Under the Tide

Under the Tide (One Shot)

He stopped his reading to go back a paragraph and start again. This wasn't much like him, for it broke his train of thought, but in extreme cases it was known to be hard to avoid. As his eyes flitted over the paper again, his face glistened with newfound understanding.

I sat next to him, too deeply indulged in my own readings to notice his behavior. It was only when he let out a sigh of relief that I looked over, and noticed. Of course, being less interested in what I was reading, I allowed my eyes to quickly skim through the information he had gathered.

Jellyfish. I should have know he would choose the animal that most interested him, yet the seemingly random fact had slipped my mind in the three years of schooling that we've had.

I had chosen the sea cucumber. Now, I wasn't particularly interested in learning what a sea cucumber did in it's spare time, but as I flipped through the informational pamphlets and resource books, I was finding them increasingly intriguing. For animals that looks like a glob of toothpaste, I certainly underestimated them.

"Boys, it's about time for the library to close. Do you need any help finishing up?" Luke looked up from the book and met the eyes of the librarian. From what I saw, she didn't look to happy to be here this late, but she still plastered that fake grin on to impress us. Luke shook his head, dismissing her and cueing me to close my book and put it back on the shelf.

After a few minutes, we were oh the doors with our bookbags on our back, and our project notes in our hand. We were walking to my house, since his parents were fine with him staying over. As we exchanged random facts about our animal, the sun began to set behind us, and we got closer to my house.

For some reason, I wanted to hold Luke's hand.

Once we made it to my house, we went to separate rooms to change into our pajamas. I grabbed my t-shirt and sweatpants and headed to the bathroom while he went to my room.

As I looked in the mirror, my thoughts where plagued with confusion. One moment, I'm studying with my friend, and the next, I'm wanting him to kiss me.

I shook my head and looked away, pulling on my clothes and walking out the door. When I got out, I saw that Luke was already looking through my collection of movies.

"Gabriel, how about this one?" He had picked up one about fish, some animated one. I wanted to say no, since we had studied fish for the last hour, but how could I do that? Instead, I sat next to him as he slipped the disk in. As the opening scene started, I let my emotions pull me under.

But I knew, someone would save me from out there- somewhere under the tide.