The Girl and the Shark

Three - Ember

Three

Ember

"How many times have I told you to stay away from the water?"

I gave a quiet sigh, this not being the first time I heard this same lecture from my father. I knew that if I said anything, he would somehow shut it down, make me feel guilty and like what I had done was wrong and awful.
I simply kept my head down, eyes blankly fixated on the white sketchbook page. My pencil hovered just above the canvas. Ready to fill the void with lines and shapes.
But I couldn't focus, not when my father continued his scolding.

Maybe it's best to tell you a little about my...well, what's left of my family.
It's been like this since my mother left. The shouting in the house stopped, but when she picked up her bags, and stepped out of the door, the silence that followed was so painful, I almost wished for the shouting to return.
I guess my father blames himself.
For not loving her enough, or...something. I couldn't tell you.
The hole she left in our lives couldn't be filled. Things had started to get better, thats true, and then I had my accident. And it was like anything that had been somehow fixed, mended, made well again, crumbled.

I know I look like my mother. More so than my present parent by a long shot. I have her eyes, her smile. It didn't take much to realise. The few photos we have hidden out of sight, of me in her arms, its painfully clear how similar we are.
Maybe that's why he looks at me the way he does sometimes. Sad and numb.

My father tries his best. His role as the Chief of Police here in Maeko Beach isn't the easiest job. Often his stress made its way home with him from work. Maybe it was part of the reason my mother couldn't take it anymore and gave up.
Now that I'm all he has left, its the fear of losing me as well that keeps him like this.
Despite it being something I loathe wholeheartedly, I do understand the reason he's so strict, the reason he hates me going to that pier.

He lost his wife to the stress and long nights. He almost lost me once, to the ocean that I'm drawn to in ways I don't really know how to explain.

I looked up finally, studying the creases and lines in his middle aged face. His short sandy brown hair was slicked back tight as usual, his uniform still on after leaving the office.
I watched him meet my gaze with his deep dark brown irises, worry and frustration within them.

"You're not to go to that pier again, do you understand?"

I felt my throat tighten slightly when the words left his mouth. I understood his reasons...yes. I understood his reasons to worry and to need to keep me safe. But that doesn't mean I agreed with the way he acted on them.
Call me a selfish teen all you want. My father's worries, his mistakes are not the excuse to lock me away.

"It's been a year, dad. Nothing has happened. All I do is read. I'm in no-"

"You can read at college or at home. Its not up for discussion."

The older man I recognised as my parent simply turned away from me with a wave of his open palm.
I opened my mouth to protest, though the little voice inside my head stopped me from belting out typical teenage spiel.
My father has his own issues, and he's also busy most of the time. Its one of the reasons I learned to be self sufficient at an early age. With the absence of a mother, well, that only helped.

He couldn't do anything to stop me from going to the ocean. He'd have to throw me in a room under lock and key before I consented to any rules of his governed by fear and spite.
He already had me living at home despite his daughter having a car, a license, and making her way to college every day to try and find a path of her own. I was already at terms with the beginning of my adult life being spent under my parent's reign. I needed some space to breathe.

My amber eyes followed him out of the room. Once alone, I stood with my sketch book, now closed, under my arm, pencil behind my ear.

Whenever someone brought up that day, the day my life was put at significant risk, I felt something in my gut coil. Not at the memory of it, not as much that as the way people felt it was their golden ticket to tell me I should fear everything past the threshold of the lapping waves.

Was I the only one not letting my accident dictate my freedom?