“I don’t know. I don’t really speak Japanese,” you said. “I just like untranslatable words. There is this one in German, Verschlimmbessern, which basically means the more you try to fix something, the worse it gets. Is that what you’re thinking of?”
She stopped then and took off her sunglasses, her pupils retracting in the sunlight. Her face looked genuine for a moment, open. She said your name.
“Case.”
And that’s when you heard Sean’s scream.
You both turned in time for him to take the last couple ofsteps before jumping into the air over the edge of an enormous cliff. His scream faded as he dropped out of sight.
Your breath stopped.
There was barely a moment’s pause before both of you were sprinting. Already, the adrenaline was pouring through you, and you couldn’t remember the last time you had run so hard. Your head was buzzing, and your whole body was boiling. Halfway there, you heard the splash, and you felt a small relief. But you still didn’t know how safe he was, or what was really down there. It wasn’t until you and Diana reached the end of the path and looked down the sheer face of a granite cliff so high that it made you dizzy that you exhaled.
There he was, floating in the dark blue water.
He wasn’t even looking at you. He was on his back, face to the sun, and with what looked to be a serene smile on his lips. In the shock of the moment, you couldn’t even conjure a sentence. All you could do was watch him drift. Beyond his body, there were disparate groups of teenagers floating on inner tubes, splashing, and laughing with one another. If any of them had watched his leap from out of nowhere, they were over it now. The anger came to you then, as you took a single shaky step back from the cliff, and you wanted to yell down to him, strings of profanity from the core of your being. Instead, you just said a single sentence out loud to yourself.
“I thought you were gone.”
Diana didn’t seem to hear you. She was staring fixedly at the water below. Then, in a matter of seconds, she did something you never would have considered: She took off her shirt and jean shorts and jumped in after him. She landed feetfirst in thewater with an incredible splash, and when she surfaced, she swam directly over to Sean and dunked him under the water.
For a moment, you thought she was actually going to kill him. They were under the water for a long time. But when they finally emerged, they were both laughing and Sean had her bra in his outstretched hand. You wanted her to punch him. You could almost feel what it would be like for her fist to connect with his jaw. But instead, she put her arms around him and bit him on the ear. He shrieked, but in a kind of delight, and then kissed her, while some nearby teens whooped at them.
“I thought you were gone,” you said again, to yourself.
Of course, you couldn’t bring yourself to jump. You were too scared. Plain and simple. But Sean climbed back to the top and executed a heart-stopping array of dives that almost gave you a vicarious panic attack. Each one brought him so close to the rock face of the cliff, you were sure he was going to scrape against it. Diana cheered him on below, fully converted to the strange turn this day had taken.
According to Sean, his diving career was over now—there was no point anymore if he couldn’t go all the way—but you wouldn’t have known it by how sharp and fluid his movements were as he spun and flipped through the air. You weren’t sure if he was even supposed to be diving since his concussion, but by the end of the afternoon, he was putting on a one-man show for the whole quarry, soaking up the attention like his old self.
You eventually found a path down to the water and waded in from the rocky shore. The water was freezing, and when you dove under, it was surprisingly clear. You could see at least twenty feet below you, but the quarry must have been deep, because there wasno sign of the bottom. You felt so many things at the same time, it was hard to separate them. Anger. Jealousy. Pride. Relief. So you weren’t sure what to do when he swam over to you and dove under the water. When he rose again, it was under your legs so that you were sitting awkwardly on his shoulders, while he stood on a rocky outcropping near the shore, water up to his armpits.
It felt good to be up there, the wind blowing against the cold water on your skin, but the sun still heating you. You hammed it up for a moment, the way he expected, waving your arms and saying you were going to fall.
“I’ve got you,” he said. “Don’t forget that I’m amazingly strong.”
“Oh right,” you said. “How could I forget?”
A breeze kicked up and gave you goose bumps, so you folded your arms.
“Not feeling the diving today?” he asked.
“Or any day,” you said.
He laughed.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I should have known this wouldn’t really be your thing. But I just had to do it one more time. It feels like… it’s hard to describe.”
He wobbled a little before holding you tighter.
“It feels like I’m leaving my body. Like I’m no longer part of my own body, but pure energy or something.”
“Sounds like a panic attack,” you said.
“I think it’s better than that. Like I momentarily disappear. But then I come back. And the coming back is the good part because I feel so clear-eyed. And I know what to do.”
Diana had climbed up to a smaller cliff, and she stood therenow, poised at the edge with her arms raised. Her curly hair lay flat down her back, and she apparently had no shame about being in her underwear in front of a crowd of local high schoolers. She pointed her hands into the sky and then dove sideways into the water like someone in a musical number from an old movie.
“People don’t get married young anymore,” said Sean. “But I’m thinking that’s the right move for me. I think that’s going to be the next trend. Early monogamy.”
