I looked at the clock, and there were only ten minutes left to finish the exam with six algebra problems to go. I looked around the classroom seeing everybody in the same state as me, worried that they were not going to finish. Everybody has their different way of coping with this kind of stress to finish, such as Sarah-Beth shaking her right knee, Timothy Smith bites on the end of his pen, Ellie rubs her temples, and I can not get my hands to top shaking to write down what I need to. I looked at the clock again, seven minutes with five more problems to go. Seven more minutes and summer will be here. Just seven more minutes.

Rinnnngggggggg the familiar bell sound rang making me write and calculate numbers faster than I never knew I could, finishing just before Ms. Daniels could come to take it off my desk.

“I hope you all have a wonderful summer, and I hope to see you all again in the upcoming school year,” Ms. Daniels said with her strict cold voice that I had to suffer through this whole year. I picked up my stuff and walked straight out of the building, anxious to feel the warm summer breeze on my face once again. I walked outside with the breeze hitting my face and being joyful that summer was here once again, and nobody could stop me from doing what I wanted.
“ Alissa! Alissa! Alissa!!!!” I whipped my head around to see Timothy, Sarah-Beth, and Ellie heading my way with their school supplies slung behind their backs.

“Are you coming to the Juice Bar with us??” Ellie asked me as soon as she ran to catch up with me, she was by far the most athletic out of all of us with her long legs and great stamina, and the others were still trudging along.

“ I don’t know, I have to train for the slalom competition at the end of July, and you know how competitive that is. Right now I don’t stand a chance between those kids, and I need all of the training I can get so I can beat them.”

“ Come on Alissa! That competition is in July and it is only the end of May! By the way we are juniors now, and we HAVE to celebrate at the Juice Bar with all of our other friends. It wouldn’t be the same without you,” Sarah-Beth pleaded as she and Timothy caught up with us.

“I’m really not sure if-”

“ You are coming at that is final!” Timothy interupted as he grabbed my arm and pulled me all the way until we got to the Juice bar.


As we walked in a saw a bunch of my other classmates as well, almost all of them talking about how hard our exam was, and how all of us had barely finished. We walked over to our spot that we always sat and waited for the waitress to come and take our order. I scanned the menu and actually realized how hungry I was because everything seemed so appealing at the moment. Deciding that I would get a hamburger and a strawberry shake, I then saw my twin brother, John, walk in and heading over to where all of his friends were sitting. As soon as he had ordered he spotted me and walked over to my table.

“Hey sis.” he said pushing me farther into the booth squishing Ellie and I, so he could sit down.

“Hey what did you think of that algebra exam? It was terribly hard, and I am pretty sure that I will never use that in my life. Why do we even need to know this stuff?” I asked my brother curiously then slurping my strawberry shake.

“First off, I thought the exam was pretty easy, and you never know when Algebra will help you in life, but it will someday,” He responded to me. I laughed to myself in my head, I should have known better to have asked John a question like that because he is a genius, and he knows everything!

“Well I am just glad the school year is over, I don’t think I could have handled anymore of Algebra with Ms. Daniels,” Timothy chimed in when he saw me eye John.

“Yea, I’m glad the school year is over, and I’m also glad that we decided to come here because this shake is outstanding!” Ellie added. We all laughed as Ellie continued to slurp loudly on the strawberry shake.

“I am also glad that you decided to come with us Alissa,” Sarah-beth added after Ellie had finished her shake in her soft innocent voice.

looking distraught John said to me,“Why weren’t you going to come here Alissa? It is practically a tradition after exams are over to come to the Juice Bar,”

“ I was going to go train for the big slalom competition at the end of the summer.”

“ You were? Seriously? You are good at competitions and being able to complete the course, but I bet you couldn’t beat my record for going the longest distance on Lake Michigan. I made it to the old boathouse, and I would like to see you try to go farther than me,” John said confidently.

“Oh please I can easily make it to the old boathouse where you dropped last time. I bet I can make it even farther than that, I bet that I could make it to OldMan Williford’s House,” John looked at me like I was crazy and then said,

“ Okay, you can try. We can do Wednesday morning, that gives you four days to work on your strategies,” and with that my brother walked off back to his friends table.

“Wow. You and your brother are really competitive. I hope you can make it to Oldman Willifords house. Goodluck!” Ellie remarked as my brother took off.


I woke up on Wednesday morning and looked at the clock to see that it read 6:45 in big red letters. I was finally able to drag myself out of the bed once I remembered what day it was, the day I was going to beat my brother. I pulled on my swim suit and got my life jacket out of the garage and went to go grab my breakfast that consisted of only a protein bar and a shake. Then I went to my brothers door to get him up, I yelled into his room,

“John! Get up!! You were going to see if I could beat you today, remember? Get up!” After a second he threw open the door with a disgusted look on his face, and shoved me out of his way walking into the kitchen grabbing a protein bar.

“You are going to see if I can ski to Oldman Williford’s house remember?”

“Of course I remember. I would love to see you even try to beat me,” he mumbled with food falling out of his mouth.

“Then go get dressed! I would like to start as soon as possible. Meet me down at the dock.”
I walked outside and felt the warm summer breeze hit my face assuring me that summer was back for sure. I walked over to the old shed where we kept our ski’s and ropes and pulled out my slalom ski and the rope with the hand grips on it. Turning around to get on the boat, I saw John shuffling his way down the stairs to get to the boat, ruffling his hair and yawning.

“You look really tired, do you want to wait a while and let you get some more rest? You were out pretty late last night, and I certainly do not mind waiting until tomorrow,” I said as he made his way toward me.

“No, I can’t do it tomorrow because I have football workouts. Lets just do it now.”
He walked over to the boat lift and flipped the switch to lower the boat. The familiar sound of the boat lowering brought back years of childhood memories seeing who could hop on the boat before it lowered first or who could run to the end of the dock and back before it lowered. I threw my life jacket on and pulled myself over the boat. John started the boat making the sound of the soft purr of the engine, and he backed out of the slip. I fastened my life jacket and took the rope and tied it around the ski pylon, tugging on it to make sure it was fastened correctly. I looked at John to tell him that I was good to go, and he then yawned and nodded his head.

“Are you sure that you can drive? You look really tired,” I asked him concerned.

“ I will be fine Alissa just get in the water,” and with that I jumped in the cold exhilarating water.

“You ready?” he asked me as soon I had gotten to the end of the rope, I gave him the universal signal to go, the thumbs up, and he accelerated forward. Sit in the chair, arms straight, bent knees, and let the boat pull you up were the four things that my dad constantly told me when I was seven years old and still learning how to slalom, I got up and felt the rush of excitement I get whenever I start to ski. I went outside of the wake and cut hard back into it feeling my ski carry me to the other side after doing this a couple of times, I had gotten pretty tired and looked at my surroundings. Excitement filled within me, I was almost to the old boat house! And after that I only had about 6 miles to go to get to OldMan Willifords house! We passed the Old boat house about two minutes later and I knew that I was officially better than my brother, all that I had to do now was hold on for a couple more minutes. I waved frantically at John to see if he had noticed that I had already passed the boat house, he didn’t wave back. That is odd, maybe he was just too jealous to look at me. I bet that is it. I thought to myself as I was filling with hope that I had just beaten my brother, now all I had to was pass Mr. Willifords house, and I would have accomplished myself early in the summer. As I continued to give myself compliments that I had done so well, I saw a boat off in the distance, and they were heading straight for us.


“John turn to the right!!” I yelled to my brother as loud as I could, but he didn’t hear me. The boat was approaching faster and John had not turned and neither had the other boat.

“JOHN!” I yelled even louder at him. I was so nervous that there was going to be a head on collision. Before I knew it the boat was about to hit us, but veered to the left sending the wake right towards me and throwing me off balance. I fell and hit the water hard. I came up out of the water gasping for air. Seeing that the boat kept going and not turning around to come pick me up. I waved my arms frantically hoping that John would notice that I had fallen, but he didn’t. I squinted my eyes to see that John had flopped over. I knew that he had fallen asleep. A million thoughts ran through my head Am I a bad sister for letting him drive while he was so tired? What am I going to do stranded out in the middle of Lake Michigan? I prayed that John would be alright and wake up before anything dangerous would happen.

In my head, I tried to formulate a plan. I could try and wave down some boats. If that doesn’t work I could try and find land and walk back home. It sounded like a good enough plan in my head, but in reality I knew it would be a lot harder than it seemed. A couple of minutes later I heard a boat coming towards my way, I lifted up my ski and waved it around while yelling “Help! Help!” the boat was approaching faster, so I raised my voice and my ski even higher. They kept driving. They didn’t see me. What in the world was I going to do. A couple more boats had waved and kept going, but none of them even bothered to stop by. Well, the first part of my plan was a fail. I thought to myself losing hope by the second. I decided to swim to shore before dusk hit, the sun was already starting to set and I needed to get on shore.

I splashed through the water using my ski as a raft. I felt my body getting heavier and heavier as I was getting more and more tired. Then I saw something off in the distance. Land! I swam as fast as I could to it just to lose hope once again. It was a jagged cliff that I was too tired to climb, but I decided to give it a shot anyway. It was slippery, but I did manage to get some good footing. I boosted my way up to the next foot hole and pulled myself up again, I repeated the process over and over again a until I reached a spot where I couldn’t find any stable rock to put my foot on. I looked around and tried various rocks, all that I knew would come out from under me as soon a I put pressure on it. I decided to go with the rock that looked the strongest and put my foot on it, at the same time a wave splashed upon my back making me lose my footing and fall off of the rocks. I came down hard and felt a sharp pain in my left leg. The water around me turned red, my leg had felt like it had been shot. I looked down and the whole right side of my left leg and been cut right down the middle. I yelped in pain hoping that someone, or anyone could hear me.

I managed to pull myself together and swim a little farther. My leg was stinging and I was tired and hungry, and not very sure that I was going to be able to make it to a near by shore. I splashed through the water for at least another hour the pain growing worse in my leg. I noticed that while swimming the cliffs that I tried to climb up on seemed to be getting lower and lower. I gained hope that these cliffs would lead me into the woods which would hopefully lead me to a road!
I was right! I found the woods and began to make my way through them until I reached the road. It was almost completely dark, so I knew I had to hurry in order to get to the road. That meant no pauses to look at my leg.

After hiking for about an hour, it began to get very dark to where I could not see very well. I didn’t stop though, not this close to being able to find a way back home. Finally, the land I was walking on got hard and I knew that I was on the road! I yelped with excitement and started to head east to where my house was, I knew it was going to be about an hours walk, but it was still better than swimming the whole way. I had walked for a long while and decided to sit down on the side of the road to take a break because my leg was receiving a sharp pain every time I had put pressure on it. I took a seat on some leaves feeling relieved that my body was taking a break from such a rough day. That was when I saw car lights just around the corner. I quickly stood up and waved the car down, I knew it was not good to get a ride with strangers, but they looked like very nice people. It was just a husband and a wife who were dressed up probably coming back from a banquet or something. They pulled over and started to speak to me.

“ May we help you?” They asked rolling down the window.

“Yes! Yes you could. You could help me a lot by giving me a ride to a telephone pole, so I could call my mom and tell her where I have been. Oh she must have been so nervous. I also have to ask her about my brother and see if he has made it home alright. Please can you give me a ride. I am so very desperate, I have been swimming the the water and hiking through the woods with this big gash in my leg,” I pleaded them in the best way possible hoping the would believe me. They looked at me like I was crazy and the wife leaned in to the husband and whispered something to him.

“Alright, we will let you use our phone and we will give you a ride back to where ever you need to go,” the man said with a smile on his face

“Oh thank you! Thank you so much!” I threw open the back door and got in.

“Sweetie do we need to take you to the hospital? You can ask your mom to meet us there if you want. Your leg looks pretty bad,” she asked me handing me her phone.

“No, it is okay. I just need to focus on getting in touch with my parents,” I told them and took her phone graciously. I dialed my moms phone number in and waited for her to pick up.

“Hello?” My moms familiar voice said on the other line.

“Mom? It is me Alissa. Listen I am okay John dropped me and did’nt turn around to come pick me up because I think he fell asleep while I was skiing. Anyway I have big gash in my leg and I really need to get it looked at so do you think we can go see the doctor tomorrow?” i asked my mom assuring her that everything was okay. She mumbled something But i could quite catch what she said.

“ Mom, slow down I can’t understand you. Mom slow down. Mom?” The line went dead.

“What did your mom say sweetie?” The wife asked me.

“ Umm I couldn’t really tell what she was saying, but am pretty sure she said something about meeting me at the hospital, so I think we need to go there,” I said to them trying to act braver than I felt.

“We can sure do that for you,” the man said with a kind smile. We drove in silence for about 5 miles until we pulled into the hospital parking lot. We walked in the waiting room and I waited for them to call me back into the room.

“Alissa Alexander?” I stood up at the sound of my name, and so did the man and the woman. They took me back into the hospital to get a cat scan to see if there was a lot of damage done to my left thigh. They told me that it was not to bad, but that I would have to keep it bandaged up and be on crutches for about two months. The nurse took me back into the medical room and bandaged me up really tight and taught me how to do it after each shower, and then the nurse measured me for how big my crutches would be. I got my crutches and started to head towards where the man and the woman were sitting when I saw a familiar body out of the corner of my eye sitting down I crying. I took a closer look to see that that person was my mother.

“Mom. Mom? are you okay? What has happened?” I asked my mom.

“Oh honey are you alright?”

“Mom, I am fine. Why are you crying?

“ Honey. After you fell while skiing, your brother was in a terrible boast crash. He has a lot of broken bones and has to get a couple of surgeries,”

“Will he be alright? Do you think he will survive?”

“The doctors said that they do not know yet, but I assure you that everything will be alright,” with that my mom pulled me into a hug.