Frenemies ✔

Chapter 19

Rocky:

I remember walking down a strip in Downtown Crestwood, shopping. Shopping at Express or Forever 21 for simply gorgeous yet very expensive outfits. Go figure. I always spend my weekend evenings shopping. It was a hobby of mine.

I was about to go home when I spotted a woman by a pale yellow park bench. She was kneeling on the sidewalk next to something wet. She held both of her hands up to face. The woman was sobbing, I think. She was sobbed, her chest heaving. I walked up to her.

"What's wrong, ma'am?" I asked.

The woman stopped crying and looked up at me. In her eyes, I could see that she looked relieved to see me there.

"Oh, miss, it's my little girl," she replied, choking back a sob. "My little girl is gone. She's gone!"

"Where is she?"

The woman stood up and pointed to the wet thing on the concrete. The wet thing was a puddle of water.

"My baby girl fell through there. She disappeared into the puddle of water." She started sobbing again.

"Ma'am, don't cry. If you'd like, I can get her for you," I offered, even though I thought she might've been a little crazy upstairs.

How could someone fall through a puddle of water?

I set my shopping bags on the park bench.

"Oh, could you, miss? Thank you, thank you so much!" The woman practically threw herself on me. I had to pry her off.

"Sure. It's not a problem. What does your daughter look like?"

"She has black hair. It's straight, and she's wearing a little white lace dress," the woman described.

I nodded my head in response. "All righty. I'll see what I can do."

I took off my sandals and placed them by the bags. I stepped into the puddle.

"Yeow!" I uttered. It was hot from the afternoon sun.

At first, I kind of expected something mysterious to happen, but nothing did happen. I turned to look at the woman.

"Are you sure your daughter fell into the puddle, ma'am? She didn't just run off somewhere?"

She shook her head violently. "Oh, no, she fell through that there puddle. I'm sure of it."

I turned my head back towards it.

Nothing.

"Okay," I muttered under my breath.

This woman's crazy, I thought.

I was just about to give up until I closed my eyes for a brief second to block the sunlight. Suddenly, I felt myself go through the puddle of water and submerge. I didn't know what just happened. All I knew was that I suddenly felt myself penetrate the water. Then I felt my rear hit the bottom of something. The ground felt hard, like pavement. I opened my eyes to look around. The surroundings appeared to be a pool. A really big pool. The ground I hit looked like the bottom of one. The white and blue flooring. However, I couldn't see where the walls for it were. I didn't know if there were even any walls at all, but I swam around to look for the woman's daughter.

It felt like I was swimming in circles, ending up in the same spot where I fell.

This is ridiculous, I thought. No way could the little girl have fallen in here. I would've seen her already.