Switching Sides | A Jamie Johnson FanFiction

• Part 12

I felt the water engulf me as I gasped at the shock of the freezing water. It clung onto my clothes and dragged me down as I tried to tread water. I didn't know where Jethro was, and frankly, I didn't care. I just had to find somewhere to cling onto, somewhere I could get my bearings.

Trying to calm myself down as I gained some leverage in the water, my head bobbing above the surface now, I craned my neck upwards to see the abrupt drop we'd fallen from. It seemed so much longer when we were actually falling; in reality, it only looked like a couple of metres. The rocks stuck out in jagged clusters as the drop descended, and I followed the rock pattern sideways until my eyes caught upon a flat-ish slab that I could probably pull myself up onto.

The cold was still biting at my skin as I pulled my arms across the broken surface of the water. A wave nearly smashed me against an edge but I put my hands out just in time, although it left a scrape along my right palm. I put my elbows and lower arms on the rocks and lifted myself out the sea, my water-logged clothes making it nearly impossible.

Once I was up, I turned around, breathing heavily and shivering, to see Jethro just behind me. But there was something odd - a trail of red followed him and for some reason it took my brain a while to put two and two together. Maybe it was just the cold, but for some reason it was only when he dragged himself out of the water and I laid my eyes on his gashed leg that I realized the trail had been blood.

"Jethro..." I started, but he cut me off, panting for breath.

"Don't say anything." He snapped, and his harsh tone caught me off guard.

"Don't say anything? I'm the one who should be mad at you! You dragged me over!"

"You made me slip!"

"You made us fall!" I argued. There was no way on earth he was putting this on me. He didn't respond.

I looked around for the first time since I got out of the water, and then the realization hit me: we were on the pebble beach.

"Oh, my, God you idiot!" I exclaimed. "We're gonna be stuck here all night and no one even knows we're out here!"

"Alex and Alice would have heard a splash, surely."

"Maybe they would have but I doubt Alex gives a damn about where you are after that stupid argument you had!" I yelled, mostly because I was mad at him, but also because I was hoping someone might hear. "What did you even want me to tell him?"

"Doesn't matter." He said, looking at the ground, his eyes occasionally glancing back to his leg which was still bleeding quite fast, but then he tore them away. "Besides, you're the one who swam over here."

"ONLY BECAUSE YOU MADE US FALL!" I practically screamed, and he glanced up at me in surprise. I guess he found out that I was only trying to use anger to mask my sheer terror at being stuck there all night when I put my hand to my chest, realizing my breathing was going mental.

I sat down on the rock with my back to Jethro, but I could feel his eyes boring into me as I tried to control my breathing.

"You okay?"

"Fine." I breathed through clenched teeth. The cold which is appeared to have forgotten about came back suddenly and I began shivering, a puddle forming below me as water dripped off my soaking clothes.

"We can get off here." Jethro started. "We just have to swim back across to the other beach, it'll be easy just..."

"I can't swim."

He stopped, "What do you mean you can't swim you just swam to here?!"

"I can't swim through that." I motioned to the waves that had gotten much more violent since we first fell in. And the tide was getting higher, and the rocks looked even more menacing than last time. "Besides even if we did swim back round we'd have to climb up all those rocks or go all the way around them which would take us even further out to sea."