Beneath the Surface

“I’m just curious, what could be up there?” Ron said to me.

“Who cares? We humans are living a perfectly good life down here, why would you ever even want to leave the ocean?” I said to Ron.

“How could you not want to know what it’s like not to be underwater, to experience fresh air and land, instead of always being underneath?” said Ron, looking at me like I was the crazy one.

Besides the fact that it was illegal, nobody had ever left the water; it was something unthinkable. There had lately been a lot of rumors though that a group of scientists were going to go onto shore, but nobody knew if it was serious. As we left the restaurant and went back to my place, Ron wouldn’t stop trying to convince me about going up there. He had been talking to me about it for several days and using all kinds of tricks to get me into it, and today was just one of those days. He was obviously one of those crazy people who desired to go and find out what kind of life lives up there. But me, I’m fine with my life down here in the beautiful wide ocean.

We finally arrived at my house and decided to just watch some TV in the living room since there was nothing special going on today. My mom put out cookies and milk. We always came up with our best ideas with cookies and milk.

“Alright, I have a crazy idea. I don’t want you to answer me now, but I want you to think about it for a few days. The two of us, let’s just go. You don’t need anything special to go up there, we could just go far out and around the blockades, just the two of us,” Ron said to me, with a bright face.

“Sure, I’ll think about it for a few days,” I said just to satisfy him and not ruin his happiness in the moment.

For years, I never cared about what was up there. It never crossed my mind or bothered me in any way, but tonight was different for some reason. I couldn’t fall asleep because I was thinking of the endless possibilities of things that could be up there. It could be a different species of animals, it could be deserted, it could be robots! I didn’t sleep the entire night and realized I had to talk to Ron about my thoughts, not sure what I want to do with them yet. I called him up and invited him over.

We sat in the living room and played cards. My mom put out cookies and milk. I didn’t want to bring up my ideas too directly and quickly because then he might get too excited and bother me even more. I slipped in a few of my ideas here and there, kind of letting them hang as discussion topics, so very casually and without getting too excited. After all my ideas were out, I somehow convinced myself even more.  

Another sleepless night passed, and another, and another. But one morning, I finally made up my mind. I wanted to go up there and find out what it was like above the water. This time I didn’t care about Ron getting too excited. I had to tell him face to face. I went downstairs, had my cookies and milk and called him over.

Ron came over again and I sat him down in front of me in the living room.

“I want to do it Ron, I want to go up there,” I said with a smirk on my proud face.

“Yes! I knew it! I knew I would get you into it in the end!” He was jumping around the living room with a huge smile on his face. I was happy to see him this happy.

“Alright, now we need to figure out a plan, how we’re going to do this. Any ideas?” I said to him sounding like we were going to rob a bank.

“Oh don’t worry, I’ve been planning this for months. Here’s what we do: tonight around three in the morning we go to the underwater city borders. There’s one spot that actually has a hole in the blockade, and you can get through it. People have tried but have always been caught. I know how we can’t get caught though. There’s a tunnel right behind a big rock outside the blockade. If we can make it there quick enough, we won’t get caught.” Ron was the most excited I have ever seen him in my life.

“Sounds like a plan. I’ll meet you outside your house around 2:45 tonight, sound good?” I told him, starting to sound stressed.

“Perfect, see you then,” he told me and left with a huge smirk on his face.

I went to bed as usual, but couldn’t sleep. I was glancing at my clock every five minutes, until I saw 2:30. I 

got up, got dressed and swung out my bedroom window, so I wouldn’t wake up my parents.

We made it to the edge of the blockade, and jumped right through and ran for the tunnel. We made it! The problem was, we didn’t know where the tunnel led. I was extremely scared, maybe I would die, or maybe I would get caught and sent to jail. Who knows what would happen from here.

We hiked for ages in the tunnel, until it started to go up, at a very low incline. We continued to trek for ages, and sometimes we thought maybe the tunnel never ended. Finally, we saw a light. We gave each other a terrified look and went for it slowly. As we stuck our heads out from the water line, we couldn’t breathe; we started to suffocate.

Gunn, Robin. "Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Oceans."Awesome Ocean. Awesome Ocean, 19 Sept. 2014. Web. 23 Jan. 2015.