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.

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