"It comes and goes in waves
It always does, always does
We watch as our young hearts fade
Into the flood, into the flood"
• Season 1-?
• Based on the show 'The Summer I Turned Pretty'
• Conrad Fisher x Fem oc
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It was a hot summer day in Cousins.
Sarah was lying by the pool with a magazine on her face. Her mother was playing solitaire on the front porch with Laurel and Susannah was inside puttering around the kitchen. She would probably come out soon with a glass of sun tea and a book Sarah should read. Something romantic.
Conrad, Jeremiah, Belly, Steven and Liam had been surfing all morning. There had been a storm the night before.
Conrad, Jeremiah and Belly returned to the house first. Sarah heard them before she saw them. They walked up the steps, laughing about over how Liam had lost his shorts after a particularly ferocious wave.
Conrad strode over to Sarah, lifted the sweaty magazine from her face, and grinned. "You have words on your cheeks."
Sarah squinted up at him. "What do they say?"
"I can't tell. Let me see." Conrad said.
He peered at her face in his serious Conrad way, then leaned in and kissed her. His lips were cold and salty from the ocean.
"You guys need to get a room." Jeremiah teased, wrapping an arm around Belly's shoulder and pressed a kiss against her temple.
Sarah knew he was joking. Jeremiah winked at her as he came from behind, lifted Conrad up, and launched him into the pool. He then jumped in too along with Belly.
"Come on, Sarah!" Belly called out.
So of course, Sarah jumped too. The water felt fine. Better than fine. Just like always, Cousins was the only place she wanted to be.
Sarah opened her eyes to find herself in a classroom.
She wasn't in Cousins.
Her and Conrad weren't together, and Susannah was dead.
Nothing would ever be the same again.
It had been a month since Susannah had died, and Sarah still couldn't believe it. She couldn't let herself believe it.
When a person you love dies, it doesn't feel real. It's like it's happening to someone else. It's someone else's life. Sarah has never been good with the abstract.
What does it mean when someone is really and truly gone?
Sometimes Sarah closed her eyes, and, in her head, she said over and over again, it isn't me, it isn't true, this isn't real. This wasn't her life. But it was her life; it was her life now.
Sarah was in Honors Physics, which she finds both a blessing and a curse. She'd much rather have it in the afternoon so she could be fully awake for her favourite subject. Instead, she was often having to fight to stay conscious. At least she's in the back of the room where Mr Brown couldn't see her sleeping.
