Unforeseen¹

Chapter 43- Sink or swim

Jayden was stuck in her head. The ripples in the water in front of her drowned out anything the instructor was saying. The chlorine scent irritated her nose; the white tile was frigid beneath her bare feet, and the very colour of the water was confining, its vivid blue keeping her attention trapped within it.

Its ripples were far and few between. It was nothing like the waves her old classmates thrashed in as they teetered on the edge of fatal drowning. It seemed so gentle compared to that, almost friendly as it beckoned them closer. False warmth could be the quick death of any, or a slow one. It all depended on whether you were ready for it, strong enough to battle against the war of its underbelly.

Even the act of gazing upon it trapped her. It forced her back to a year since passed. Below, its freezing lifeblood forcing its way into her lungs, eradicating any oxygen she tried to keep cradled in her grasp, knocking it away as easily as an empty can against the wind. The blurred faces from above, unmoved, none aided her in the pitiful fight against its claws. Her only hope was the flimsy rope wrapped around her chest, a final cord from the world above.

Sharply inhaling, she shook her head. Water. It was just water. Not a monster, not a beast, just water. She glanced upwards. A window. There was no window in the lab. The lab was underground. She was not underground. She was not in the lab at all, but in a normal swimming pool with her and the fifth-year class. She was there because the school thought it would be a good time for the two grades to learn to swim, and Pepper signed the permission slip, ignorant of Jayden's tense history.

They weren't going to throw her into its hungry depths. She was safe. She could already swim. The water couldn't harm her. How many times did she have to think that to believe it?

She focused on the window, ignoring the way the instructor had them stand in a line in front of the pool. She almost believed she would see Curls standing next to her if she were to turn her head. But of course, she wouldn't. She wasn't in the lab. Instead, it was only Abigail, a classmate she barely talked to.

In her head, she took her therapist's advice and listed everything different from here and there. The window was there. The temperature was warmer. The pool was smaller. Oliver was there. FN wasn't. It was brighter. She was wearing a proper swimsuit. There was no line she had to stand behind. She could back away whenever she wanted.

But even then, the water kept stealing her away, its waves slapping against the sides as if taunting her.

"-if you can't swim, then you'll go to the shallow-" she caught a snippet of what the instructor was saying before Elizabeth caught her eye as she exited the toilets. They made eye contact, and Elizabeth smirked. Jayden wrinkled her nose and looked away, already drained of her antics.

It hadn't even been ten minutes since the blonde tried to trip her up; luckily, Oliver was there and steadied her so she didn't land on her face.

She turned back to the instructor, now pacing, not giving Elizabeth the satisfaction. It soon proved to be a mistake, as she heard her bare footsteps behind her, followed by a sudden push that sent her barreling. There was nothing she or anybody else could do to prevent her from hitting the water.

As soon as her head went under, a rush of water invaded her unprotected airway. Her limbs instinctively thrashed, but it was a more panicked instinct than one of survival. She could swim. She knew how to swim, so why wasn't her body listening?

Her eyes snapped open. Blue. Everything was blue. It smothered her, creating a haze of the blurred faces of her classmates still on the edge of the pool. Their forms were distorted and sickly shimmered with the water. Her already open mouth screamed for aid, but the pool silenced it before it could even begin to form. Her eyes wailed from the chlorine, and as her vision blurred over completely, memories surrounded her.