Tomorrow

Sink or Swim

Kayleigh gaped at the sight of her comrade gasping for air as he was pulled into the salty abyss. He wouldn't last much longer before the current would pull him far, far away from her.

Forever.

She remembered that gruesome night they went skating down by the Lighthouse. The spiderweb that formed under the weight of her feet. Her frail, shaking body plunged into the freezing water. She could almost still feel her lungs filling up with the liquid, still feel the cold ambushing her like a dagger, puncturing stinging holes through her by the second.

But she could also remember the hand that reached through and grasped her wrist. Even when her arms were flailing and splashing out of control. Remember it tug her up to shore. Recall the awful words that spilled out of her savior's mouth. But still hear calming words he spoke to her after the panic. The sensation she felt when she finally breathed in the crisp Winter air. And how he carefully bandaged her broken ankle, with which her eyes were currently focusing on the scar the day had given her as a permanent reminder. She recalled the words she spoke to him: "thank you." They weren't nearly enough to thank him.

And that hero was drowning.

Possibilities spun through her frantic mind. What if she'd go in, but not come out? Is this just petty karma, perhaps? Was her psychologist right by telling her that it was all in her head? Was she crazy? What if, but what if: what if he were to die?

He couldn't drown. Not now. Not when she was around to do something. Nobody else was around because of the tide's demonic suction. No wonder...

Unlike that dark night when she plummeted into the water below when the lighthouse was blinding her vision from the corner of her eye, today it was perfectly light outside. So I can see myself fail and die a little clearer, she thought.

Although the thriving, beautiful ecology of the beach was beyond compare,she could easily picture the gleaming ocean as a watery death trap that could swallow her whole. The young girl knows how to swim, but not yet to cope with her greatest fear, the vision she still sees in nightmares.

There was no time to cope. Her eyes instantly met the ocean, and the only thing still visible of the sea's victim was a hand frantically clawing at the water.

The hand that had saved her life.

Without any other slight thought of turning around, Kayleigh's feet swiftly sped across the hot sand. Trying her best to ignore the fear that was eating away at her sole, she took a deep breath in and dove into the pulsing water. Though she cringed upon impact, she
surprisingly wasn't dead. Her heart was racing, but not from fear. But from the fire now burning within her. Fierce willpower. Adrenaline. Fury. Hope.

Her kicking feat beat at the water, her hands fluently slicing through its exterior. It would sound pretty immature to call this "vengeance" against her now washed away phobia, or the water as an inanimate object at that, but rather redemption.

Her fingers, now calloused and wet, clamped around the limp and near lifeless wrist of her companion. A warm tear ran down her soaked face, still hard to tell apart from the saltwater that now draped her entire body, as she readied to swim the trek back.

But the hand squeezed back.

~

"I still can't believe you did that," he finally spat after a brief moment of utter silence. He wrapped the blanket Kayleigh had fetched for him tightly around his shivering body.

"I guess I'll take that as a thank you," she calmly muttered in reply, despite the fact that her heart was about to beat through her chest. "I can't believe you still went swimming after I specifically warned you not to."

"Well, of course you did," the boy gingerly teased. "You've got hydrophobia, silly."

"Not anymore."

     "Thank you."

      She smiled.