Little White Lie
Chapter 2
By: Jenn
A/N – So my lucky-ass friend who lives in England met GC last night. And apparently when Joel called Benji over he was like, “Hey bitch, get over here and sign these!” And I find that tremendously amusing… but I’m easily amused. And my friend is lucky, and I hate her. Anyway. Review or I’ll be so very sad. NP – ‘Say Anything’ by Good Charlotte.
CHAPTER TWO
The next few seconds were a complete blur, but somehow I ended up back in the water, swimming out to where Aaron went down with Joel right behind me. Billy and Paul stood in shock on the beach as Joel and I tried desperately to find Aaron. The murky water stung my eyes as I dove as deep as I could, flailing my arms around me wildly searching for some sign of Aaron – an arm, his hair, a piece of clothing, anything. I felt my lungs burning, desperate for oxygen, and kicked back up to the surface. I greedily gulped the fresh air as soon as my face broke through the surface of the water. Once I caught my breath, I dove down again. I felt my heart racing when my hand grazed what felt like another hand, but it turned out to only be Joel. He’d thought the same thing I had, that when he touched my hand he’d found Aaron. We didn’t. We never did.
I surfaced one last time taking in as much oxygen as I could before going back down. I wasn’t going to give up. Joel was beside me, treading water and just watching me.
“Benj…” he said quietly. I ignored him and prepared to dive under again. He grabbed my arm and held tightly. “Benj, we’re not gonna find him.”
I stared at my brother in disbelief. He couldn’t be giving up. Aaron was still down there and we had to find him.
“Benj come on,” Joel said. “It’s been way too long. There’s no way.”
I nodded in defeat and followed as Joel swam back to shore. He was right, it had been nearly 15 minutes since Aaron went down. No one could survive that long under water.
Joel and I trudged out of the water past the still-stunned Billy and Paul, and flopped down on the sand, exhausted. Billy and Paul sat down next to us, and none of us spoke for a long time. We sat there in silence, the setting sun behind us providing no comfort against the icy dread we all felt.
“But we didn’t. . . we didn’t kill him, did we?” Billy stuttered in a voice that reminded me of a small, terrified child.
“No, we just laughed and did nothing to help him,” Paul snapped, his voice dripping with bitter sarcasm. Billy said nothing.
I turned to look at Billy sitting next to me. The tiny guitarist was shivering violently, but I knew it was not from the cool breeze coming off the lake. I placed my arm around his shoulders gently, then pulled him closer to me offering what little comfort I could.
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Paul’s POV
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It could have been hours we sat on that beach staring at the spot on the water where Aaron went down. Time seemed irrelevant. All I’m sure of is that it was well past sunset when Dan, who’d been taking a nap in one of the spare bunks on the bus, awoke and came to round us up. We had to go. We had a show the next night and press early the next morning. A show and press. That seemed impossible since we’d just watched our drummer drown. Dan began leading us back towards the bus, then stopped suddenly and turned to us.
“Hey where’s Aaron?” he asked.