The young boy stepped out from the pool locker room onto the hot cement. No clouds were in the sky, and the city’s pool radiated the light it received. The high-dive loomed on the opposite end of the square, and a teenage girl splashed into the water. When she came up for air the boy was still looking, watching her safely swim away from the center of the deep pool. She reached the ladder and pulled her body up out of the water. Two boys younger than him burst through the door of the locker room and pushed past him, laughing as they scurried toward the water. The first jumped in, splashing water onto strangers. A man who was floating on a noodle began saying something to the boy who had splashed him as soon as the child’s head popped through the surface. But before his words were complete, the second boy jumped onto his friend and splashed water into the open mouth of the man on the noodle. The boy still standing outside the locker room was wearing a pair of sandals that his sister loaned him for the day. She said she didn’t want to go; she wanted to stay inside, “But here, take these. You’ll need them when you are standing on the concrete.” The boy looked down at the faded pink sandals, at imprints of his sister’s toes. He lifted his head up, and took a deep breath of the wet air before taking his next step.
The pool was filled. A lifeguard was counting the heads, checking for capacity. The boy walked over to the only open chair he could see and set his towel down. In the neighboring chairs, three high school girls lay out, in bikinis. Two of the girls looked over at him, turning away a second after they saw how young he was. A lifeguard blew a whistle. The boy turned to look at the guard who was wildly waving his arms at someone in the water. Half of the swimmers turned when he whistled again. In the pool, a man that had his girlfriend on his shoulders put his hands up in surrender. She toppled over backward into the water. The lifeguard relaxed and let the whistle fall from between his fingers. He adjusted his sunglasses and let the swimmers turn back to themselves.
The boy turned back to his chair and laid out his towel, smoothing it out like he had learned from his older sister. Behind the row of chairs on the edge of the cement was a sand pit where all the children who were too young to swim could play. A mother held a small child against her chest and stood watch over the children there. She looked down at a child sitting on a metal sand-digger who was scooping up sand and pouring it onto the hill he was making. The mother saw the boy looking over at the pit while adjusting his towel, and watched as he continued to maneuver the towel to be perfectly square with the chair’s frame. The first moment he felt her eyes on him he let go of the towel and turned away from the chair, toward the pool.
Though both the low and high-dives had lines, the boy huffed, kicked off his flip-flops, and hustled over to the back of the line for the low-dive. Last year he had met Joanna here, on the last day that the pool was open for the season. As the pool was closing down the diving boards had cleared out, and for the last thirty minutes of the pool season the two were alone together. They ran a circuit on the low-dive, one after another, laughing and chasing each other back to the board and into the water and out again. No guard had stopped them. The boy had thought about Joanna all through the fall and winter and had counted down the days until the pool opened again. For some reason, the mother in the sand pit looked over at him as he stood in line. The young boy took no notice, and looked through the line in front of him, searching for Joanna. The line shuffled forward, one child after another until it was his turn. He took hold of the aluminum handles and stepped up the ladder onto the board. The springboard was warm under his feet, and the air was warm around him. But with no smile, the boy ran to the end and jumped off, curling into a cannonball before he hit the surface. His body slipped through the water, remaining curled like a fetus until he stretched himself out and swam up toward the surface. Once he had come up from the side of the pool he hurried over the hot cement to his chair, and sat down on the edge of the seat, dripping water into a pool underneath him. One of the bikini girls next to him turned toward him, watching as he scanned through the lines behind the diving boards.
No one in any of the lines looked like Joanna, but the girl on top of the high-dive? She took her bounce and flew into the air. Before the girl’s head had come up from the water, the boy was already rushing over from his chair toward the diving board. A guard whistled at him, “Slow down.” The boy turned to look up at the guard who still held the whistle close to his mouth. When the guard settled down the boy turned around and walked slowly past the low-dive. The girl was still pulling herself out of the water as the boy took his place in the back of the high-dive line, hoping for her to come behind him. Before she got into the line again, a high school bikini girl got in line behind him, then a junior high boy a year older than him. The line moved forward and he took a step in closer toward the diving board. The young girl that was just out of the water came over toward him and got in the back of the line. She seemed different but she still could be…. “Hey,” said the junior high boy and pointed toward the empty space between the boy and the ladder. The young boy still tried to see if it was Joanna, but the bikini girl scowled at him and he turned back around quick, setting his hands on the ladder, watching the man up top run off and pencil dive into the water.
The boy saw the surface of the water ripple outward from the small entry. “Your turn,” bikini girl said. The line pressed forward behind him, pushing him up the ladder. As he climbed he tried to turn around toward the girl in the back of the line, but her head was down, and looking backward made him stop long enough till “C’mon” from junior high boy, and another vicious look from bikini girl who put her hand over the top of her breasts. The boy turned around and swallowed, forcing his hand up onto the next step, his forearms trembled, and the corner of his left eye itched with salt-water. At the top he held onto the metal bars, looking out at the wide open sky above him. Someone from the low-dive splashed into the water. The cold air rushed by him, and the end of the board warbled up and down in the wind. His back was hunched over, and his knees were bent, this first time ever up here. He looked at the edge of the board and held tightly onto the metal bars on either side of the board. “Go!” yelled junior high, but the boy on the high-dive only gripped the metal bars tight and thought of his sister’s flip-flops.
Down in the pool, the man floating on his noodle had his eyes closed. The two boys that had splashed water into his mouth were still splashing other people. The three bikini girls next to his towel were all still laying there without a word to each other. The mother in the sand pit was still looking over the boy on the metal sand-digger, but now turned and saw the small boy on top of the high-dive. He was still curled up like a fetus as he clutched the metal handles. No lifeguard blew their whistle signaling him to come down if he wasn’t jumping, or jump if he wasn’t coming down. Leaving the boy at the sand-digger, the woman took a step toward the boy on the high-dive, and watched in pain as junior high kept on yelling up at him.
