It was the best day to go to the beach. The weather was perfect. Sunny, with a slight breeze and some clouds in the sky, and hot. So dreadfully hot. The summers in Florida are never dull, no matter what the temperature is. Every day, my friends and I can lay out and tan by the pool, go shopping, or go on adventures just to see what kind of trouble we could get into. It was in June that we took our first trip to our favorite beach since school got out. We drove with the windows down and music blasting. As we arrived at the beach we could only think of one thing. It was summer. The air even smelled like it. Sunburnt tourists, sandcastles and the smell of sunscreen filled the air. Surprisingly, the beach wasn’t as crowded as we thought it would’ve been on the first weekend of summer. We set up our things on our section of the beach, and laid out our towels, and umbrella. We ate our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, laid out on the beach for a while, and headed out into the water. There were three of us. Taylor, Abby, and I.
“Come on guys!” Taylor said with a hint of a giggle as she plunged into the ocean. “You’re so slow!” With the sun beaming down on us as we waded deep into the water, I heard a fisherman yell something to us from the shore.
“Did you guys hear that?” I asked.
“Hear what?” Taylor replied.
“I thought I heard that fisherman talking to us, but it’s probably nothing” I said, and we continued into the water without any clue of what was about to happen.
We waded so far in the water that it was getting difficult to see the lifeguard stand. The tide was picking up quickly, but we didn’t think anything of it--we’d been in the ocean so many times before and we didn’t think it was a problem. Abby was joking around saying little things like, “Guys, I see crabs under our feet... Made you look!” and,”There’s a shark over there... Made you look.” It was funny for a while, and we were having a blast jumping waves, and wading out further and further. But then, we weren’t able to see the lifeguard stand at all, and the sky started to turn a black-grey color. With the water getting rocky, and no one to be seen in any direction, we were beginning to get worried. We started swimming back to the shore, but when we got to about waist-high in the water, Abby yelled out,“I see a shark!”
“Abby, stop joking around. This isn’t funny.” Taylor said.
“I’m not joking this time! I seriously see a shark. It’s big, and black. I think it might be a bull shark.” Abby said, with a frightened tone in her voice.
“If you’re joking Abby, I swear” I said, getting worried by Abbys’ rarely serious face.
“I’m not.” Abby snapped. She pointed to a strange black blob swimming under the rocky waves, and suddenly, three more black blobs appeared under the ocean surface. I thought about the last two hours, how there weren’t that many people on the beach, how there was a red flag above the lifeguard stand, how no one seemed to be deep in the water, past the drop off, and how the clouds started rolling in. I finally understood what the fisherman was trying to tell us. We were in danger. Of course we were in danger. We would’ve known if only we had listened. There was to be a tropical storm that afternoon. As the sharks were rapidly swimming towards us, we swam as fast as we could to get back to the beach before the storm actually hit, and before the sharks made fish food out of us. We were making pretty good time, considering the circumstances. The waves were pounding us, forcing great amounts of salt water to enter into our eyes, noses, and mouths.
“HELP!” Someone cried. I looked to my left, and saw that only Abby was swimming by me. We gave each other a terrified look as we swam back to rescue Taylor, who was caught in a small undertow, caused by the waves crashing against each other, allowing no time for her to catch a breath. On top of that, her feet were stuck under the sand, and the sharks were quickly making their way towards her. The storm was picking up, and we felt raindrops hitting the tops of our heads. We knew we needed to be quick.
“Grab my hand Taylor.” I shouted to her, through the large wind gusts that were sweeping by. She caught a hold of my hand, and Abby helped me pull her out of the sand, and over the large waves collapsing over her. We swam as fast as we could, letting the waves carry us back to shore. As we went over one particularly large wave, I saw our umbrella appearing in the distance. “Please let us get back safely.” I thought to myself. We finally collapsed onto the sand, rejoicing that we got back to the shore alive. But we still weren’t safe. The rain started pouring down on us, bringing lots of sand into our eyes. We grabbed our things, not even bothering to organize it all, and we ran to the car. By that point, we were the only ones on the beach,with no one else in sight. We dashed through the empty parking lot to my car, which seemed almost harder than swimming through the waves, because we were so tired and seeing was so difficult due to all the sand forcing into our eyes. We popped the trunk of my small 2003 baby blue Volkswagen Beetle. We hopped into the car, and caught a breath. It was as if I hadn’t breathed since the storm started. We sat there, in silence for about five minutes, and then started laughing. The rain was pounding down so hard, and the wind was sweeping through the air so fast that the water was coming down horizontally.
“What a way to start the summer.” Abby said, in a combination of breathing, crying, and laughing. We waited for the storm to settle a bit, and headed home, glad we were safe.