Siren Bay

V

December 16th | Fifteen Days Until NYE

My eyes fluttered open when Leah rolled onto her other side, brushing my shoulder and waking me up in the process. I blinked rapidly at the darkness once again, Leah's warm body pressing against my own.

Fatigue prickled my scalp as I shifted, my hair brushing the sides of my sleeping bag. Just as my dreams began dragging me back to sleep my phone's alarm vibrated beneath me.

Jolting awake completely, I quickly rushed to turn off my alarm, freezing in place afterwards when I heard Benji's light snoring. I slowly turned to Leah. I couldn't see her face, whether her lashes fluttered from dreaming or if she was wide-eyed and angry from being awoken before noon.

A moment's silence. My strong pulse ran in my ears before I sighed heavily. Gently, as carefully as I could with Leah pressed against me, I moved out of my thin sleeping bag again. The night was cooler so Benji hadn't put on the air-conditioning. My body twisted and turned, my pyjamas wriggling around me, but I burst free for the second night in a row.

Quickly glancing at my best friends, sighing at Benji's light snoring and Leah's sleeping solemn face, I quietly rushed into the same routine as the night before.

Throwing on a jumper over my pyjamas again, I decided to leave my hair in the two braids I'd put them before I fell asleep - I knew I'd come back from Siren Bay and forget to braid my hair again, and then Leah would notice in the morning - she was awfully perceptive.

I barely convinced my two friends yesterday that I had slept soundly. Hiding my yawning and concealing the dark circles over my eyes, having coffee instead of water; I hoped I was a good enough actor for them to believe me.

I wasn't particularly good at Drama in school but I enjoyed it regardless. My talent was in sports. I'd been a champion swimmer and participated in national tournaments all through school, but sailing was my calling. My grandparents taught my dad, who taught me, and the fond memories I had growing up camping by vast lakes and gliding across the water in swift boats were the happiest I'd been.

As I left Benji's home, gently wedging the door so it didn't shut completely, I jumped on the Smith's bike and quietly rode it onto the road, just missing Leah's own motorbike. As soon as the tires hit the tarmac, I hauled down to Siren Bay.

Six months away from what made me happy, but I wasn't heading to the water to leap into the waves once more.

The two days at sea on my eighteenth changed everything for me. As I rode around the banks in the road, I remembered the sand beneath my bare, grazed feet when I wept in Siren Bay.

Pulling up to the car park of Whale Beach and hauling the bike next to the playground as I'd done last night, I remembered lifting my head and seeing a pair of glistening eyes staring at me in sorrow.

As I ran across the beach again, my mind replayed the events of six months ago. With my feet leaping across the first trench in the rocks after the ocean pool, my past self grabbed the outstretched hand and allowed myself to be pulled closer.

I walked carefully to the second trench containing my Siren Bay. The other hand had grabbed my ankle then, after they'd heard my name shouted across the sea, and dragged me beneath the waves. My family and friends, the locals and the police, wouldn't have seen me for two more days, when I'd crawled ashore in my sparkling birthday dress and covered in salt and sea.

Placing my feet back on the sand of Siren Bay once more, I sighed, my breath wavering. The night was warmer, the moon a little brighter, so I could see the shadow in the water before. The familiar hand back on the rocks. My breath hitched.