The Acceptance of Change

Chapter 6: Up.

I felt the cold water engulf me immediately. It was when I tried to swim up that I realized how deep I had gone before even thinking to do so. I swam up, guiding myself with the concrete wall presented before me, and made it to the surface. The Mange and Sadie helped me up onto the bridge, and I laid there for a few moments, getting my breath.

"Dude, are you ok?" The Mange exclaimed.

"Yeah I'm fine, gotta get changed out of these clothes though," I sighed, "they're drenched." My clothes weighed me down. I took off the jacket I was wearing and threw it over my shoulder. I was hoping the sun would dry off my skin, which it did. I was wearing a black t-shirt which absorbed the heat from the sun which helped it at least feel warm, but there was no saving grace for my jeans. They barely were held up. My tennis shoes were filled with water that was soaked up by my socks, they made an audible squish when I walked. My hair was also drenched, but was drying faster than expected. Even though I felt like a weighted blanket engulfed my body, I don't regret a thing.

"Hey," Sadie spoke, "Thank you." She spoke with a soft sincerity.. Like someone hadn't done something like that for her in a long time. "I actually can't swim, so who knows what would've happened if-"

"It wouldn't have mattered," I said without thinking, "I would've dived after you even if you had fallen in."

"Oh, well thank you. Sorry for drenching you though." She spoke, kind of in a trying to tell a joke way. but it didn't come across as such. It was more like a genuinely guilty way.

"No problem. Seriously. We should start heading back though, I'm not trying to catch a cold," I said urgently.

So we started to head back to the car and I realized that Sadie was kind of walking with a limp, she must've hurt her foot when she slipped.

"Hey, could you carry her to her car?" I whispered to The Mange, "she's got a limp going on, and I'm drenched."

"What are you guys whispering about?" Said Sadie, suspicious of our conversation.

The Mange bent down in front of Sadie.

"Hop on," The Mange said.

Sadie realized that we knew about her ankle, and she reluctantly got on The Mange's back, knowing that the latter would be much more painful. One of her feet was slightly drenched due to having slipped into the water. The other leg has barely bloody scrapes covering the midsection of the left of her calf which were probably from when I pushed her back up. I looked back to the other leg and it had scrapes on the left side as well.

"Sorry about the scrapes," I said.

"Seriously, don't worry about it," she said. "I prefer the scrapes over the treatment you got."

We made it to her car and The Mange set her down. The gravel on the parking lot gave her visual limp an audible representation as well.

"You gonna be ok driving home?" The Mange asked Sadie.

"Yeah, I'll be fine. You should worry about Jonas, not me," Sadie said.

They both look over at me and I look almost comical, the way I'm just standing there and dripping water off of my clothes still. The Mange laughed, but Sadie gave me a genuine little smile. My heart skipped a beat.

"Alright, I'll see you guys later," Sadie said.

"Alright, see ya!" The Mange said.

"See ya," I said. I kept looking at her while she drove away, almost in a trance.

"Come on, let's go," said The Mange. I was suddenly snapped out of my trance and walked towards his car.

He dropped me off at my foster home, which is where I lived, and The Mange drove off with a smile and a wave. After he left, and only after he left, I smiled to myself.

After standing there for a moment, I opened the door to my foster home.