“I want to try again,” Ryan says, pulling me out of my thoughts.
This time, he lasts six seconds before the windmilling starts. Third try, fifteen seconds. On the fourth attempt, a kid does a belly flop in the deep end, and the resulting tidal wave sends Ryan into such a violent startle that he grabs my head and nearly drowns me.
“Ryan!”—glub—“Let go”—glub—“of my”—glub—“head!”
“Sorry! Sorry!”
He lets go, and I surface, coughing. Chlorine burns the inside of my nostrils. I wipe water from my eyes. “You almost drowned the person teaching you not to drown. There’s irony in there somewhere.”
Despite everything, Ryan’s mouth quirks. “You’re still alive.”
“Barely. My ear is full of pool water, and I think you scratched my scalp.”
“Your hair is very short. There’s not much to grip.”
“And yet, you managed to do just that.”
The lifeguard—a bored-looking teenager with zinc oxide smeared across his nose—leans down from his chair. “You guys okay?”
“Fine!” I flash him a thumbs-up. “Just teaching my friend how to swim.”
He glances at Ryan, who is standing stock-still with water dripping from his chin and his glasses at a fifteen-degree angle. “Maybe try the kiddie pool?” he suggests.
Ryan’s face turns the color of a fire engine. I steer him away before he can die of embarrassment. “Ignore him. We’re staying right here. You’re doing fine.”
“He told us to go to the kiddie pool, Oliver. The kiddie pool. With the toddlers and the mushroom fountain.”
“He’s sixteen and paid minimum wage. His opinion doesn’t count.”
We take a break. I buy us two Bomb Pops from the snack bar—the red, white, and blue ones that stain your tongue and drip down your wrist if you don’t eat them fast enough. We sit on the edge of the pool with our feet dangling in the water. Ryan eats his, catching every drip with a napkin.
“You know,” I say, biting off the blue tip of mine, “my mom says everyone learns at their own pace. I promise, by the end of summer, you will be doing laps in this pool.”
He scoffs. “I highly doubt that.”
“Don’t be so sure. I’m an excellent teacher.”
“And I’m an excellent student, but that still doesn’t mean it’s going to happen.”
“It will. You trust me, right?”
Ryan glances up at me. His eyes study me, and for some silly reason, I force myself not to move, not to blink, not even breathe.
“I do,” he says right before I pass out from lack of oxygen.
“Then finish your ice cream. We’ve got a lot of lessons to get through before the sun goes down.”
The fact that he listens to me warms my heart in a way that the sun could never.
8
OLIVER
Present Day
What do you get when twenty hockey players creep across a moonlit campus in various stages of buffoonery? The world’s worst special ops unit.
Gerard trips over a decorative shrub and face-plants into a bed of petunias.
