Alone                                                                  

        All Sarah could think about at practice was getting home so she could lay down and stare into her phone on social media for the rest of the day. She was the star of the swim team, I guess you could say. She had been swimming for years and never once did it cross her mind that she could have competition within her own team. Little did she know that, that was about to change.
Sarah was built for swimming. She was tall and muscular, for a girl, with wide shoulders. Typical swimmer. She had never ate out of the diet Saxon gave her or missed a practice. But Sarah was getting older and getting more opportunities to go places and do stuff with her friends. She was in high school and didn’t want to spend every second of her life at practice staring at a black line.  Her coach, Saxon, started to notice this “I don’t care” attitude in Sarah that came across before she even did herself.
Saxon was worried. He was worried that Sarah would just stop trying all together and lose interest in a sport she was really good at. He started to remind her frequently that he, her family, her school and her team had expectations she had to live up to. When he told her that, all she did was roll her eyes and say something like “Its not like somebody’s going to beat me” or “I just want a life”. It drove her crazy when he told her these things because she knew, or thought she knew, he was just trying to make her feel bad. So finally one day she decided she wasn’t going to practice. Instead she was going to go to the fair with her friends.
It seemed like Saxon waited forever for Sarah to show up to practice. He stood outside and looked for her little blue Honda Civic with her monogram on the back of it, to pull into the pool parking lot. He waited and waited and waited but she never came. Finally he just started practice without her.
Meanwhile, Annie, Sarah’s closest thing to a competitor, worked with Saxon. Annie was good but she wasn’t as big as Sarah, which makes a big difference in swimming. Anyway the state championship meet was coming up in a few weeks, and Annie knew she needed to practice as much as she could. She’d always been second best to Sarah and she thought maybe this meet would end that.
Sarah sat on the bench next to the ferris wheel and ate fried oreos with one of her friends, Erin. Erin was different, as in not your average sixteen year old girl. She got in trouble with the law quite often. She didn’t come from a good family and moved around from place to place until she moved here last year. Erin had sleeves of tattoos and piercings in every visible part of her body and didn’t seem normal to anyone at their school, so Sarah kind of took her in. Erin didn’t have the best influence on Sarah and Sarah’s family constantly reminded her that “Erin was a bad person” and “Oh, trust me you don’t want to get into that.” But Sarah just ignored it. She didn’t see anything wrong with her until one little mistake changed her life forever.

It was getting late and Sarah was standing on the corner of the street all alone. Erin had gone off with some boys that looked similar to her. She knew right away coming to the fair was a bad idea when Erin left her there with nothing but the clothes on her back and her cell phone. The cell phone wasn’t much help. She had absolutely no service, and even if she did, who could she call? Her parents were at the Panthers game, not any of her four grandparents lived anywhere around them, her brother wouldn’t come get her even if his life depended on it, so there was only one person left to call. That one person was Saxon. He was the last person she wanted to call for help considering she skipped practice today without even telling him. She was desperate to get out of there though so she called him. It rang four times and went straight to his voicemail. Figures. Saxon saw her calling and ignored it. He was really disappointed in her and didn’t think twice in sending her to voicemail. So she sat down on the curb and waited for what seemed like hours in the dark.
Finally Sarah  saw what looked like a boy walking, or attempting to walk towards her. As he got closer she realized he was drunk. She got up really fast as if she was scared he was going to hurt her. Sarah tried to ask him where Erin was, and he pointed across the street. She didn’t know what she should do. Should she stay here?  Should she go across the street, or should she run as fast as she could in the other direction? She decided to walk across the street in hope to find Erin.
Erin was not in a good place. She was alone, drunk and confused. She recognized Sarah walking down the sidewalk on the other side of the street. She followed her as fast as she could, wobbling every time she took a step. “Sarah!” Erin yelled in Sarahs direction. Sarah turned around and ran towards Erin. “Where did you go?!” asked Sarah. Erin just said she was with her brother and his friends and that was it. Sarah knew that wasn’t the truth, but she didn’t care. She was just ready to go home. Sarah rushed Erin to her old beat up red car and said they needed to leave before something bad happens.
Erin wanted to drive but Sarah knew that was the worst possible idea considering she was drunk but she agreed anyway because all she wanted was to go home. They got in Erin’s little beat up red car and pulled out of the fair parking lot where they had parked hours and hours ago. Erin seemed fine driving, but there was something a little off. They were more than half way to Sarah’s house when Erin started speeding up a lot. Sarah didn’t mind because all she wanted was to be home. Near Sarah’s house is a really sharp turn, and they were about to get to it. Sarah told Erin she needed to slow down but she wouldn’t respond or slow down. She was up to ninety six miles an hour. Sarah started screaming and yelling at Erin to slow down but still, nothing. If Erin didn’t slow down, they were going to wreck. Erin didn’t. They were in a fatal car wreck. The car flipped at least five times and then wrapped around a tree.
Sarah’s mom, dad and coach sat in the waiting room at the hospital thinking of what happened and why and what they could have done to stop it. Sarah was rushed into surgery immediately after the ambulance got to the hospital. Erin was pronounced dead at the scene. Her family was nowhere to be found. They waited for a nurse or doctor to come out and give them news about their daughter but no one came for what seemed like days. They all wondered why Sarah would do something as ridiculous as getting in a car with a drunk driver.

Saxon blamed this on himself. He thought if he would have answered that phone call none of them would be sitting here in this hospital. Sarah’s parents tried to tell him it wasn’t his fault, but he just couldn’t help to take the blame for it. States were in a few weeks and he realized he wouldn’t have the strongest, best swimmer he had to compete. But right now he didn’t care. All he could think about was the hopeless girl laying on the operating table that he’d known for years and was now basically like a little sister to him.
Finally the doctors came out and said Sarah was in critical condition but she would live. Her parents and Saxon all started crying and thanking God that she would be okay. But Sarah would still be in the hospital for a few weeks and would without question miss the state championships of course.
Weeks passed and Annie had worked and worked and worked until the week of states finally came. Annie won second in the state in the one hundred meter backstroke behind this girl named Madison. Sarah came in a wheelchair to support Annie and Saxon. She really, really hoped she could come back next year. Annie was really happy with it but she wished Sarah could have been there to compete. After all that happened in the past few weeks they both realized their love for swimming. Maybe it just took some mistakes along the way to realize it.
A year passed and Sarah had a lot to deal with since she had lost Erin in such a tragic way. Lucky for her Sarah had swimming to fall back on and a good coach and friend that helped her get back on her feet. Her and Annie were both back and in the pool better than ever.