“You’ve escaped every single time,” he says softly, and for some reason, that makes me look over at him. His hair is windswept and mussed, the intermittent breeze sweeping through and playing with the strands. His brows push in toward one another, his expression matching the conviction in his voice.
There’s nothing I can do to refute what he’s saying because—he’s right.
Ihaveescaped.
“If I go out there, all the effort I’ve put in…could totally wash away, and then it’ll be like starting from ground zero. I don’t want to do that,” I whisper, emotion clawing at every word. “I don’t want this to always feel so hard.”
He holds out his hand. “Then I encourage you to take your power back, rather than give it away. Only you can do that.”
I offer a small nod and look down. Slowly, I kick my sandals off my feet and sink them into the sand beneath me. It’s gritty and smooth all at once. I drop my bag along with it, trying not to pay the people around us any mind. The beach isn’t as busy today, but that probably has a lot to do with the fact that school is back in session and people are back to their usual routines.
“That’s it,” Dawson praises, waiting patiently as I slip my swimsuit coverup over my shoulders and head. I hold onto it for a moment as I steady my breaths, breathing in for a few seconds and holding it until I release it.
I can’t believe I’m actually going to do this.
I can’t believe I’m about to walk into the open waters after they tried to kill me.
“I can do this,” I say to myself, though Dawson replies as if I’m saying it to him.
“That’s what I like to hear.”
Finally, I release my coverup, revealing the black one piece underneath it. And then I take small steps with Dawson until the water soaks my feet. My breath hitches in my chest, and my heartbeat staggers.
Dawson holds his hand out again, and I grasp onto it like I’m hanging over the edge of a cliff and he’s my lifeline.Don’t let me go,is what I want to say to him. Somehow, I think I know he won’t.
He has that look in his eye that tells me he wouldn’t have me out here unless he believed I’d be okay. His confidence in me makes my own peek out of the dark closet it’s been trapped in.
We keep walking, and soon, the water is up to my knees. I crouch down and skim my fingertips over the salty whitewash. For as long as I can remember, I’ve always loved the ocean. The way it appears to go on for days. How it’s filled with so many different unknowns. Unknowns that, as humans, we have the ability to conjure up to whatever we want them to be.
In my mind, there was always an abundant amount of good disclosed deep below.
And then it swept me off my feet. Almost as if to tell me to grow up. To tell me that I wasn’t a little girl anymore who should believe in fairytales.
“I used to believe in mermaids,” I tell Dawson out of the blue as we sway with the water. It licks at my upper thighs while it hangs out around his knees.
“As every little girl should,” he says, moving out a little farther.
I follow, but my heart hiccups, because one of my feet slips out from under me. I quickly try to feel around to find my footing, but the water pulls out into the abyss, bringing me along with it.
My mind goes right back to that day when I fell. How, one minute, I was on that rock, and the next, there was nothing but ocean water beneath my feet. “W-Wait. Stop.”
I struggle to breathe. To pull in air as the water climbs higher up my body. There’s nothing below me, and while I could swim back to shore, it’s like my body turns into a boulder. Pretty soon, I will sink down, down, down to the depths of a hell I’ve dreamed about countless times.
Save yourself, this voice says in my head.
I’m trying!—I want to shout, but then the memory of that saltiness hits the back of my throat, and I want to gag. I want to upheave what I ate for breakfast this morning—which,admittedly, wasn’t much because I knew we’d be coming out here today.
Why did I tell him I’d do this?
Why did I believe I could?
I’m stupid, and now I’m drowning all over aga?—
“Breathe, Emory,” is what I hear next. In a deep voice that I’d love to reach out to and get lost in. That really would be the nicest thing in the world right about now. But I can’t. Not when my brain is muddled with the sounds of a frantic heart.
Warmth spreads out in front of me, and I know it’s Dawson. Somewhere along the way, I squeezed my eyes shut again—probably when I lost my footing—and I haven’t opened them again since.
“Kick your feet and inhale.”
