Rag Doll In The Waves

• Bronte Reynolds, Grade 12
• Short Story
• 2011

Olivia is a rag-doll in the waves. Her body twists with the current. Her lungs heave against her ribs. Any moment they will either jump out her nose or explode inside her.

The water pushes against her skull and she sinks deeper. Her temples will soon cave inward.
“So this is what it feels like to be part of the sea, part of something” she thinks. This tumbling sensation in your stomach, this taste of salt in your nose, the sea in your lungs and gritty sand in hazel eyes and, and, and...
Suddenly she is unaware of the current. The pressure on her skull stops, and numbness replaces it. The waves cradle her tenderly and her body sinks downward.

An hour ago the edges of Olivia’s bare feel dangled over the rocky ledge. The meeting with Olivia’s biological mother had been no more than a long expected inconvenience to her mother.
Olivia had felt like a dismembered branch, who, after years of being tronden on underfoot, had tyied to re attach itself to the tree that dropped it. All Olivia was to her mother, was the embodiment of one impetuous night.
She peered down at the mass of water below her, where all the individual streams flowed together to become an ocean, moving together in giant waves. She longed to know what that felt like.

Now, skin white, lips drained of colour, she moves with the twisting flow of the ocean. An orchestra of ambient noise. This is what it feels like to be a part of something.
Suddenly a hand grips her wrist. Pulling her away from the twisted brutal ballet. The water lets her go and Mike becomes awear of her weight as he drags her towards shore.
Olivias mind is still swimming in the murky grey. Mikes voice screams somewhere in the background of it all.
She feels a pounding against her chest. Breathe. She tries, but she has forgotten how. Olivias lungs heave against her ribs then fall.
The silence is deafening and Mikes stomach twists painfully in tight knots. He tries to block it out and focus on the rhythmic pounding. One, two, three. One, two, three...
Olivias throat tightens, Mike turns her on her side as she emptys salt water from her lungs in painful coughs.

“Olive! Its OK! Olivia! Look at me”. She lookes up at him, trying to blink the sand out of her eyes. “Mike?”
“Oh, my Gosh” he whispers to himself.
“Jesus Olive! What happened to all those swimming lessons?”
“Well, I know yours didn’t go to waste.”

Olivia looks through her window, and watches Mike hop out of his car, a plastic bag swings in his hand. He got her her favourite take away and some arm floaties as a joke. She raises her eyes up and smiles when she see a bird making a nest out of broken sticks, watching with silent admiration at the way all the tiny detached branches weave together to make a shelter.