Adopted by One Direction

Hold On

For some time, all I could hear was silence. My heart was still thumping, but slowly. Suddenly, a  pair of strong arms closed around my waist. We ascended. We shot above the water, and I gasped desperately for air, coughing. I coughed up a lot of water, but now my lungs felt like they were on fire. I could still feel some water swishing inside my lungs. It hurt so much. I heard voices around me talking frantically, and someone lifting me up to the beach. Someone checked my pulse. It was dangerously slow. My body seemed to be shutting down.

"No! No!" I could hear voices shouting. Someone pushed down on my chest and breathed into my mouth, so my chest started rising and falling on its own. I started breathing, but it hurt so much. My throat was burning and my lungs ached with every breath. I didn't want to do this anymore. Death at this time felt more peaceful. I stopped breathing and just lay there, still. Then I felt someone gripping my hand tightly, crying so hard that tears dripped down on my face. "Hold on..." the person kept saying. I didn't want to, but I forced myself to continue breathing, just for him. It hurt a lot, but I continued, in and out, in and out. "Hold on..." That was the last thing I heard before I closed my eyes, blocking out the world around me. 

The next thing I knew, I was lying on a stretcher in an ambulance, with five terrified boys around me. My eyes flickered open and I coughed feebly, attracting their attention. "Are you alright?" They asked immediately. "I've been better," I replied, closing my eyes again. I still felt exhausted. After a few seconds, I could feel someone shaking my shoulder. "What?" I asked. It was Harry. "Don't go to sleep." He said. "Just now you stopped breathing." "Oh," I said, looking at five nervous pairs of eyes around me. "Um, what happened?" "You dived down but you didn't come back up for a long time," Liam told me gently. "We got worried, so we went down to look for you. We think you lost conscious. You coughed up a lot of water but didn't wake up, so we just called an ambulance." "Oh," I repeated. "I don't want to go to the hospital, I'm fine." I sat up quickly but felt very dizzy. "You aren't going anywhere until you get checked up in the hospital," Louis said, pushing me back down. In a few minutes, we were at the hospital. The people there checked me up and decided I was fine. To be on the safe side though, I still had to stay in the hospital for the night. After they finished checking me up, I lay down on the uncomfortable hospital bed and immediately dropped into slumber. After a few hours, I opened my eyes. The boys were sitting on those plastic blue hospital chairs around my bed. Their faces lit up when they saw me awake. "Hey," I said softly. My throat hurt when I talked. "You feeling better?" Niall asked, his bright blue eyes wide open with concern. "Yeah. Thanks for saving me." I said, sitting up. "I don't know why I suddenly couldn't breathe in the water, it was really scary." "It's my fault. I'm sorry for daring you to do it." Harry apologized. "You never would've known anyway, don't blame yourself." I smiled at him, patting him on the shoulder. "By the way does anyone have water?"

Liam quickly asked the nurse for some and I sipped some gracefully. "Oh! I have a question!" I said suddenly, looking up from my water. "Who was crying at the beach? I could hear someone crying, that's why I started breathing again." "No one was crying." Zayn said, getting red in the face while the others said, "Zayn." I laughed a little bit, then became serious. "Thanks though. Hearing someone crying about me made me rethink if I really wanted to die there just like that." Zayn came over and gave me a hug. "I'm glad you started breathing again. We couldn't bear to lose you." "Me too," I said. "You'd better get some more sleep." Liam said, "We'll camp here tonight." "What?" I asked, "You don't need to, I'll be fine on my own!" "Too late, we already brought sleeping bags and stuff." Said Louis, smiling cheekily. "You guys are completely bonkers!" I said, laughing, before closing my eyes. The next morning, I was first to wake up. I saw the boys sleeping on the hospital floor, literally. They had all fallen out of there sleeping bags. A nurse peeked into the room, looking at the boys disapprovingly. "I'll sort them out," I whispered to her, then climbed out of bed. I turned on the television and switched to a random channel, then turned the volume to the highest possible. The boys rolled around, trying to crawl back into their sleeping bags, and I laughed. My laughter faded away when I realized what exactly the TV was playing. One Direction on the beach with a girl. I kicked the boys with my feet, my gaze still transfixed on the TV screen. "What?" Harry asked me sleepily, sitting up and rubbing his eyes. "Look at what they're saying on TV!" I hissed at him. He just stared at the TV screen stupidly for a few seconds, before he actually watched it. He stood up quickly. "Oh no!" He exclaimed. "Someone saw us!" "Exactly." I said gravely. "Louis, Liam, Niall, Zayn! Wake up! Look at the TV!" Slowly, they opened their eyes to watch the TV. "This is really, really, bad." Louis said, messing up his hair with his hands "We'll have to think of a convincing story to keep the press quiet." Niall said. "Um, how about you guys just met me on the beach and you hung out with me because I was all alone?" "Quite good. We'll also say that you're a fan, so if there are pictures of us hugging you, it'll still sound convincing." We nodded. I hoped everyone would believe our story. "There's an interview tomorrow, so we'll tell them then." Zayn said. After the nurse gave me one last check, we could go. We all piled into the car and Louis drove us back home after some complaints. "I don't wanna drive!" Louis whined. "Liam, you drive!" "No way, you're oldest, you drive!" This went on for more than ten minutes.  Once we got back home, I went and called Lilly. "Hey!" She said when the call went through. "What's up?" "Not much. I went to the beach, almost drowned then went on TV." I quickly clamped my hand over my mouth after I said that. The part where I went on TV did not mean to come out. "Seriously?" Lilly squealed. "What did you get onto TV for?" I rolled my eyes. "Aren't you going to ask me about why I almost drowned first?" "Oh, right. Of course. So why did you almost drown? Are you ok now?" "Yeah, I'm fine now. I just kinda tried diving deep into the sea then went out of breath. I went to the hospital to get checked up but I'm OK." "Good." Lilly said. "Drowning sounds terrible...OK, now tell me, what did you get onto TV for?" I made up this story about how I was one of the girls swimming in the background at the beach, and thankfully, Lilly believed me. I felt guilty afterwards, but it had to be done. Me and the boys just stayed in for the rest of the day, lounging around, doing nothing in particular. Around midday, Niall and I got hungry, so we scavenged through the fridge looking for food. "Yay, I found some cheese!" I said, opening the package and sniffing it. "Ew, it's like a month old." "There're  some biscuits here." Niall said, and took out one to try. "It's good!" We took the biscuits out into the living room to eat while watching a movie. The other boys came too, attracted to the biscuits. "What do you want to watch?" I asked, munching on the biscuits. "Horror!" Harry suggested. "I don't mind, though I'll probably be so scared that my hair falls off, but OK." Harry popped a DVD into the slot and the movie started playing. It was called 12 Drops of Blood, and it was truly was the most horrific movie I've ever watched, If someone happened to walk into the living room an hour later, he would probably be greeted by this sight. Louis sat alone on the floor, half hiding behind Harry's legs. Harry was sitting completely straight on the sofa, barely moving an inch the entire time. Liam was sitting next to Harry, holding a few cushions to his face. Me, Niall and Zayn were huddled up behind a blanket, each with one eye peeking out. We sat there, frozen, as the murderer walked up and down the street, cackling loudly, then stopped in front of a house. He glided silently into it and stepped inside a room. Three teenagers inside let out a blood-curdling scream...

"Ugh!" I yelled, hiding my face into Niall's sweater. "What's happening?" "I don't know!" Niall yelled equally loudly. "He's going to kill them, ahhhhhhh!" He buried his face in my hair. "OK fine, let's stop it," Harry said, standing up quickly and stopping the DVD. The rest of us still stared transfixed at the blank TV screen, slightly shivering. "Let's do something to clear our mind of this movie, OK?" Liam suggested. "Uh, wanna go bake something? We could make some cookies." I gazed at the TV screen for a few seconds longer, as if the movie would suddenly reappear, then I replied. "OK." The six of us went to the kitchen and we started getting the ingredients out to make chocolate chip oatmeal cookies. "Why oatmeal?" Niall asked. "Oatmeal doesn't even taste nice!" "Because the oatmeal is going to go bad soon, so we have to finish it. Besides, oatmeal in cookies should be tastier than oatmeal by itself." I helped with the mixing while stopping Niall from stealing all the chocolate chips. After an hour, the cookies were in the oven, nicely baking, but the floor was coated with flour and the remainder of the chocolate chips had all spilt onto the kitchen table. We spent another good half an hour cleaning up. At least the cookies were really good. We ate most of them, but the boys helped me put a few in a bag so that I could bring them to school to share with Lilly tomorrow. We were completely stuffed with cookies, so we just had a salad for dinner in the evening. After dinner, I went on Twitter and Instagram scrolling through the tweets, I saw this.

tealer Just watched the scariest movie ever, I'm still shaking. :)  Louis Tomlinson I know, mate, I'm never going to watch it again! I laughed, then added my own comment. passiont What movie was it??? Follow me I'm your biggest fan!!! A few seconds later, I heard Niall snorting downstairs. He yelled up at me. "Pash, how many followers do you have now?" "Wait a sec," I said, checking to see if my number of followers could miraculosly have grown in the past ten seconds. No such luck. "Exactly zero." I called back to Niall. "What?" He shouted. "How about Lily? Dosen't she follow you?" "She dosen't even have a Twitter!"  "Oh really?" There was a silence for a few moments, then a new tweet appeared. tealer who wants a follow? Retweet this and I'll follow some people! "Thanks, Niall!" I yelled, smilling. I quickly retweeted the tweet and immediately got a follow. I typed in a comment. passiont Oh my gosh I got followed by tealer! I'm so happy thank you Niall a million times!!! Next I went on Instagram. Harry had just posted a photo of his socks a few minutes ago. I walked out into the hallway and looked down the stairs. Harry was doing the laundry. He had seperated his own socks from ours and took a photo of them. "Hey, weirdo." I said, calling to him. "Yeah, check and see how many likes I've got on the photo, and you'll see how weird I really am." I looked down at my phone and my eyes popped out. There were already 3000 likes, and the number kept growing.

"See?" Harry said cheekily, throwing a pair of socks at me. "People like weird!" "Yeah, right." I replied, throwing the socks back at him which hit him right on the head. "That's just because you're Harry Styles." I put my phone back safely in a drawer in my room, then went down. Me, Liam and Zayn had a game of Monopoly, where Louis stole all our money and Liam got bankrupt. By 10 o'clock, I was super already super tired. So was Zayn. We raced up the stairs to see who could go shower first. But halfway up the stairs, I tripped. Zayn caught hold of my wrist just in time, and he helped me back up.

"Hold on." He said, placing my hand on the banister.

I smiled.