Josh kept telling himself that Lily had to be alive. With panic in his chest, Josh tried to breathe slowly as the feelings of fear and dread mounted higher with each stoke he paddled. As he headed up to the cabins, Josh thought about what he would tell his and Lily’s parents and the sheriff. The most important thing was for them to focus on finding Lily. He had to leave out some parts of what he saw. If he told them about the Standing Wave turning into a whirlpool, about how it sucked Lily in—and at the same time how it threw him up in the air—they’d think he’d lost his mind. And he couldn’t tell them about the weird music he heard in the trees and how the sky mysteriously clouded over when the whirlpool formed.
If he described everything he saw, they might not believe a thing he said. So, he kept to his “simple” story: “One minute Lily was surfing the wave and the next, she had disappeared. I was right there in the nearby eddy, where I always stay where we spot each other surfing the wave. It was quiet. The sky was blue. The trees were turning gold with the coming Fall.”
He knew what he saw. Or did he? Maybe he really had gone crazy and just dreamed up the whole whirlpool thing. Or maybe he was perfectly sane and had seen things happen that weren’t normal, and therefore … supernatural, or … the product of magic.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
You're always so good at getting inside your characters' heads! I'm always clear about what they're thinking & feeling. This one is especially good. I can feel Josh's anxiety over telling the story, his worry that he might be crazy. Well done!
ReplyDeleteI love the thought out detail of his "simple" story: “One minute Lily was surfing the wave and the next, she had disappeared. I was right there in the nearby eddy, where I always stay where we spot each other surfing the wave. It was quiet. The sky was blue. The trees were turning gold with the coming Fall.”
ReplyDeleteWonderful!