Water

Water was a short story written by Ted Phillips for an assignment in his eleventh grade Advanced Placement English Language and Composition class on March 4, 2004. Water is based on a combination of real-life experiences of Ted Phillips and an exchange with his real life friend Alex Zuleta.

Hello? Anybody home? Ted… Ted, answer the door. I know you're there, stop jerking off and come to the door. Ted! Teddy! Ted, come on… Thheeeeodoooorre… So you only answer to that name, huh? Are you coming out or not? It's nice out today; I'm going swimming. Come to the beach, Ted. Don't be a hermit; come swimming with me. If you need a bathing suit you can borrow a pair of mine. The water is clean, I checked. There's not too many people down there. Just jump in, Ted, it's not that cold. I haven't seen you swimming all year. I meant here. You have the ocean in your backyard. There's nothing to be afraid of in the water. If you don't wear shoes, they won't get wet! The tide is high now, Ted. Just come out. No one will throw you in. It's water. You used to go swimming all the time. You're just being lazy.

Darkness engulfed me as I plunged through the abyss. I could hear the sizzle of ionic reactions and feel my downward acceleration counteracted by the buoyancy influenced by the salt now seeping into my pores. Water rushed past my ears and formed tiny whirlpools at my fingertips. Except for the muffled gurgle of moving water, there was a peaceful silence around me. Slowly I drifted upward against the force of gravity, but my lungs needed air, and I was down too deep to get my head above the surface for another breath before drowning. Tilting my head back so my nostrils would be the first into open air, the water broke around me, and a great din of sharp and blunt sounds pierced my eardrums, as the water ran down my face in rivulets, leaving the salt kindly in the seams of my eyelids, and my lungs filled with air again, and I could feel the compression of the water against a newly filled chest; I wiped the salt away from my eyes, and the accumulated drops from the tip of my nose, and the light was blinding and the images under-processed.

I had been a grand total of three inches beneath the rippling surface. Just beginning to gain my bearings after rebirth, I rushed to the side of the pier (the ladder that remained being two rusted fastening bolts on the edge of the limestone pier) to pull myself out of the five-foot depth so I could make another jump. My legs swung and crashed against the side of the pier because of the whiplash created by the straight upward force I was exerting on my body. The smallest sea creatures fell to the sand bed below, as several other black things remained embedded in my kneecaps. I wiped the barnacle shards from my legs and bore raw scratch and scrape marks.

Running, I took another leap from the pier and attempted to make a 720-degree turn but plummeted through the dark green-brown skin at five-forty. The bubbles rose around my head, and everything was silent again, except for a faint ringing in my ears from pressure difference, and the burning sensation in my knees and shins. Kicking upward to return to the surface more quickly, I was anxious for yet another jump. And this was the routine at the private beaches in Edgewater Park. One would wait until the tide was almost high, then jump -- or gradually lower oneself in my case -- then jump in, climb out, jump in, climb out -- swim around briefly -- climb out, and jump in again.

I stepped back to get a running start for the next jump into the water. More baby crustaceans lay at my feet, blood running down my legs in rivers of saltwater, my sore knees twin diced calices. The world rushed past my eyes as I promptly locked my eyelids and clamped my greasy nostrils shut with my left thumb and forefinger. I resolved not to climb up the side of the pier again but to walk towards the shore where the stairs could talk me back up to the seawall and onto Little Pier. I decided barnacles hurt too much and I would come back later and scrape them all off the side of the pier when the tide was low.

But for now I wanted to jump into the water from the side of the pier again. My hair was matted, the strands adhering to each other, and salt deposits clung to my face and itched my sunburnt skin. I wasn't getting to the shoreline fast enough for my excitement, so running through the water seemed appropriate although a worthy challenge. My legs trudged through the churned up mixture of sand and water over-saturated with salt and sent waves trailing ahead of me as I approached the staircase. My bathing suit clinging embarrassingly having wrung itself dry on my thighs, I tumbled over the free air and fell face-first towards the concrete steps.

Thrusting my right arm ahead of me to break my fall, my knees cracked into a partially buried granite stone, and the water rose up around me in a shockwave from my shallow belly flop. My knee screaming, I rose to my feet again, and looked down to see two black eyes looking up at me. In the foam where I had landed I saw the serrated triangular prism and the spiked UFO head as the horseshoe swiftly crawled away in the still crashing surf.

A ravine from my forefinger across to the heel of my right hand erupted with life, the smooth wrinkles in my skin interrupted by random peaks of flesh that pumped my precious red blood cells through the unintended incision. My palm sizzled and bubbled in chemical reactions with the salt that lay there. I couldn't jump in again. I went home.

So are you coming down with me or not? No excuses this time -- I don't mean for you to just sit there or stand around. Come into the water. It's August, you can't not go swimming all summer.

I tell him I have homework.