#shouldbedead

Last summer my family (little sister, mother, and father) took a trip to the islands down south for a scuba diving trip. We went on this trip with another family (Mother and father and their three boys; William (16), Henry (14), Malcolm (11) and we also brought our dive instructor. 

Now the trip was going great, and one day us kids decided to we wanted to go to the beach again. Our parents just made us take the dive instructor for supervision. That was fine, and we went to the beach to just have fun. William decided later in the day that he wanted to go free diving. If you don’t know what free diving is, it’s mainly snorkeling, but you hold your breath and dive underwater for periods of time. No one wanted to go with because it had just started to rain lightly. These horrific storm clouds had been glooming all day, and it had just begun. The dive instructor, of course, was going to come with us. So we got all out equipment and as soon as we were in the water the rain intensified. It was a torrential, and our instructor told us to get out of the water. We got out, and she said while we put everything away she would take the smaller kids back. We had taken two cars, and William had his license, so it didn’t seem like an issue. Once they left William said to me, “I don’t care what you do, but I’m going back in the water.” 

 The waves where huge, it looked impossible to get out in the water. Not to mention that there where rocks and it was now thundering and lightning was striking pretty freakin close. I thought he was insane. Now in any other situation, I would have just waited on the beach, but this was different. William didn’t really like me. He had always looked down on me and threw shade at me all week. I didn’t really want to go, I wasn’t the best swimmer, and the waters scared me. But in the moment, I lost all real common sense and decided I would win William over and join him. I followed him into the waters and began swimming for my life. We were pretty far out at this point. It was a struggle to keep my head above water. William dove underwater and I did the same. 

 Then once I was out of breath, I moved to the surface. I didn’t take my head out of the water because you can usually blow through the snorkel and then breathe air. I blew out of the snorkel and then breathed in straight water. I freaked out, now desperately needed air. I couldn’t get my head above water, and when I tried to breathe, I got another mouth full of water. It was one of the scariest moments of my life. I was already exhausted from swimming so hard, and now I couldn’t breathe. 

 I blacked out.

The next thing I knew I woke up in a chair, in a shack on the beach. It seemed to be a sports bar. William was in the chair next to me reading a magazine. He quickly explained to me that I had blacked out and he got ahold of me. As he held me a fishing boat was coming back and they noticed his struggle. They picked us up. He said I was beyond luckily, he wasn’t sure he could have gotten us back otherwise. Once I was ready, we left the beach and stopped at a local clothing shop because our bags had gone missing. When we returned, we told our parents we stopped for food. They never questioned it.