Dive Smack: When a diver under or over rotates or twists on a dive, hitting the water with enough force to cause pain or physical injury.
MONARCH NIGHT has two hard and fast rules. One: if you don’t dive—or at least jump—you don’t get to party with the big boys. And two: underclassmen have to leave once they’ve shown the team they’re not wussies. No exceptions. One inquisitive parent wondering why their kid is home late, maybe drunk, is all it would take to end this tradition forever.
By the time I’ve had my third beer, one freshmen and one sophomore have looked over the edge and chickened out. That’s average loss. We power through the rest of the underclassmen without problems and sent them packing, ready to let the big boys play.
I crack my neck side-to-side and catch the flicker of flashlights coming from the nearby cliff out of the corner of my eye. At least the part about us not being alone out here wasn’t in my head. But if Rocco is a decoy for his new friends at Andover, I’ll kick his hipster ass this time and mean it. I spot him off to one side talking to Les whose arms are pumping like he’s mad. Rocco has his hands tucked so deep into his pockets his shoulders are by his ears. Twice Les points away from the cliff, like he’s telling Rocco to leave. Interesting. I don’t remember those two ever being friends so it’s strange to see them arguing.
I’m about to suggest that the upperclassmen start diving when Chip claps a hand on my shoulder.
“Mind if I go overboard first?”
Amy is biting her thumbnail behind him. She grins at me and I get his underlying urgency.
“You always go overboard. But yeah. Go for it. I’ll just hang here without a date.”
“And whose fault is that?” Chip says.
Mine. The fault is definitely mine on this one. I could have waited for her and the later it gets, the more doubtful it is Iris will show up.
As I turn away from the cliff’s edge, I notice a couple of freshmen lurking by the trees, stragglers, trying to play it cool.
“What are you two still doing here?”
“You let a bunch of girls stay to watch,” one of them whines, “so why can’t we?”
Easy. They’re girls.
I shine my flashlight at the whiny voice and the beam of light lands on the same pimple-faced freshman that stood in my path at practice yesterday. If I remember correctly, he actually pulled one of the only daring freshman dives tonight. He shadows his eyes with his hand.
“No freshmen. Them’s the rules.”
He points at Chip. “But that guy’s not even a diver.”
“You won’t be one, either, if you don’t haul your scrawny asses out of here.”
“He’s right.” Pimple-Face’s buddy says. “My mom will pitch a fit if I’m late. We should go.”
“If my cousin was captain,” Pimple-Face grumbles to his friend, “he’d let us stay. He doesn’t care about girls.”
Neither do half the guys on the team. That’s not the point.
He mutters something else as they shuffle away, but it’s too low for me to hear.
“Hey, tough-guy,” I call out. He turns and I shine the flashlight on him again. “What’s your name?”
“Miles Stone.”
“You pulled a good dive tonight. I’ll be watching you at practice.”
“Big whoop,” he says. “I’ll be watching you too.”
Chip cracks up. “That little punk’s got balls.”
“Yeah. I wasn’t kidding about watching him. You ready to go?”
“Prepare to be awed, my friend.”
Chip keeps a long arm pointed at Amy as he backs up several paces. He huffs out a few quick breaths, then runs for the edge and yells, “Bonzai,” as he hits the air, then turns headfirst into a couple of somersaults and disappears.
Bonzai …
I never told Chip what I yelled at the quarry that day, but that one word gets my heart racing like I was the one flying through the air. Tonight would be the worst time to have a flashback. And the fact that I have no control over them puts me on edge (pun acknowledged, not intended).
I stare at the triangle of moonlight on the water until I see him swimming toward the rocks. Little flecks of color wave in peaks around him, striving to make order out of the chaos below the surface. It’ll take Chip fifteen minutes to make his way to the top again.
I know it’s too late now, but I probably should have assigned a few people to guide everyone back. Last year, a freshman got lost on his way back up and it took an hour to find him, slowing down the whole night. Another reason Pimple-Face and his much wiser friend needed to go home.
A few minutes pass before Chip shouts, “All good,” signaling that it’s clear for the next person to jump. But I’m not sure it is. Not for me, anyway.
Ace comes forward to take his crack at diving, but I grab his arm and pull him back.
“You sure you’re okay to do this? You were wasted earlier. Rules are rules, but I can bend a few for you. It’s one of my only privileges.”
“Would you give Les Carter a GET OUT OF JAIL FREE card if he was a little wasted?”
When I don’t answer, he says, “Exactly. You don’t need to worry about me. That Big Mack Attack has got me feeling first-rate.”
I’m glad Ace is up to the task, but if he’s picking up on my tension toward Les the other guys must sense it too. I need to watch out for that.
Ace leaves the cliff in a spectacular display of height, and everyone close by sucks in a breath of awe—he is the Flying Ace after all. He does a perfect pike that makes him look suspended by moonlight before he disappears into the darkness.
Sully and Les take turns after him, which means I’m up soon. I didn’t expect Chip’s dive to throw me off my game, but I’m feeling a little out of sorts. I move my flashlight around the group, looking for him. “Anybody seen Langford?”
“I’m right here.” Chip steps out from behind a tree with Amy. “You up?”
I nod and set off for the spot where I’ll begin my take-off.
“Make way for your captain,” Sully says, doing his best impression of Coach Porter.
I flip him off with both hands as I shake out my limbs.
“Don’t forget you have to say something,” Chip says.
Right. I almost forgot it’s tradition for the team captain to address the group. If anyone is expecting me to impart words of wisdom on the fly, they might be disappointed. But I’ll give it my best shot by using something that’s been weighing on me a lot lately.
The nature of family.
“Listen up,” I say loudly. “Before I take a flying leap—something a few of you may have been hoping for anyway—I want to say something in honor of Monarch Night.”
The team stares at me with serious expressions. I picture Sully and Ace and Rocco in recreational swim and my idea of family makes more sense to me.
“I don’t believe family is defined by blood alone,” I tell the group. “For me, family applies to the people in my life that support me and make my experiences memorable. By that measure, you guys have been the best family a guy could hope for, and that’s made all the difference in how I think as a captain and a teammate.”
Sully is the first to raise his beer. “Hear! Hear!” But the others quickly follow his lead.
I make sure to catch Chip’s eye. Amy is rubbing his upper arm, her head resting on his shoulder. He raises his beer to me and nods. Definitely family. And definitely the best.
Whoops and hollers follow me as I run to the cliff’s edge, but I stop short, flapping my arms to keep from falling over. Whenever I put on a show like this for the team a jolt of power surges through my veins like a live wire. But tonight, there’s a battle in my gut-brain making me hesitant. I need another minute.
“Changed my mind,” I say, stalling. “You want to see something with a little style. Am I right?”
There are a few whistles before they let their suggestions fly.
Sully says, “Just do an open pike, Captain Show-Off.”
“A triple,” Ace shouts.
“How ’bout a twister?”
That one was Les.
The 10-meter drop is high enough to pull it off.
“I don’t know,” I say. “How about an armstand?”
I take a few steps away from the edge and do a handstand. Holding perfectly still. The group goes silent. They know doing an armstand dive from this cliff would be suicide. You have to jump far away from the edge to hit the water, which means you need a running start. I just like calling their bluff. I stay that way until all the blood rushes from leaden feet to my head.
A big splash interrupts my theatrics, followed by a dog barking in the distance that puts me on high alert. I flip back to standing too quickly and a massive head rush hits me right as I lean over the edge of the cliff. My vision swims, momentarily blurring the water below.
Flashlight beams skim across the surface from the nearby cliff like searchlights until they conjoin, holding steady and illuminating a dark, motionless mass that looks like …
I search the group, my heart rattling the bones in my chest like a caged animal. “Where the hell is Rocco? Did anybody see him jump?”
People rush to the edge with flashlights, blindly following my lead.
“Um, dude, there’s nobody down there,” Sully says.
“I don’t see anything either,” Chip confesses, his brows pushed together.
“Didn’t you hear Belly barking?” I ask Chip. “Move back. I’m going in.”
I know what I saw.
“Whoa. I’m right here.” Rocco yanks me backward. “I went into the bushes to take a leak.”
Les appears right behind him and our eyes meet right before I drop a hand on Rocco’s shoulder and sigh a breath of relief. “Jeezus, man. I thought you were hurt.”
Actually, I thought he was dead.
I could have sworn …
“What’s gotten into you?” Rocco asks. “I’ve never seen you this jumpy.”
Chip is a few feet away, staring like he’s waiting for an answer to the same question.
“Nothing,” I say. “I’m good. I’m just a little lit.”
But that’s a lie. Everything from my head to my stomach feels out of whack.
I wipe the sweat from my brow. Real sweat. Even though I make a show of it. “For a minute I was convinced one of you threw Rocco overboard for defecting to Andover. Not that I’d blame you.”
They laugh and cut jokes I don’t entirely hear because I’m trying to get my head on straight. And fast. 10-meters is thirty feet. And thirty feet is a big drop, whether it’s the cliff or the pool.
I return to my take-off point, taking a deep breath in, deep breath out. Punking out isn’t an option. I have to jump. Them’s the rules.
Chip puts a hand on my chest. “Hold up. You sure you’re okay?”
“I think going upside down after a few Big Mack Attacks sent too much blood rushing to my head. My eyes were playing tricks on me.”
“And your ears,” he whispers. “I know what hearing Belly bark means to both of us.”
“I know. We can talk about it later. Go make out with Amy or something. I got this.”
“If you say so. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
I forcibly huff out a big breath and run to the edge with my heart and head thrumming. Convincing myself this time that I got this. Once I’m airborne, I make a split decision to do an easy 1½ Somersault. But as I come-out to spot my entry, I lose my layout. My knees bend like door hinges, yielding to the hard pull of gravity, throwing off my alignment. My back hits the water. Hard. So fucking hard a whip-crack of pain shoots through to my lungs and I gulp half the reservoir.
Jeezus. Motherfuck. That hurt.
I can barely move.
Light skims the top of the water.
Get to the surface. That’s all I can think. But my stunned muscles refuse to obey.
The need to take a clean breath becomes excruciating.
A tiny voice in my head yells, Kick to the surface, you imbecile, or you’ll drown.
Buzzing fear takes over as I sink deeper.
The water becomes darker and darker until I’m part of the reservoir’s flooded city, inside one of its many hidden rooms where everything is awash in shades of black and blue.
A woman sits alone in a chair facing a window that faces nothing. Her blond hair waves around her like weeds made of shadows. I open my mouth to speak and only gulp more water, but she turns her face to the small bubbling sound of my lungs filling.
Jeezus.
Mom?
“You found me.”
I flail in a series of backward strokes, my heart a pulsating vessel on the verge of bursting. She rises from the chair and floats past me, so close there’s no denying what I’m seeing. She points to something behind me and I blink, trying to sharpen my vision, but I’m too immobilized by shock to move.
“You’re running out of time.”
I sink deeper.
Mom screams my name.
And everything goes black.
An arm loops under mine, small but strong, and pulls me upward. I take a huge breath as we breach the surface and cough up the water in my lungs, sputtering as I run a hand over my eyes to clear my vision.
“I got you. Just breathe.”
“Iris?” I croak. “You’re here.”
She tugs me toward the flat rocks where girls like to sunbathe. The spot where I stood and watched her jump a couple of weeks ago. I climb out on my hands and knees and take a few ragged breaths, then collapse and roll onto my back.
Iris leans over me, her long hair dripping water onto my chest, eyes wild with fear. “I saw the whole thing from the other cliff.”
I stare into her eyes, wondering whether I made it out alive or if this is some near-death wish fulfillment. And to be honest, I’m not sure which one I’d prefer.
“Are you okay? Can you talk?”
I nod, open my mouth to speak, but my lungs have a different plan, and I spew more water. I sit up and my nose drains in a flash flood. I throw my head back, pinching my nostrils, sucking the fishy water down my throat.
“Oh God. Can I do anything to help?”
“You just did,” I say, raspy and waterlogged. I struggle to prop myself up enough that I can shout to the group. “All good.” But my voice is so weak Iris yells it for me again.
“Someone else jumped in right after you,” she says.
Chip. He must have stayed by the edge to watch.
The obvious logic barely forms before Rocco climbs onto the rocks beside me.
“What the hell happened?” He swipes water from his eyes. “I’ve seen you do that dive from this cliff dozens of times. It’s basic.”
“I broke form,” I tell him. Wrapping the truth in a lie because two maladaptive events in the span of a few hours is a kick to my head and my ego. “Thanks for coming in after me.”
“I didn’t. Not at first. I mean, I did jump in after you for kicks. Because you were so freaked out before. Then I heard you smack, right before my own feet hit the water. I’m glad you’re okay, but that one’s definitely gonna leave a mark.”
I already feel it forming. A long patch on my back stings like I’ve been branded.
“I dropped my flashlight in the water and couldn’t see his coloring when I pulled him out,” Iris says. “I thought he was going to need CPR.”
I wouldn’t have objected.
She extends her arm in front of me to Rocco. “I’m Iris.”
“Rocco.” He shakes her hand. “You look familiar. Are you on the Ellis Hollow swim team?”
“No. I write for the school newspaper.”
“With Les?” He studies her for a long minute. “Interesting. Their loss on the swim team, though. You’ve got mad jumping skills.”
“It wasn’t my first time.” Iris winks at me and gathers her hair in a long bunch. She wrings the dark tendrils, drizzling water onto the ground at her feet. Every curve of her body is being hugged tight by a sleeveless wetsuit, making it hard not to stare.
Iris flips her hair behind one shoulder. “I need to grab my towel and flashlight. My friends and I always leave extra stuff at the bottom before we hike up. Be right back.”
As soon as she’s out of earshot, I turn on Rocco like a viper. “Dude, you gotta go. For real. Get the fuck outta here.”
“What?” He looks startled for a millisecond.
“Don’t get me wrong. If you two didn’t jump in I’d probably be…”
“Dead,” he says. “Yeah, no shit.”
“It’s just…” I flick my eyes to Iris.
Rocco looks in the same direction and a lightbulb clicks on in his eyes. “Gotcha. You like the jumper. Okay, I’ll go. But just for the record, I didn’t go to the demo or come out here to spy on you. I want to make sure we’re clear on that.”
“Crystal. Now go.”
Iris returns and hands me her towel so I can wipe my face. It smells like something flowery and mint and I take a deeper whiff, pressing it against my face to hide how much pain I’m in. I don’t want her to see that Im struggling, so I give her my best grin, crooked and full of confidence.
“It looks like you’re in good hands here,” Rocco says, pushing off my shoulder as he stands. “I’ll let the guys know you’ll be topside in a few. It was nice meeting you, Iris.”
“Same. I’m sure I’ll see you at a meet. The editor has me covering sports now.”
“If you come next Friday that’s a guarantee.”
“Hey, do me a solid when you get up there, will you?” I say. “Don’t tell the guys I smacked.”
“Sure. No Worries, Mr. Perfection. I’m good at keeping secrets. But you’re gonna owe me one.”
“Fine. Deal.”
I don’t know if the gleam in his eyes means that’s a joke, but owing Rocco is the least of my problems.
Iris plops down on the rock beside me and we watch him scramble up the rocks into the night. She leans back on straight arms and sighs, telling me I’m not the only one whose heart went berserk in the water.
I stare at her profile, the slope of her nose. Both of us still and silent after-the-fact, which is quickly becoming awkward seeing as I’m the rescuee. And the girl I like is the one who saved me.
“So Iris,” I start, “do you come out here and save springboard divers often?”
She tips her head back and laughs. “Only about as often as I climb trees to save monarchs.”
“I wasn’t sure if I should text you or just leave and hope you’d show up. I sort of overheard your dad tell you to stay away from me before I left, so I’m glad you came, but why were you on the other cliff?”
“I got a few friends to drive out here with me then realized I never asked which cliff you’d be on. I just assumed it would be the same one we use. I’m sorry you overheard that conversation, though. My dad is way too overprotective of me. He’d be furious if he knew where I was right now.” She grabs her flashlight and signals to her friends with a series of long and short flashes. “Right before I jumped in I told them I might be a while.”
In less than a minute someone from her group signals back. It’s brilliant. I should use that for the team.
“I don’t usually smack that hard. It’s kind of embarrassing. But I’m glad you were here.”
“I couldn’t let the captain of the diving team drown now, could I?” She smiles at me the same way she did when we ran into each other here over the summer and I can’t stop staring at her eyes. They’re big as pool balls and rimmed in a million lashes. Tiny drops of water cling to the ends like sparkling stars. Jeezus. Maybe I am a goner, after all.
Iris clears her throat and I resuscitate all over again.
“If you hadn’t come, who knows what might have happened. The ghosts that haunt the quarry could have gotten me.”
“I’m sure Rocco would have saved you.”
“I’m telling you, Iris, I saw things down there.” I laugh it off, even though it’s true.
Because I bet telling the girl you like you’ve been seeing things that aren’t there ranks as a top red flag warning in every how-to-lose-the-girl-fast handbook.
Iris gives me a wry grin. “Would it make you feel better if you knew I came here against explicit orders not to because of your card reading? I know it’s not an urban legend, but the Cat gave me a sketchy feeling.”
“Didn’t my cards also say something might happen in the midst of a new and mutual love?” A sharp pain twinges my back when I try to sit up, making me wince in a way I can’t hide.
“You’re hurt,” she says.
“A smack from 10-meters packs a big punch.”
“Mind if I take a look?”
Damn.
I was hoping she’d give me more to work with in the cupid Amor card department. Iris clicks on her flashlight and lays a hand on my back. Her warmth seeps through my skin into my bones so deep I shiver.
“You have a nasty welt. From here to here.” She runs her hand down the length of my back making it impossible for me to gauge my current pain level since her touch has me near frenzied. Nothing like nearly drowning after seeing your dead mom to make a guy feel horny.
Her friends flash their lights again.
“Looks like they want to get going.” Iris starts to stand.
I grab her hand to make her to stay. I feel better when she’s around me. More sane.
“Do you have to leave with them? Come back to Monarch Night with me. I can walk you to the other cliff to get your stuff. Chip and I can drive you home.”
A smile flits across her face. “All the way out here I kept wondering how much my appearance would disrupt the status quo. Are you sure you’re ready to dismantle that box?”
“How can I not be? A beautiful fortune-teller told me it’s in my cards.”