Page 3 of Time to Bounce
I didn’t question it.
I jumped.
I hit the water with a splash, and the waves immediately started to pound into my face.
But, like my mom, I was an excellent swimmer.
I did my first open lake competition last month and won the entire thing for the sixteen to eighteen-year-old division. Mom had to fib and tell them that I was sixteen.
A wave of water hit my face, and I coughed as water went into my mouth and filled the tube it wasn’t supposed to fill.
Distantly, I heard a scream, and I just knew in my heart it was Mary Beth.
I swam harder, determined to get to the stairs I’d seen earlier.
A rock hit me in the knee, and I reached out desperately, hoping to haul myself on top of it.
I made it, scrambled up to the rock, and gasped in gulping breaths of air.
And with the bare amount of air left in my lungs I screamed my sister’s name. “Mary Beth!”
No one heard me.
The waves were probably too loud.
I screamed again.
Still nothing.
Terrified, I sat on that rock, and I waited.
I don’t know how long I waited, though.
The first hints of light were coming over the horizon when I saw a beam of light.
It was a bit longer when I heard the screams of my name.
My dad.
He sounded desperate.
Scared.
As scared as I felt.
I whipped my head around in the direction I thought I heard his voice, then cupped my hands over my mouth in a funnel shape and screamed, “Daddy!”
A lot happened after that.
My dad’s light finally caught my face, and I started to cry.
“Baby, hang on!” he yelled. “I’ll get you!”
He couldn’t get me, though.
I sat there for another half an hour with my dad telling me it would be okay when a big boat with US COASTGUARD emblazoned on the bow pulled up beside me.
I had no clue how I’d gotten so far from the wall.
