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Paul looks immediately conflicted, which I’m beginning to recognize as his resting state. “Probably shouldn’t.”

“Probably not.”

“We’re supposed to board.”

“Sometime this century?”

I start up the stairs. After two steps, I look back.

Paul is still at the bottom, one hand on the wall, watching me like he can’t decide whether I’m a terrible influence.

“Coming?”

He looks down the line toward Don, toward the boat, toward the night already planned and paid for.

Finally, he exhales. “This is a bad idea.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

He starts up after me. I grin and keep climbing.

At the top of the stairs, there’s the swinging gate with a metal latch and no sign telling us to stop.

I push it open.

A pool. Not a little decorative pool, or the one in our backyard. It’s long and bright under stadium-style lights, the water cut into lanes by floating ropes. On the other side, a set of empty bleachers. To our left, a few people sit under an umbrella eating from paper plates and wearing shirts that look official enough to make me queasy.

“Maybe not,” I whisper over my shoulder, catching a glimpse of Paul’s hesitant eyes.

Then, something breaks the surface of the water.

A gray back.

A fin.

Another.

Six dolphins move through the water, gliding smoothly just below the surface.

“Oh,” Paul says behind me.

“You’re fuckin’ kidding me,” I say to nobody. Maybe to the dolphins, who are converging in the water in front of us.

One dolphin pops up near the edge, its head rising clean out of the water. It looks directly at us, and my whole chest does something stupid.

“Hey dude,” I say.

The dolphin squeaks, and Paul laughs under his breath.

The sound is so surprised and boyish that I look back at him instead of at the dolphin. His eyes are wide. His mouth is open a little. The careful, polished thing he does with his face is gone.

Then something wet and blue flies between us. I catch it against my chest on instinct. Water splashes up my shirt and across Paul’s open collar.

“What the hell?”

I look down at a soaked, rubbery soccer ball in my hands.

The dolphin bobs in the water and nudges the air with its nose like the situation should be obvious.