I can't swim||drabble
Strong arms dragged her out of the suffocating darkness into the blinding light. Coughing and spluttering Lydia watched as the liquid content of her lungs spilt out onto the dirt ground. She gagged uncontrollably for what felt like an eternity, shivering in her soaked t-shirt and shorts. Once she’d calmed down she tried to take a deep breath, finding it only successful in throwing her into a coughing fit again.
Once she’d expelled enough of the water to breath again, she tried to get up, and after a few trembling failures she could finally stand on two wobbling legs. Throwing one foot out in front of the other she tried to put as much distance between herself and the body of water that had been seconds away from becoming her death bed. The clearing she found herself in wasn’t very big, the thin trees starting just a few metres away. Beyond that she could see a black car in the distance, which she began stumbling towards. She managed it three steps before her swimming vision became indecipherable and she collapsed.
Strong arms were waiting for her and she fell deep into them. She looked up to lock eyes with Isaac Lahey, who seemed to be trying to tell - no, yell- something at her. She couldn’t hear him over the water pounding in her ears. Only in her stationary state did she notice a skull-splitting headache that threatened her consciousness. He continued to mouth words, but she realised that he was now repeating the same one word. Lydia.
A darkness took over her vision and she let go.
A light annoying tapping noise came from Lydia’s feet. She could feel the familiar sensation of her silk sheets on her biceps, inhaled the tell tale strawberry scent that told her the fabric freshly washed. She opened her eyes one at a time, wincing as she adjusted to the pale purple glow of her room after complete darkness. She watched the clock on her bedside table tick the seconds by.
The tapping noise increased in volume, and coupled with the clock, it was enough to drive Lydia over the edge. “Enough!” She sat up like a rocket, spotting the source of the noise almost immediately.
Isaac Lahey nearly fell off his chair in fright. Dressed in a light blue t-shirt and trackpants, he looked like he might as well have lived in her house. She wondered how long he’d been there, playing with one of her pens. As he got up and came around to the side of her bed she also noticed he was without shoes, wearing only a pair of red and black stripy socks. “Are you okay?” He asked in a low tentative voice, bending down close to her. His blue eyes and sunken smile projected worry at her, and the grey circles under his eyes combined with the veins creeping up to his irises conveyed sleeplessness.
"I will be once you get out of my face." Lydia grumbled. Isaac recoiled like he’d been stung. Which she supposed he had been. He had saved Lydia’s life, presumably dragged her here and now she was snapping at him. Not exactly gratitude. She tried to amend her appeal slightly, "I just need to breath, okay?"
He nodded quickly, “Right, yeah, of course. I’ll be going now.” If stayed any longer he’d have to give an explanation as to why he was here in the first place. An explanation he wasn’t quite sure he had. He went to pick up his things. It was only then that Lydia noticed the open duffel bag next to her desk, its contents spilling out onto the cream carpet. He shoved his clothes back into it, sliding his shoes on over his quirky socks.
To avoid outright staring Lydia drew her attention to other new things in her room. Her bedside table had an old looking sandwich sitting on it, and a glass of water that looked like it might once have contained ice. She looked to her window to watch as the fading lights of the evening were dragged behind the other houses on her street. So she’d only been out a few hours, right? Then why had the perspiration off the ice not evaporated? Why was her sandwich stale? More importantly, why was her mom making her a sandwich? The last time her mom had actually made her any sort of food from scratch was first day of kindergarten, when she’d gone without snacks for fear of what she might find in her lunchbox.
"Isaac? How long was I out?" She rubbed her eyes, yawning.
"Uh, about a day?" He shrugged, reaching the door. Her hands fell from her face, eyes wide in shock.
"A day?" She knew she hadn’t been getting a decent amount of sleep recently, but to need a day, 24 hours, to wake up without an alarm. She didn’t realise how far gone she was, how much her new found ‘abilities’ had affected her life. Isaac took another few steps towards the door, when Lydia stopped him again. "Isaac, wait, one more thing." She held out a hand, readjusting her pillows so she was sitting up properly.
Isaac froze, his fingertips on the door handle. He turned around to face the queen. But she didn’t look much like a queen at the moment. Her red hair stood off her head, bags sat under her eyes despite just waking up, and she was wearing polka-dot pyjamas he didn’t think anyone else knew she owned. Aside from Allison, who’d come in earlier to help change her out of her wet clothes into something drier. She’d barely been awake at that point, and definitely not in the mood to change clothes, but she’d needed to get out of the wet garments she was wearing so as not to get sick.
She was avoiding his gaze, picking at the unravelling stitches of her quilt. She took a deep breath, like she had a long speech prepared, endless sentences bleeding into each other before she got to the actual point. Then she exhaled, and settled for just looking him in the eye, and saying, with the upmost sincerity, “Thanks”
And that was better.
