The Other Side

The Shook Up Boy

Song: No Weapons by Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein

Ash and I raced over to Declan, but the water was holding us back. We quickly waded over to where Declan's lips were blue and shaking. His teeth were clenched together and his thick blonde hair was plastered to his face. 

Catie got to him first. The water was only waist-deep, so she knelt next to him in the ocean and gently laid a hand on his shoulder.

His wide eyes snapped to hers. Ash crouched on his other side. Jaden stayed behind Catie, a hand on her shoulder. I carefully bent down in front of him.

"What's wrong? Are you okay?" 

Declan turned and faced where he had half paddled, half fled from. A shaky hand rose and he pointed.

"Dude. You're not going to believe me, but there was this huge wall like 5 feet that way." His eyebrows were close together in confusion and disbelief.

"Dec", Catie whispered, "you need to tell us what really happened."

Declan shook his head. "I told you." He shakily stood up, "I swam a little bit that way and dove under a wave. When I came up, there was this big cinder block wall. The water was a weird green color instead of this blue...almost like at the edge of something. Like an urban setting or some shit." 

Everybody stared at Declan, trying to figure out what the hell was going on. Pushing me out of the way, Dec waded through the waves back to shore. We all just kind of stayed, watching Declan plop down on a towel. He opened up a water bottle and chugged it down.

Jaden made a face. "Maybe...he has some sort of..." He ran his hand through his mop of wet locks, "yeah, I got nothing."

I sighed. "Maybe we should take a break. Let's get something to eat, turn up the music." I glanced at Catie, her eyebrows furrowed as she tried to comprehend what she had just witnessed.

We waded back to the beach. Ash took charge of the music, picking his playlist on Spotify that he called "vibes". Dear God, this boy. Catie came back from the van with the cooler and pulled out a turkey and cheese sandwich. She handed it to her brother, still sitting on the towel. Declan took it and practically swallowed it whole. 

Ash set a place for a bonfire for tonight on the sand and placed our chairs around it. Catie was able to coax Declan off of the towel and over to the chairs. We all took a seat and told dirty jokes to pass the time. At one point, we all got up and danced to a song blaring from the old stereo that Ash had plugged his phone into. Even Dec seemed to shake out of his funk and joined us in dancing. It wasn't so much as dancing as flailing our arms and bobbing our heads to Ash's upbeat pop playlist. By the time that song was over, Declan had seemed normal again.

We had shaken the mood out of the shook boy. Sorry I'm not good at puns or whatever.