Chapter 8 Rachel

Chapter 8 Rachel

I wake up in a strange room. The ceiling is white, with blue and purple dots covering it. I squint at it, blinking my eyes a few times. Then I look around. I’m lying on a white bed, a machine nearby beeps steadily, I look down at my arm and see a needle stabbed into it. An IV. There’s a television in the corner, but it’s turned off. There are several chairs next to my bed, my mother sits in one of them, reading.

            “Mom?” I say, and she looks up at me.

            “Honey! Thank goodness. Are you alright? The doctors said you were alright, but are you? You were passed out an awful long time, and I heard what happened at the beach and I’m so sorry and… and…”

            “Mom,” I say, as soothingly as possible, “Calm down okay? I’m fine, just a little tired is all.”

She purses her lips. “Okay darling.”

            “How long was I out?”

            “Only a few hours. I heard you wiped out. Your friends said that you didn’t come up, so they all dove in to get you, and dragged you out onto the beach. One of those friends of yours, which one was it? Um… Rikki, yes it was Rikki, she had to do CPR or something like that to get the water out of your lungs, but you still didn’t wake up. They took you to me, and I drove you here, to the hospital, and the doctor said you would be fine, he said you should have woken up right after the water got out of your lungs but you didn’t and I… I was so worried.”

            She begins to cry. I hold out my hand to her.

            “It’s okay, Mom, you don’t have to worry, I’m fine now. I was just out a little longer than usual, it’s okay.”

            She sniffles, grabbing a tissue and smiles at me. The doctor walks in. He has brown hair, and wears a long lab coat like a mad scientist. He looks to be in his thirties. He smiles sweetly at me, and when he speaks, it’s in a very confident, reassuring way.

            “There you are, Miss Holly, glad to see you awake. You gave us quite the scare, there,” he says.

            “Glad to see you too, doctor,” I say. “Any ideas as to why I was out so long?”

            “Well,” he starts, “I can’t seem to find anything extraordinarily wrong with you, it’s probably just your make.”

            “Meaning?”

            “Well, not everyone reacts the same to situations. Sure, an average person wakes up from fainting within a few seconds, or a few minutes, but that doesn’t mean all people do. I find it odd that you were out for hours, but all your vitals were perfectly fine. Like you were asleep, you could say, except that you wouldn’t wake up. You’re just special, Rachel. Nothing’s wrong, you’re just special.”

            “She’s ready to be discharged, then?” my father asks, walking into the room.

            “Of course. I can assure you, there is nothing wrong with your daughter.”

           

            When we get home, my mother insists I go straight to bed, but still allows me a brief questioning from each of my siblings first.

            “Are you okay?” is the first thing Roquelle asks me.

            “I’m perfectly fine. Couldn’t be better.”

            “I heard you rode a wave barrel,” Jack says, popping up. “Was it awesome?”

            “Totally.”

            “Off to bed,” my mom croons behind me.

            “Right”

 

            That night I dream of the ocean. It swallows me repeatedly, threatening to do so until I learn to breath underwater.

            “I can’t do it! I can’t! Stop!” I yell until I am pulled back under.

            When I try to break the surface again, there is a solid wall of ice that I hit which sends me shooting back down into the abyss. The impenetrable ice holds firm, my lungs burn, but I don’t faint. Finally, I am forced to suck in, pulling water into my lungs. Great, I think to myself, at least when I die my spirit will float past the ice. But I don’t die.

Finally, I hear someone smashing through the ice, breaking it to bits.  I surface, but they are gone. The water in my lungs disappears. The ice fades and a bright orange surfboard with a yellow stripe running the length appears next to me. I get on the board and a pleasant sensation washes over me. The water is no longer grabbing at me, only lapping softly against my skin, washing away scars, washing away my wounds, my pain inflicted upon me so short of a time before. I look up at the sun, and the dream fades to white.

           

I sit upright with a start, my alarm clock is going off. As I turn it off, my mother bursts into the room.

“What’s the matter? Why is your alarm clock going off?” she questions me.

“So I can get ready to go to school…”

“You can’t go to school today! You had a traumatic experience yesterday, and you’re not better yet.”

“But the doctor said I’m fine,” I assure her.

My dad hurries into the room. “What’s going on?” he asks.

“I want to go to school, but Mom says I can’t,” I explicate.

“The doctor said she was fine,” he reminds her.

“But I’m so worried about her,” my mom counters as if I’m not even there.

We discuss it for about ten minutes before they finally decide I can go to school, as long as I promise to call them if I begin to feel ill. With that, I get ready for school, and before I know it, I’m getting onto the bus.

“Good morning, ladies,” the bus driver says, “I heard you had quite the scare yesterday, Rachel.”

“It was nothing,” I tell her.

She gives me a worried look before turning her attention away from me and closing the bus doors. Roquelle and I sit down in our normal seat.

“Ready for your meet today?” I ask Roquelle.

“I think so,” she replies.

“You’ll do great,” I assure her.

“Thanks.”

At the next stop, Jenna and Peter get on and immediately bombard me with questions.

“Are you okay?” Jenna asks, hurrying over to me, trying to assess my condition herself by prodding at my eyes, my arms, my ears.

“Jenna!” I say, slapping away her hands. “I’m fine.”

“Should you even be going to school today?” Peter enquires.

“You sound just like my mother. I’m fine. It was nothing, really,” I assure them. “How did you even find out?”

“Shelly told me, and I told Peter,” Jenna answers.

“Did you really get barreled?” Peter questions me further. “Did the board really snap?”

My eyes widen, remembering. I slap my palm against my forehead. “Darn, I forgot about that! I broke Rikki’s board!”

Peter says, “Awesome!” in the background.

I glare at him.

Jenna tries to console me, “Don’t worry about it Rachel. She saw what happened. You can just get her another surfboard.”

“I guess,” I mumble, still upset.

 

I don’t have any classes with Rikki, Em, Shelly, and Carol until math. I try to find Rikki beforehand to apologize, but have no luck. When it finally gets to that time, I walk gloomily to the math building.

“Rachel Holly!” I hear someone yell from behind me. “Never have I seen you look so depressed before in my life!”

Sarah starts walking next to me. I look up at her.

“Hey girl, you sure you’re okay?” she asks me.

“Yeah,” I say, “it’s just that I broke Rikki’s surfboard yesterday, and…”

She cuts me off, laughing, “Rachel! You almost drowned yesterday! You think Rikki is gonna care about some stupid surfboard?”

“Well…”

“No, don’t you worry about Rikki, worry about yourself right now, okay?” Then she walks off.

I go into math, looking at the floor, when someone shouts my name. I look up. Rikki, Em, Shelly, and Carol stand in a line, holding up pieces of notebook paper with giant number tens written across them. I can’t help but smile. They rush over to me and we launch into an all-out group hug.

“Rikki,” I begin as we pull away, “I’m so sorry about your board-”

            “My board!” she exclaims, grabbing my soldiers and looking me in the eye. “Rache, that old board doesn’t matter to me! I’m just glad you’re alright!”

            “But, you let me use it, and I wrecked it. I promise I’ll get you a new one, Rikki.”

            She shrugs, “Don’t worry about it. It was an old board anyway. I mean really, I was about to get rid of it.”

            “But you saved my life!”

            “Come on, what are friends for, right?” she reassures me.

            “Yeah,” I admit, “Hey, you guys picked up those papers down at the beach right?”

            They all start laughing.

            Em says, “Yeah, Rachel, we picked them up.”

 

            My mom looks at me skeptically.

            “It’s not like I’m the one running,” I tell her. “I went to school, why would I not go to Roquelle’s track meet?”

            “Oh, alright, just be careful…”

            “Careful what? Careful not to pass out? Come on, Mom. There’s no catalyst to make me faint at a track meet.”

            We all get packed up in the van to go. Roquelle bounces her knees nervously.

            “You’ll do great,” I say.

            “You didn’t have to be there early or anything, right honey?” my dad calls from the front.

            “No, not any earlier than the half an hour early we’ll be there.”

            “Good,” he says.

            We finally arrive at our school, Plumeria High School, where today’s track meet is located. My sister gets out of the van and goes off to find her coach, and we go to the stands to wait for it to start. Nothing much happens, except that we get to watch them set up for the meet, which doesn’t really require a lot of setting up. After the half hour is over, we get to see a lot of people run. Some, I know, like Roquelle, or Sarah (who is also in track). However, most the kids running are from other schools, and I don’t know them at all. Our school does pretty well at the meet. Roquelle scores the silver for her group, and we do noticeably well in other areas as well. We give Roquelle our congratulations afterward, but she declines my mother’s offer to go out somewhere to eat, saying she would rather just have a nice meal at home.

            When we finally get back to our house, my mother starts making mashed potatoes and meatloaf and Roquelle, Jack, and I watch television. I do all my homework during this time, as do my siblings. When dinner finally gets cooked, we sit together at the table and eat.

            “I turned in my project today,” Jack announces.

            “That’s awesome, Jack, what’d your teacher think?” I ask him.

            He shrugs, “I don’t know, she seemed kind of mad, just at everyone, I think. Half the class was missing.”

            “Staying home the day a project is due,” my sister says, “I mean, I hate school as much as the next person, but that’s just stupid.”

            “School’s not so bad,” I say. “It’s kind of fun sometimes.”

            My sister gawks at me, “I don’t know how you can be so optimistic about school.”

            “In other countries, some people don’t even get to go to school,” I say, eating a spoonful of mashed potatoes. “It’s a privilege.”

            “Sometimes I wish we weren’t so privileged,” Jack inputs.

            “Some things you just have to get through,” my mother says, “Someday, you will be thankful for it.”

            “I hope you’re right,” Roquelle says.

           

            I go to bed. Tomorrow is a Saturday, so I don’t bother to set my alarm. I’ll get to sleep in as long as I want. Although, I’ll probably have to get up at some point to run errands with my mother. That’s okay, though. I don’t mind. I’d probably only be able to sleep until 10:00 anyway, my body just doesn’t really let me sleep later than that. After a moment of pondering the day, I fall asleep.

           

In my dream, I’m at SeaWorld with my family. We walk around the park until we stop at the shark tank. We look around at all the cool sharks until an employee comes up and starts talking to us. She offers to let us take a look at the sharks over the top of the pool instead of from the sides and under it like we have been. However, she says we’ll have to go one at a time. I go first. She takes me up a set of stairs to the top of the tank.

“Have you ever done this before?” she asks me.

“No, but it sure is exciting.”

“Yeah, I remember how excited I was when I got this job and first came up here. My boss said it was okay if every once in a while I take people up here and show them.”

“Cool,” is all I think to say.

Before I know it, we’re standing at the edge. I look over into the tank. I am about to ask the employee a question about the sharks, but I turn around and she is gone.

Water suddenly comes rushing into the room from the roof and a giant wave hits me, knocking me into the tank. I panic. The water rushes in, pushing me further down. The sharks begin to notice I’m there. I swim upwards, but my head hits a thick layer of ice covering the top of the tank. Ice covering the tank. Sharks swim for me. The closest one nips at my heels, and I yelp. Suddenly, I hear someone smashing the ice from the outside. At first I thinks it’s the employee, but for some reason, I can tell that it isn’t. In fact, it’s two people. They pull me out and drop me on the ground. I look up to see who it is, but they are already gone.