Drowning Love

The scorching mid-day sun beat down on my pale skin as I plunged into the salty ocean. Muddy green-blue water surrounded me as I swam further trying to catch up to my friends. A small fish brushed by my hand as my head broke the surface to catch my breath. Nicole, my best friend, splashed water at me when I finally had come up, a friendly gesture saying hey-there-you-are.
Nicole was a naturally outgoing person, always the one to say hi first. I was the shy and kind of nerdy type, so I envied that trait of hers. But the thing most people were jealous of was her gorgeous red curls and emerald green eyes. I half smiled and glared playfully at her; she playfully glared right back.
“Belinda, come look at what Evan found! It’s so cool,” Nicole grabbed my hand and dragged me over to my other best friend; a honey-blonde boy who was extremely fascinated by marine life. She tapped Evan on the shoulder and he turned around, his hands cradling a small shiny object.
“There you are Bell. Look, it’s a shark’s tooth! There are tons more over there,” he switched the tooth to his right hand and lifted his other arm and motioned to an area about two and a half feet away. I smiled at his enthusiasm about such a worthless -well worthless to me- object. He studied my face to make sure I wasn’t just wearing a mask of interest and that it was a sincere reaction.
“Cool! I have never-ever seen anything like that. Why do you always find the cool things? I’m jealous!” Evan was finally convinced I wasn’t lying and he beamed back at me, his blue eyes shined in the sunlight. I studied the shark’s tooth intently, making sure my brain processed every color on it so in the future maybe I could find one and show off to Evan instead of the other way around. The dagger like object he held in his hand was amazing. I never thought I would be so amazed by something like this, but I was. It was mainly black and gray, but it also had greenish-black and bluish-black swirls.
All three of us had been staring at the tooth and now it had been silent for three and a half minutes. Nicole, being the playful person she is, pushed Evan into the water and then rammed into my side –gently- and took us both down after him. She then swam towards the area Evan had stated the shark teeth were at; Nicole probably wanted to make a necklace out of them. Then it was just me and Evan there floating in the never ending blue. Even under water he examined the tooth, I was just staring at him wondering what was so fascinating about it.
We had been standing on a sandbar and when Nicole pushed us in we ended up in the deeper water where we couldn’t properly stand. Since the mud-like substance on the ocean floor was deeper down the water was clearer and I could see Evan’s face almost perfectly. A second or two later we both came up for air, and Nicole had finally come back. In her hands were about 15 shark teeth. I shook my head at her as she came closer; she was the type of person always looking for something to make money off of.
“Let’s go out deeper and see if we can find more of these teeth, I am thinking on making bracelets and selling them,” I wasn’t surprised at this idea.
“Nikki, what are we going to do with you? It seems every time we find something interesting you want to make into something and sell it. Like the time we were camping and Bell found an old goldfish bag. You then decided you wanted to make wallets out of goldfish bags and sell them to kids at school,” Evan teased her as we started drifting into deeper water.
Nikki suddenly disappeared under water to start searching and then Evan and I joined her. Something at the bottom of the ocean was shining, and I decided to check it out hoping to find some teeth for Nikki. I slowly lowered myself closer to the object. Evan and Nikki had swum out about a yard away by the time I was finally to the bottom. I dug through sand and mud until I got it, and I was glad that it was a tooth or else I would have gone down here for nothing while they might be finding something interesting.
I grasped it tightly in my hand as I started making my way to the surface to inhale a much needed gulp of air. The tooth I found wasn’t as colorful as Evan’s, but I didn’t care because I had finally found something interesting in the ocean. I was two thirds of the way to tasting the sweet, salty oxygen of the air hovering above the water when my foot got caught on a piece of seaweed.
It seems like a million things happened at once from that moment on. My air that I’d had safely preserved in my mouth decided to press the ‘eject’ button and then flew out of my mouth; in its place were several little bubble. I tried to breathe in oxygen that didn’t exist, and then clamped my mouth closed and tried to keep the water out. Black dots flickered in my vision as I started feeling the pressure of the water above me. The weight of the water against my chest and skull was unbearable I felt like pulling out my chocolate brown hair. My lungs were trying to rip open a hole in my aching chest, I was thinking about letting them at the time. I would do anything if it would let me breathe again. Anything. Finally I gave up trying to be calm and started thrashing my legs through the water hoping I would get loose form the seaweed or tear a whole in the universe so I could escape this pain. My arms were flailing in the water, I tried to raise them far enough so Evan and Nicole could see I was drowning. I couldn’t hold my mouth closed any longer and I slowly let my lips part. I felt pressure from every angle and then I saw someone, or something coming down at me. I tried to scream for help but it was useless, the shriek was muffed by the water. I felt something grab me and then everything went black.