I started to get choky and I felt like crying and maybe I did but since I was in saltwater if I cried tears I couldn’t tell because my face was wet anyway.

Then I remembered that if you found a drowned person soon enough you could revive them. Janet had told me this. I was wasting precious seconds. I must get help. So I started for the beach and yelled out, “Mr. Bazlinton! Help!” But we had come out way too far for my voice to be heard.

“Help!” I yelled. Then I thought that it would be quicker to swim to the rocks, climb out, go up to the road, and run back to the beach. So I started off for the rocks. But I kept calling, “Help!” And praying, “Oh, Jesus, please, please!” And I was saying, “Oh, Jesus, please help me find her!” when somebody said, “No problem, laddie, here she is!

Jennifer stood up from behind a large rock and laughed at me till she almost got sick and every time I tried to get a word in edgewise she’d scream out, “Help me, Jesus!” and laugh some more. I paddled toward her as hard as I could because I had decided to kill her right there and then even if she was a girl and even if I did love her.

It took me about a minute to reach the rocks. And when I did, Jennifer started to climb over them to get away from me. I took off after her. I slipped and hit my shin really hard and it hurt a lot but I was so mad I didn’t care how much it hurt as long as I could catch her and kill her. Then I heard her yell out, “Ow! I’m hurt!”

And I yelled back, “Good, I hope you die!”

But she didn’t answer. When I got to her she was sitting holding her foot and bleeding a lot from the arch because she had stepped on a broken wine bottle and was cut horribly deeply. She looked up at me and tears were streaming down her cheeks.

I said, “I’m sorry, it’s my fault.”

“Don’t be an ass, it’s my silly fault. Oh my foot!” she said. Then she started to cry even harder because it hurt her so much and, I think, because she was scared: it was really bleeding hard, not like a regular cut but like a picture in Life magazine of an accident or a dying soldier. There was a puddle of blood under her foot. “What are we to do?”Jennifer wailed.

All of a sudden I remembered the first aid things Janet had taught me.