David couldn’t wait for the school day to end. His terror level was rising. He felt as if he couldn’t breathe, as if he was drowning.
David McKinley’s life hadn’t always been so terrifying. His nightmare began on the first day of seventh grade, three months earlier. Before that day, his life couldn’t have been better. He and his mother lived in a quiet neighborhood in a small town outside of Indianapolis. They had lived there for nine years. Prior to that, they lived in a suburb of Chicago.
When David was two years old, his father died in an accident. David’s mother decided to make a new start for herself and her son, so they moved to Indiana.
David and his mother were very happy, even though Mrs. McKinley had to work two jobs to pay the bills.
On David’s first day of seventh grade, his life changed drastically. The day started out easy enough, and everything went smoothly, until gym class. The coach told the boys to get changed in to their swimsuits, because they were going to be playing water sports in the swimming pool. As the boys lined up along the side of the pool, the coach began going over water safety. He told the class, that if any of them did not know how to swim, they could stay in the shallow end of the pool, until they could be assigned a swim coach. He told them that several high school seniors, who were expert swimmers, and trained in water rescue, would be helping him throughout the first term.
David didn’t know how to swim. With his mom working so much, she had never found the time to teach him how to swim. As David stood by the side of the pool, he felt someone push him, and he fell into the deep end. As David went under the water, something came over him. He began to panic. He tried to reach the surface of the water, but he kept falling further into the pool. He couldn’t breathe. He thought he was going to die and he was absolutely terrified.
Suddenly, from out of nowhere, a high school student was pulling him to the surface, and then out of the pool. When David was out of the water, he became hysterical. He began crying uncontrollably, like a little baby. He was still terrified.
The boy, who had pushed David into the water, was suspended, and David was taken to the Nurse’s office, to be checked out.
From that day forward, David’s life became very difficult, and at times, unbearable. The boy, who had pushed David into the water, was very popular, and when he was suspended, his friends blamed David, saying that he had overacted. They began calling him ‘Water Baby’, and the name stuck. Soon, the girls in his class began calling him that as well.
Things got worse, as the weeks went by. He didn’t tell his mother about any of it, because he knew that she had enough on her mind without him adding to her stress. Soon, David began having nightmares, where he was drowning. He would wake up terrified, completely drenched in perspiration. He never told his mother about the nightmares, figuring that it was his problem, not hers. The nightmares seemed so real, that David stayed up late, so that he wouldn’t fall asleep. He was getting less than five hours of sleep per night.
Since David wasn’t getting enough sleep, his grades began to drop. David had always been a “B” student, but after the nightmares started, he began getting “C”’s and “D”’s. David used to love school, but the constant teasing by his classmates, made him hate going to classes. He couldn’t wait until the final bell rang each day, so that he could go home, and get away from the other students. The pressure was getting so intense, that his chest would feel tight, and he found it hard to breathe. David felt like he was drowning, even though he knew he wasn’t. This had been going on for several weeks, and David was tired of it.
David decided to take a different route, when he walked home from school. He had no idea why he decided to go that way. Soon, he wished that he hadn’t. As David walked along side of the road, he saw a SUV go through the intersection, off the road, and right into a retention pond. As David watched, it seemed to happen in slow motion. Just before the vehicle sunk below the surface, David noticed that there were a few children in the back of the vehicle.