• When my parents first told me we were moving to a house by the beach, I wasn’t happy. I have never liked the ocean. The water tastes bad, the waves seem to swallow you up, the sand is nasty feeling and sticks everywhere, and it can be so boring. I couldn’t like the ocean any less, I thought. That was my main objection. I couldn’t have cared less about leaving my hometown, since I had no friends. Even when we first reached our new house, I thought I couldn’t hate it more. I have to admit, I was wrong.
    My little sister always loved the ocean. She would run up to the waves and stand in them, no matter how cold it was. It was my job to watch her, so more often than not I had to stand near the ocean to keep an eye on her. That was the one time I didn’t mind the smell, litter, and general nastiness. I loved my sister too much to care about all of the negatives. If she wanted to go to the ocean, I would follow, no matter how much I despised it. That was the one good thing about our new house by the ocean. It had a cement wall that was about 7 feet from the ground, and right after that wall was the sea. You could see all of it from that old wall, so I no longer had to go down to the water to watch her. I could just sit on that rough old wall with the bits of grass that peeked through the cement and watch her. If she started to drown or anything, I could just jump down and run to the water in less than a minute. That’s partially because it wasn’t a big beach, our house was pretty close to the ocean, and I’m a really good runner, even on sand.
    So one day I was sitting on the wall, swinging my legs as I watched my little sister. It was a sunny but windy day, which I remember because my sister (whose name was Elly) was wearing her big sun hat that she wore whenever the sun was bright and I had made sure to tell her not to let it blow away in the wind. Elly turned away from the ocean and shouted at me to watch her because she was going to do a trick or something that she wanted me to see. I waved to her and shouted that I would. She turned around and stepped deeper into the water. I continued to watch her but I heard someone call my name. I pressed my hand to my baseball cap and turned around to see who it was. I thought that my parents were home or something. But no one was there. I looked around for a second and then turned my eyes back to the ocean. No one was there.
    Elly’s hat floated on the water’s surface, bobbing up and down with the waves. I jumped down and ran to the water, shouting Elly’s name over and over again. I got no response. I ran into the water and looked for her but saw not a single sign of her besides her hat. I sprinted up and down the shore, searching for a single sign but saw nothing. Tears streamed down my face as I took Elly’s hat back from the water and called my parents using my cell. I explained the situation in a panic and they rushed back home. We all searched but found nothing. Even the police found nothing. Nobody knows what happened, but it all is my fault.
    It’s been ten years since that day. I used to stare at the ocean, waiting for her to come back. Once I thought I saw her. She grinned at me and beckoned me to come to the water’s edge. I ran to her, but by the time I reached the water she was gone. But I stood there for a bit and noticed that the sea was blood red. I then realized that if I had watched Elly and had gotten there in time to save her, I probably would be missing too.