NOVEMBER 2, 2009

I hit wrong. The air and sense are knocked out of me and I sink under. The water that fills my mouth tastes like it came from a tin cup, cold, clean, metallic. I will drown. My body will drift all the way to the bottom of the dark quarry to rest on top of Tyler’s. I fear even more that he is not dead and will see that I have made a fool of myself. Again.

And then Tyler is dragging me back up through the water. I soar to the surface, where he yells, “Breathe, A.J.! Breathe!”

I can’t obey. My mouth is open, but no air pulls into my lungs. As I flail about, panicked, Tyler holds us both up, treading water. The water is a hundred feet deep. The shore is too far away. I am going to die. I hope my face won’t contort in agony as I drown. I hope that Tyler will carry an image of me dying with a serene, yet ultimately incredibly hot, beauty.

Tyler hugs me tight, stares into my eyes until I stop struggling, and orders, “Aubrey, chill. I’ve got you.” He sounds the way he did when he called that kid “Son.”

I stop struggling and let myself be held aloft by the strong, steady surge of his legs scissoring together. The air is still knocked out of me, though, and I can’t fill my lungs. His tone is casual, like he’s making a suggestion, when he says, “Breathe.”

I cough, sputter. When I can tread water, he lets me go.

“Seriously, Puke, you have got to regulate your fluids. First not enough. Now too much. Props for the jump, though. Not that many girls jump.”

In a mousy, embarrassed voice, I say, “I thought you were going to drown. Or that you were down there paralyzed.”

“Paralyzed?” He almost laughs, then doesn’t. “You jumped to save me?” He stares hard, checking whether I am joking. When he sees that I’m not, he says, “No one ever tried to save me before,” in a suspicious way.

I feel my hair plastered to my skull like Wednesday from the Addams Family, take a big breath, and dive under to wash it back off my face. Tyler plunges under and soars past me, going deeper and deeper. He goes so deep that his tan skin turns pale and blue. I follow him until he stops and we face each other with our hair swirling around our heads and patchwork squares of light wobbling across our faces. He puffs his cheeks out and flutters his hands under his jaw, imitating a blowfish. I stretch my arms out and wriggle in S shapes, curvy as an eel, then clamp Tyler’s face between my powerful moray eel jaw hands.

He acts like my jaw hands have forced all the air out of his puffer fish lungs. He blows bubbles into my face, then grimaces, squeezing his eyes together, challenging me to try to stay under longer than him. My lungs are on fire, but I mime a yawn, look at the watch I pretend I am wearing, tap my fingers on my chin like I’m bored. I am stretching out for a nap when he shakes his fist in my face, then blasts off toward the surface. I am a fraction of a second behind him.

With the first breath I suck in, I yell, “Loser!”

“I don’t think so!” Tyler inhales a lung-busting gulp of air. I do the same, then we plunge back down. Tyler flips backward in elegant circles, going farther and farther down. Then he stops, crosses his arms over his chest, and tilts his head up at me, cocky as a rapper in a battle who’s just spit out some deadly rhymes, challenging me to top him. I dive farther down, do some body popping and a goofy, jokey robot, then freeze with my arms crossed over my chest, throwing pretend gang signs with both hands. We go back down again and again, break-dancing and having rap battles and seeing who can stay under the longest.

I always win because I can hold my breath forever, since I know how to move on the outside and stay silent and still on the inside.