehow it keeps burrowing it way back to the front.

He turned his focus to the ground, muttering a quick "sorry." Now he feels bad. It's just a question, McKenna.

"No, that's the point of the game, to get to know each other," I started. "But you just sort of jumped right in with the feels."

"I can start with something else." He suggests obviously trying to backtrack on his question. I started walking again and he followed.

What did he really want me to tell him? That it was terrible? That it made me not want to do anything for months? Yeah right.

"Um, it was awful," I started.

Honestly, it was suffocating. You know all those times as a kid when you would be in the pool? It was always fun. Swimming, flipping under water, pretending to be a fish. That's how it felt before. Everything was just great. There was nothing that could go wrong.

"I loved her so, so much, and I felt like maybe she never really loved me."

The thing is that when you are in water, sometimes you can't tell the difference between the tears and the splashes that end up on somebody's face.

It was like some friends came along. One wanted to be with Elizabeth and one with me. So the closer my friend and I got to the shallow end, the deeper Elizabeth and her friend got. Not my friend nor I noticed how far she had gotten away from us. Slowly drifting away.

"Which of course now I know isn't true, but that's how I felt."

My sister became less important than my other priorities like school and photography. Looking back at the picture I had of her during her time "swimming away," I now noticed the curious glint in her eyes faded, the grin she often wore became less frequent, and the words she spoke softer and softer.

Her friend kept dragging her out into the deep waters with the crashing waves. She was never sure of these waters, but her friend was so insistent that they were fine.

"They don't want you in the shallow end. See them laughing without you?" He would hiss in her ear. The waves crashed too loudly to hear her choke back her sobs and the sky was getting too dark to even see her before she faded away. "Come under the waves Elizabeth."

She didn't want to follow him under the waves, but she had no choice by that point. She was too far gone for saving. So she went.

"I felt that she left all alone in this world..."

Finally the waves stopped and the silence was terrifying. My friend disappeared. Where was Elizabeth? I slowly began to be pulled under the water. Why was it so silent?

I kept going deeper and deeper until I saw her. She was here under the now clear waters. In this moment, I finally realized that I could no longer breathe. No matter how much I screamed and pulled at her. She wasn't moving. She was dead.