So without further ado, here is chapter one:
Chapter One.
I finished tying the triple knot on my ankles. Then I moved onto checking the knot I had made on the cinder block beside me. Yup, good and tight. I straitened up and took a deep breathe that stung my lungs, I looked around to check of there was anyone watching me. No one was. I closed my blue eyes for a moment then carefully sat down on the icy dock. I looked into the eerie blackish water of the lake under and around me. I let my bare feet dangle over the edge into the freezing cold water. I let out a breathe and whiteness blew out into the cold January weather. I could feel my chest start to hurt as I took in another breathe. My feet had started to numb off. I took off my hat and coat, putting then behind me. Then reluctantly I took off my warm fuzzy mitts.
I took one last look around, double checking for any watchers. The cost was clear, so I slowly started to lower myself into the icy water. Soon my body started to ache from the cold.
Through the corner of my eye I see something moving, I turn my stiffening neck towards the movement. There standing staring right at me is someone. I gasp and let go of the dock, falling completely into the water, the cinder block falls in after me. I only have a second to take in a short breathe... then I am sinking quickly to the bottom of the deep lake.
My chest is convulsing before the block hits the bottom. I talked myself through this. I prepared myself for this feeling, the feeling of my lungs begging for air, and none going to them... but this was nothing I could have readied myself for. But a small voice in my freezing mind told me that it would be over soon. I knew my heart would stop soon due to the coldness of the water... and I would slip away.
But it felt like eternity before the faint beating of my heart stopped. My eyes slid closed and I fell away from life.
Blackness enveloped me.
I felt warmth flood my... body? Then I felt myself leaving the cold body that once was mine, and suddenly I was staring at my dead body. I held my hands at arm length in front of me. I was translucent. I stared at myself for a moment, then remembered that I was dead.
I looked back at my dead body. My face was pale, my lips were blue. But my golden as sun blonde hair floated around my face like a frame. I started to reach out to maybe touch my... body? When something dove into the water and sped like a bullet though me! Yes, I mean it... right through me! The something turned out to be a someone.
The person swam down to where the rope was, and something silver shined in the person's hand. A blade. He started to saw at the rope. It only took me a moment to realized what he was doing. He was cutting me loose and was going to try and save me?! I tried to scream at him, but nothing came out of my mouth.
He finally cut thought the rope, and I wondered how he could hold his breathe for such a long time. He wrapped his arms around my dead body's waist and started for the surface. I followed screaming silently at him. I beat fists at him, that only slid through him.
When he reached the surface he drew in a deep breathe. Hell, my limp dead body looked better then his. I watched as he lifted me onto the dock and then pulled himself up.
Then he frantically started CPR. It was weird watching him put his mouth to mine.
Then he started to pump my heart. I felt a tug on my chest. I was pulled toward my body. Pump, move, pump, move. It continued until I was only a foot away. Then he moved to putting air into my lungs. Then back to the pumping. I tried to swim backwards, but the pumping pulled me closer, as my ghost foot touched my body, and I was sucked in. Suddenly all of the warmth that I had, was gone, and I was as cold as ever. It was horrible, even worse then in the water.
My eyes flew open, I gasped in air. It burned my lungs, and then they collapsed, and the drowning started all over again, but this time it was worse.
My chest started to convulse, it was painful this time, and my whole body shook with them. My saviour, acted quickly, pressing his mouth to mine, and blowing air into them. In, out, in out... he continued this. Finally he pulled away, and started to dial a number on his phone he pulled out of no where. My eyelids started to fall, and darkness threatened to overcome me. I welcomed it with open arms.
“Oh no you don't!” the voice shocked me, and shot pain through my head. Warming hands clasped my face. My eyes opened, whoever had brought me back to life was keeping me from fainting. His cellphone was pressed to his ear, and held in place my his shoulder. His eyes met with mine for only the shortest moment. His head snapped up, and he started to talk into the phone... all I could make out was the word: emergency. Then I fainted.
I expected to fall away from my body again, but no, I just lay in darkness.
When I regained a small amount of consciousness I was pulled under by a wave of warmth. The next time I wake, I hear a faint beeping. I don't have the strength to open my lead eyelids. My mind fogs up, and I am out again.
“Savannah?” the voice penetrates my comatose state. The soft voice reminded me of my dead grandmother. She was my best friend, and the one that kept me going for years. When she died, my life crumbled. My parents sent me to therapy, psychologists, anything that claimed that they could fix me. I was put under tests, brain scans... I even had a MRI once. My parents were crazy. I changed schools. Grew out my hair, let my black highlights grow out instead of redoing them... I changed everything about myself to prove to my parents that I was okay, and sometimes I was, but once the sun set, everything started to pile high. All of my problems my worries just fell onto me. It was horrible. And finally once day it was too much. That was the day I tried to kill myself. Well technically I did, but the stupid jerk brought me back.
Now here I am, wherever here is... alive.
The soft voice cooed again. Not my name, but the horrible word sweetheart. Even unconscious, I shivered. Sweetheart was the word my mother used on me after my grandmother died, thinking a sweet word like that, would make me feel loved still... well it didn't, it kinda backfired, since then, the horrible word has been banned from our house... because it doesn't matter where I am in the house, I can feel the air tighten, when someone lets the word slip.
Since Grams died, I have not ever known the meaning of love. If someone asks me, if I have ever been in love, I smile, and then say bluntly. No.
I would listen to my friends jabber on about their stupid worthless, jerks that they called their boyfriends, and how in love they were with them. I would totally zone out, and only mumble “mhm” or “ahh” when needed.
I never dated, or had a stupid boyfriend. I was always the one poking my nose into a good scifi book. It didn't matter if there was a bloody world war three, nothing could tear me away from a good book. Trust me, people have tried.
I opened my eyes only a little, bright light streamed into my eyes. I quickly let them close again. There was some murmuring. When I tried again to open my eyes, the light had been either turned away, or turned down, because a caramel light flowed into my eyes. I forced my eyes to open fully. My vision was blurry, and everything swam. I felt water run down my cheek, and I knew my eyes were tearing up from the light.
“Savannah?” the sweetheart voice said. I felt like groaning, but I couldn't even find the energy to remember what happened to me.
“Savannah, you are in the hospital, are you conscious?” it asked. How did they think I was going to answer, I could hardly open my eyes.
I blinked, the blurriness still didn't go away, I could hardly see the form of whoever was talking to me.
My eyes fell down. I was again enveloped in blackness.
Warmth wrapped around me like a blanket.
What is going on?
When I opened my eyes this time, the blurriness vanished after a few minutes, I was looking up at toothpaste green. I made a mental grimace. I looked around the room until it hurt my eyes. Then I closed then and let the the dizziness fade with the pain.
I slowly became more aware of sounds around me. Voices talking, a steady beeping sound. Then. Badly hidden silent crying. That could only be one person.
My mother.
Suddenly in a wave of dizziness what happened to me, what I did to myself surged back into my head. I. Tried. To. Kill. Myself.
Someone saved me though. Someone brought me back to life. Kept me breathing, my heart beating. Who was he?All I can remember was two perfect chocolate brown eyes. Now, those eyes are my worst enemy. My worst nightmare. How could he have me?! He had to have seen me pull the cinder block off the deck. He must have seen me wanting death. But, he still saved me.
Why?
I opened my eyes to the world I was still stuck with. I turned my heavy head and looked at my mother's back. She was facing the window, looking out. Her shoulders were shaking, and I knew she was crying. She reached up and put her hand onto the glass. My vision started the blur from not blinking. I closed them and waited a few seconds. When I opened them my mother was wiping her eyes and cheeks with the back of her sleeve. She the pulled her blond hair up into a high pony-tail and put a huge elastic around it. She let her curls fall down her back.
My mother and I look the same. Blue eyes, but I have a tear-drop pupil, meaning, my pupil leaked into my retna, pale translucent skin, light freckles, natural blond curly hair. Everything is perfect about us. But, we are tiny. She never reached five foot three. So, I am about five foot. Everyone towers over me. But, there is always a good thing about being small. You get to were heels!
I have two other siblings, Josh, my older annoying brother, he is almost twenty-five, he works in Africa, doing all these crazy things. Then there is Syria, she is four, and looks just like my father. Dark strait hair. Green eyes, tan skin. She is almost at my shoulders. Shes like our father, tall. Josh is about the middle. Six foot one. Father is Six five. I used to joke about how my parents met, I doubted that he could see her. But that was long gone. My parents started to fight, and they almost ended their marriage. But Syria stopped them. Who knows how.
I never have made one wish in my life. Not one. If I saw something I liked, the next day it was in my hands. I was spoiled rotten. Well that was until I hit high school. Suddenly my grades dropped, I started to drop. Everyone started to edge away from me, even my best friends. I was the perfect girl. I wasn't teased about having acne, because I had none. I was teased because I was perfect.
My low grades caused everyone to start believing that all blonds are dumb, and suddenly all my fellow blonds in the school, started to dye their hair, and tint their eyebrows. I was that one girl that stuck out.
Plus since I was two I wore a necklace that had a small vile with a drop of what I liked to think of as blood.
Now all that's not why I wanted to end my life. I am not totally sure why I wanted to, but I did. I just wasn't happy with who I was. I wasn't meant for life. I talked myself out of it all the time. Walking down a street, thinking, I could just throw myself in front of that truck. Walking on railroads. Hey, it would be fast. But every time, I made myself walk away.
But I guess at the docks, I was just in a bad state of mind. And I did it. But I realized before my heart stopped, that it felt right.
I dared open my eyes, my mother had gone, or was not in my sight. I looked around. The room was empty. My eyes caught a calender. There were red Xs on every day from the fifteenth, to the thirtieth. I wonder what day it is today?
Then a nurse walked in followed by... my father. He pulled out a pen from his jacket pocket and made a green X on the calender. January thirty first, that was today. I have been in and out of consciousness for eleven days. What happened?
“Well Mr. Woods, Savannah has improved a lot. Her lungs are working without anything hooked up. And her heartbeat is steady, if she wakes up for more then a few seconds she can go home as soon as she feels fit,” the nurse smiled at my father.
“Please call me John,” he said, she smiled even more. “How can you tell if she is awake or not?” I made fists under the covers and quickly closed my eyes. I heard foot steps coming my way. Please, please don't let them tell if I am awake or not.
“Well you tell me, John,” the nurse said. I let my eyes opened just a little, and I saw my father leaning over me. I quickly closed them, but I knew he had seen. My father surprisingly didn't say anything. I waited over five minutes, but he didn't say anything. I opened one eye only a little. There he was, smiling down at me. His perfect white teeth gleaming.
“Ah,” I gasped. Look at that, I can talk. I closed my eye again. Now he knew for sure I was awake. Light fingers brushed over my forehead. I cringed. I knew I had hurt my family so badly.
Giggling laughter filled the room suddenly. The singsong voice that filled my life for two years. Syria. I felt tears start to sting at my eyes.
Syria's voice echoed around the room. I felt the bed I was on sink a little at my feet, I guessed she had settled there.
Then a song I knew all too well, started, Mary had a little Lamb. Her perfect pitch lit a tiny spark of envy, which was a slap in the face. Wake up!
I sang along in my head with Syria.
“Ria,” my father said using my sister's nickname. “Hush, maybe your sister doesn't want you to sing!” That was like a knife being stabbed into my stomach.
“No,” I sighed, my voice dry. “Don't stop.” Syria giggled, and she continued to sing. I heard my father sigh.
I knew he was just being soft right now. But once I was in a better condition he was gonna blow up, my mother would just cry. Ria, well she is too young to understand. My parents probably will tell her that I got into an accident at swimming, or I was just sick.
Ria changed her song suddenly to the ABC's. She never did that. She always finishes her songs. Why would she stop? She was singing her favorite song too.
My foggy brain grasped at false strings. It wasn't until Ria stopped singing that I found out her reasoning.
“Your a smart little girl, aren't you?” it was my brother's voice. Josh? Josh was here? Ria giggled. “I can't tickle you now, can I?” Josh's voice flooded my head. I remembered Josh and Ria's agreement. If Ria ever sang Mary had a little Lamb in Josh's presence he would tickle her until she couldn't breathe. He hated the song to the bottom his heart. I am not sure why, but he does.
“Josh!” my father boomed. I heard his hand clap Josh on his back.
“Mr. Woods,” Josh teased. I opened my eyes. Josh was really tanned and his hair was long, about his shoulders. I noticed they were some braided with beads in them, looks like he had adopted part of the African style. It looked great. My father had his arm around Joshes slender shoulders. My father has a huge body, he likes to tell everyone how big boned he is, but I think its a little more now. Josh on the other hand, he is slender, but muscular. High cheekbones, and a very square face. I used to call him a robot. My father has the same face, but not as bony.
My mother and I have heart shaped faces. We aren't bony thin, but we aren't big boned like my father. Ria is like our bodies too, but she has a bit more of my father's build. But that might still be baby fat. Look around my bed for the controls that move the bed up and down. I find then by my hand. I press the up button for my head. The bed makes a hissing noise and my torso rises into a semi-sitting position that hurts a little. Everyone looks over at me. I eyes are still a little blurry. Josh blinks a few times, then takes a few steps towards me, reaching for my hands. His warm hands envelope mine in warmth. His eyes are brighter then they used to be, they carry a whole knew look. Older, smarter, healthier. Its a good change. I smile. I see tears rise and threaten to fall over his long lashes, but he pushes them back. But I saw them. They were there.
“I came here as soon as I could!” he whispers, it's then that I notice that his voice has even changed, his voice dropped too... it's deeper more mature, even though he went through the whole voice crack and it deepened, I guess it did again. His eyes search mine for something, I don't know, I guess I must look pretty awful. I blink a few times, then squeeze his hands. His eyes flit toward our hands, he stared at them, like he never expected to have felt that again.
“What happened?” I asked stupidly, even though I know, I wanted someone else to tell me. Josh looked over at our father. He nodded, then took Ria by the hand and lead her out of the room with a promise of ice-cream.
It's a while before Josh talks, it seems like he is grasping for words.
“Josh, just tell me,” I beg in my weak voice. He meets my eyes for only a second. Then they flitted away.
I looked over my shoulder and stared at the beeping screen of my heart-beat, breathing, and blood pressure scans. My heart-beat went up a bit, because I realized how much trouble I had gotten into.
I looked back at Josh. He was biting his lip, a bad habit that we both have.
“Savannah,” he started. “Savannah, you tried to kill yourself.” My face crumpled, I knew this already, but it was so much to hear Josh's disappointed voice tell me. “You tired to drown yourself at the docks. Your heart stopped, but someone... Devin, saved your life.” So, his name was Devin, I tried to hate the name, but as I played it though my mind, I found myself liking it. I shook the feeling away.
“Oh,” I whispered. Josh shifted his gaze to the window. I closed my eyes.
I felt the disappointment sink in.
How could Devin be so thoughtless. Any sane person could see that I knew what I was doing. Why did he have to save me, my life isn't good for me... I haven't been happy in ages.
It all started a few years ago. When Ria was born Josh moved away, and my parents started fighting. Mother lost a lot of weight with stress. My school life started dropping. Everything just went downhill after that. I used to dress like a barbie, hell I was a barbie... a shot one, but after all my problems. I was a barbie gone goth.
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Tell me what you think!
, maybe because she reminded me of someone else i know who likes to sing... but that just shows she was relatable. Good job making Josh's character, I'm glad you actually made him tan, some stories the characters can be in the African plains and still have perfectly white skin, and that makes me go :/ . well, i guess that's it with me having fun adding smileys and weird faces into this, Good luck and Good job! Oh yeah, i believe some-one would commit suicide for that reason, after all, there's been worse reasons...