Take Me Tomorrow

Chapter 12: Going to Die

My mother called me Sophie, but it was short for my entire name. Sophia Elizabeth Gray. My middle name was her first name and she was proud of it, so she called me Sophie. "Like Soph E.," she once explained.

During that conversation, she was washing my hair, and the water had been too soapy. It burned my eyes and tasted like punishment. I squirmed when I told her, but she kept talking like she couldn't hear me. She scrubbed my scalp too hard. It hurt, and the only thing that stopped her was my dad. He burst into the bathroom and yelled until she let go of me. That's when I slipped back, hit my head, and water took over the memory.

Now, it was everywhere. Between my toes, wrapped around my arms, clutching my fingers and twisting my hair. Grasping my dress, the river ripped the fabric around my legs. The cold rush of it all spun me around. The icy water burned the way alcohol did when it was used to clean an injury. After my fall in the tub, my father had to use alcohol to clean my scalp. I still had a bumpy scar. Now, I couldn't feel it. I couldn't feel much at all. 

I clenched my teeth and tried to pry my eyes open, but my mouth opened instead. I gulped on river water. My throat tightened, my body screamed. My arms and my legs flailed around. I could swim, but the rushing current made it hard to realize which way was up. Just the thought of the previous rains drowned me.

As I fought for control, I smacked into something hard, and a branch wrapped around my swinging arm. But it wasn't a branch. It was a hand. A big hand. And then, it let go.

When my head broke the surface, someone screamed, "Sophie!" Or was that all in my head? I looked around, but was sucked back under. I flipped in the water. My dress snagged on twigs, rocks, everything. I was going to die.

Pain shot up my spine as my body jerked up. I broke the surface again. Oxygen flooded my lungs. My head spun. I heard someone shout my name again. It sounded like my father, but my dad never called me Sophie. Never slapped my cheek until I came to either.

"Come on, focus," Noah's voice rose above the sirens that consumed the night air, the same night air that bit my exposed skin like sleet. "Breathe, Sophie."

I gurgled the water that my lungs rejected as Noah dragged us across the river. With one arm he swam us toward shore, with the other he held me. I clutched his heavy jacket, my fingers digging into him. A whimper escaped me. I was so numb I couldn't even help him swim, but I tried, until I almost slipped from his grasp. That's when I let him take him control. Depended on him to get us to safety. Tried not to think about what that meant.

As the current strengthened, and Noah was clearly losing his strength, he stretched out his swimming arm and somehow snagged a fisher's net. He pulled, and then I pulled. The net was our only chance to get to shore. Even with the item, we strained against the current, his foot kicking against mine, but we moved forward. Noah was a strong swimmer, stronger than anyone else I knew in the Topeka Region. I was wrong about him. He hadn't grown from the forest; he had come out of the water.

Before I even saw the water's edge, Noah pulled me onto the shore and then helped himself out. He gasped for breath, half of his torso collapsing on top of mine. Both of us spit up water, unable to care where it landed. I could barely breathe, and his hand moved to my head. His fingertips stroked my scalp like I needed the comfort. Honestly, I probably did.

He pushed himself up on shaking arms. "You okay?"

I slapped him across the face.

As if we hadn't had enough water, rain began to downpour, cold and wet like the river. I shook, but my hand remained in the air, and rain dropped off of his bangs. His face was already reddening from where I'd struck him, but there was red that wasn't supposed to be there. Blood. His head had split open, and blood trickled down his cheek. Even so, he didn't seem to notice. His widened eyes stared at me and only me.