"Melabee? Melabee? Melabee!" A pair of hands reached down to cup Melabee's pallid face. Air did not flow out of her nose or her mouth, her chest did not rise or fall. Without hesitation, the pair of hands clasped over themselves and started to give Melabee consistent chest compressions. After the twelfth count, Melabee's eyes snapped open and she started to cough out sea water. She sat up and wheezed for air, desperate to replace it in her lungs.
"Hey, hey, it's alright." Melabee's attention was caught by the deep voice and her eyes traveled to the person, who she had just noticed, beside her. Her eyes met a pair of concerned clear blue eyes, the eyes that she, and everyone in Dynasty High, knew too well. However, unlike now, those eyes were usually expressionless.
"Xander?" she managed to speak out.
"What are you doing out here?" he asked, worry lacing his voice.
"What are you doing here?"
"I was just..." he looked away. "I heard it was your birthday yesterday." As he averted eye contact, his eyes fell upon something behind him. Melabee glanced behind him and her eyes widen, for she saw a rectangular gift box covered in plain blue wrapping paper.
"I wasn't expecting you," she told him quietly.
"I wasn't expecting to see you out here, beached like a dying dolphin," Xander turned back at her, a playful look on his face. Melabee responded with small laugh.
"Yeah, it's been a weird day." She recalled the strange man she had seen and grew quiet. What exactly did she see? According to her eyes it looked like a man with a fish tail. Melabee became uncertain of what she'd beheld. She decided this wasn't a time to think about what had happened.
Silence hung in the air and only then Melabee realized her state. Her hair was a matted mess sticking to her face and Ellie's birthday gift clung to her body along with the prickly sand that managed to seep through her sweatpants and sweater. She felt, and most likely looked, like a drenched dead cat.
"I should probably head back home and change," Melabee said, a bit too loudly.
She struggled to stand up; it felt like she was still drowning in water. Xander offered his arms and awkwardly, Melabee scrambled to her dead feet. Xander bent down to pick up the present and held it in his hand as they walked. Their cars were only a few yards away and yet it felt as if they were crawling a mile. Both of them were silent, avoiding any other sort of contact. After what felt like years, they finally reached their vehicles.
Suddenly remembering how she was dragged through the water, her hands immediately reached inside her pockets. After a moment, she sighed in relief; her keys were buried inside a handful of sand.
"Are you sure you should be driving?" Xander asked, eyeing her.
"I live close," Melabee said. Another silence engulfed the two until Melabee made a move towards her truck, "I should go."
"Here," Xander interrupted, offering her the present. He greeted her, "Belated happy birthday."
Melabee hesitantly accepting the neatly wrapped gift. She decided to smile up at him, although it might have instead looked like a grimace. However she looked, it must have been amusing because Xander let out a chuckle. Immediately her smile dropped from her face.
"What?" she asked.
"Nothing," he replied, grinning.
The piercing ringing of a cell phone suddenly rang through the air. Xander felt his pocket for his phone and swiftly brought it up to his ear.
