Tell Me Where's My Hollywood Ending?

I tossed my bag into Roar’s car, and climbed in the back middle seat, Jay had taken the passenger side. We hadn’t been able to spend much time together lately, what with projects, and finals. As it turned out after Graduation, Jay was going to go off to school in New York to study film, and Roar was going with him to take a course in photography. We had decided that after our last exam, the next day we would go up to Malibu for the weekend before graduation.

Roar’s Parent’s had a house up there and they said we could hang out as long as it was just the three of us. James had begged to tag along, I told him this was my get away with my school friends only. In reality Roar would’ve loved for James to tag along, but I needed to get away from the Palm Woods and all their Future Famous. I had been feeling so guilty for kissing Logan at the concert, I literally would ask James when they’d be at the studio that way I knew I could come home and not run into them. I went back to just running with James in the morning, and that was it.

It didn’t take us too long to get to the house. We immediately all changed into our swim wear and headed to the beach that was just below us. Jay went out with his surf board to catch some waves, Roar sat under an umbrella on the sand to read and I waded out into the water to swim. Jay swam over to me with his board. 

“You wanna learn to surf?” He asked. I thought a moment and nodded. He hopped over his board and told me to lay on it on my stomach. I climbed on and did as I was told. Jay hooked up the leash to my foot and then told me how to paddle and ‘pop up’. He told me to practice them while he held the board so i couldn’t go anywhere. After about an hour of this practicing he told me to wait a minute so he could run back up to the house and get his extra board so we could go out on a wave together.

We paddled out and got on the wave. I watched what Jay was doing to copy him. When he popped up, so did I, if he moved the board, I did the same. That was until suddenly I was engulfed by water. If there was one thing I wasn’t good with, it was being submerged by water. I was fine, wading out into the water swimming in shallower ends, waist deep at least, anything deeper and I would panic. I wasn’t that great of a swimmer, pathetic really. I thrashed and spun and turned and rolled. I felt a sharp pain in my ankle. Panic really started to set in when I felt my chest tighted and it got hard to hold my breath.

I’m an Idiot. I thought as I started to hyperventilate underwater. How could I be so stupid? I’m going to die down here, I just wanted to have a good weekend with my friends, learn to surf and now, I’m going to die. I’m going to die from a panic attack making me drown. I thrashed about some more, trying to reach up to my throbbing ankle and undo the leash. I couldn’t do it though. I was getting really hard to do anything with the amount of water in my lungs. I tried to cough it back out but again, I was under water. That was the last thing I remembered after passing out.

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

I woke up on the beach, having a coughing fit. I saw Jay knelt beside me and Roar staring at me standing over me. I rolled over in the sand and dry heaved before I could properly breath again. I went to stand up, but Roar caught me when there was a sharp pain in my ankle. She helped me hobble over to the umbrella and sat me down in her chair. Jay ran off back up to the house while I looked down at my ankle. It was swollen, black and blue, not to mention just above it, I was bleeding.

“The fuck happened?” I asked, my voice raspy. 
“You wiped out,” she said. “You wiped out and Jay couldn’t find you at first, he couldn’t see the board. It took him a few minutes to find you but you had passed out.”
“I had a panic attack underwater..” I said. I was supposed to see a doctor if that happened again. I looked over at her. “I remember that much.”
“He had to give you CPR,” she said. “I thought you were dead for a moment there.”

I shrugged. As if dying wasn’t a big deal.

Jay ran back over and sat down at the foot of the blanket. He bandaged up my foot and told us it would all be best if we went back up to the house and watched tv or something. They helped me up the many steps and we sat down on the giant couch and watched shows. That night we went out onto the deck and had a bon fire. I felt like shit for ruining what would’ve been an awesome 3 days of fun and adventure.

We still stayed in Malibu for three days, but most of it was me sitting with ice and trying to convince my friends they could still have fun without me.