Floating Face Down (boyxboy)

Chapter Ten

[A/N]  Hello my darlings.  I meant for them to meet this chapter, but the chapter was turning into the length of three.  I need this transitionary chapter because I want to feel like everything is settled before some more intense stuff begins.

Next chapter will be on time though, Friday evening (GMT) and they do indeed meet.

I waited patiently by the tree, every muscle relaxed against the uneven surface propping me halfway up. I'd vomited all down my shirt, my feet were bare and the moment the flashlight shone from behind I could see the tinge of blue in the nailbed.

I might have been cold but for some reason I wasn't feeling it anymore. My hands didn't tremble as I barely lifted them, my hair did not stand on end, and although I felt like dead weight, and my bruised ribs stung at my side, my swollen nose distinctly numb, I did not shiver.

There was a lot of commotion as I was lifted up, a couple tries failed, someone came back with a towel, then as they tried to engage with me there was a call to the ambulance services.

It wasn't that I was depressed, I just didn't have the energy to speak. I felt like sleeping, so I did, and only woke up as someone was shaking me, the concerned mascaraed eyes of Emma, and more torches as the ambulance workers moved through the woods towards me from behind, while I still faced the lake.

I wasn't on the ground.

In my mind I was still floating in the water, face down, looking at the bed of the lake, in that slick black ink. Breathing in the liquid ice, floating alone in the darkness.

My position never changed even as I was lifted up onto a thin stretcher and velcroed in.

They kept speaking to me in friendly tones, trying to engage with me, it was a long walk back to the main road and as much as they tried there were still students that came out and saw me being carried away, whether or not they from my school, I couldn't tell, it was too dark and I didn't care.

Inside the ambulance they took my blood pressure and covered me in an odd metallic blanket. The light inside that ambulance was so bright it burned my eyes.

"Hello, Elliot is that right? My name is Shelly. Can you tell me what your birth date is young man?" A friendly ambulance worker asked me, brushing thick black curls out of her face. Warm brown skin and gold spectacles, a little tinge of glossy blue on her lips.

I eventually told her my birth date, she said something to her co-worker along the lines of delayed reaction. That I might be in shock.

"Can you tell me what happened? Do you remember?"

I nodded. Someone leaned over me and attached one more seatbelt as the ambulance started moving.

"They threw me in a lake from the bridge."

"Some of the other kids?"

I nodded.

"Do you want to maybe write down their names? I can get you a pen and paper."

I continued to just stare at her, then eventually shook my head.

Shelly frowned but looked over at her co-worker and said nothing. "What happened to your face?" She asked after a moment.

"They beat me before throwing me in."

Shelly stared at me.

"Okay... Well I'm going to check if that nose is broken alright?"