❝everything that drowned me, taught me how to swim❞
{written by two enthusiastic writers who met on the internet}
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Two girls-Alina and Mabel-once best friends are now in rival friend groups at Aquarine High. Both have gone through traumatic experie...
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The jittering of the butterflies in her stomach meant only one thing: school. Alina hadn't thought much about the "prison" over the summer. She was far too busy with the weekly therapy sessions, the constant joy of being freed from the place called school, and lastly the cloudy thoughts of the fight. She hadn't even realized summer had ended so soon and now she stood in front of the towering building of her high school.
The fight. It had happened a few weeks after Alina's sophomore year had ended and the blissful summer was in full swing. The temperatures had risen and the sun scorched down onto the usually dead town during the other seasons which was now alive and breathing. Many had poked their heads out of their houses and emerged from their hibernating state. Now the streets of Aquarine were flocked. Oh, and the beach. The place that Alina had avoided like the plague since she was eight.
Mabel, her best friend since pink bows and dresses- five, and Alina had taken a walk around the neighborhood one sunny day when the temperatures were at least tolerable. She still remembered the wide smile on Mabel's face and the several laughs that the two friends had shared.
"Allie!" Mabel gasped, putting a hand over her heart as if sounding hurt. Alina burst into laughter. Her friend was always sarcastic.
"Oh my god-, stop- Mae!" Alina stated between laughs. The brisk wind blew through Mabel's long light blonde hair that was rocking the hair down style. She rolled her eyes, grabbing onto Alina's hand and dragging her towards a road where Alina hadn't been on in a while.
"C'mon!" She shrieked with joy, intertwining her hand into Alina's. They ran alongside each other, passing the local flower shop which always smelled so lovely, and the yellow bike resting on the wall that belonged to Mrs. Garcia who usually visited the shop.
"Where are we going?" Alina asked in uncertainty. She bit her nails, something she did when she was anxious. She didn't know where Mabel was taking them, but whatever it was, creepy place or not, it made Alina nervous.
It had been a habit- biting on her nails since she nearly drowned in the waters when she was eight. Sometimes she wondered why God had given her a second chance to live. The others who had fallen off the cliffs there had died. Alina had been the only one who had survived, but she knew something had died that night in early October. After Liam, one of her classmates, had seen her slipping off the edge which resulted in his father saving her from the water's dragging, she had changed. She had weekly therapy lessons with Ms. Mendoza, PTSD due to the trauma from the near-death experience, and constant panic attacks whenever she was near the ocean or any mention of those demonic waters.
"You'll see," Mabel winked, her brown-green orbs twinkling in the sun. Alina sighed, following her because she trusted her friend.
She shouldn't have trusted her.
They stopped in front of the cliffs. The exact cliffs where Alina nearly died eight years ago. She felt her body begin to tremble, her hands shook. She was getting overwhelmed. The sound of the waves crashing against the cliffs and the sloshing of the water sent her back to the night. Her heartbeat quickened and tears threatened to spill. Why would her best friend take her here? Mabel knew she was terrified of the ocean.
