Page 27 of High Season
“You don’t have to,” said Blake.
“I want to,” Hannah said. “It isn’t that high.”
Barnaby whooped.
“Yes, Hannah!” he said. He turned toward the cluster of teenage boys at the edge of the water. “Hey! You guys! Hannah’s gonna jump.”
There was a flurry of cheers.
“I don’t have a swimming costume,” she said.
Barnaby grinned.
“You could always do a skinny dip.”
She ignored him. Turned to Blake. For once she felt bigger than everyone here. Stronger.
“You want to come, too?” she said, breezy, as if the thought had only just occurred to her.
She saw him swallow.
“You’re not going to make the lady do it alone, are you, Blake?” said Barnaby, taunting.
“Yeah,” said Blake. “Yeah. ’Course I’ll come.”
With more confidence than she felt, Hannah reached down and took his hand. There was another volley of whoops. A wolf whistle.
“Come on,” she said. “Let’s do this.”
He knew the way upstairs, so he led. She could feel his pulse, fast and soft, like the beat of a butterfly’s wings against the inside of her wrist.
“You can back out, if you want,” he said, when they reached the first floor. “Barnaby’s drunk. And he’s an idiot. No one will care.”
“Do you want to back out?” she asked.
He looked right at her then.
“Not if you don’t,” he said.
She gave his hand the tiniest squeeze.
“I don’t,” she said.
She was sure that she wouldn’t back out either, until they reached the roof. It was a flat plain above the patio. You had to climb out of a window to reach it, one leg and then the other, until they were backin the muggy night air. That was the first time Hannah thought that maybe this was a bad idea. That she understood how far the pool was from the house. The stretch of ground that they would have to clear, the hard white stone below. A primal, gut twist of something that told her not to jump. An ancient survival instinct.
Below them, someone started to clap slowly. Just one person at first, and then more, until a sea of hands moved back and forth, a rhythmic wave, a beat that drew them closer to the edge.
“Ready?”
Blake said the word so softly, so close to her, that Hannah was certain she could feel it vibrate in the air between them. Beyond the pool, where earlier the sea had unfolded a dark and brilliant blue, there was now only darkness. A vast stretch of nothing. Only the sound of waves far below them. Only the feel of Hannah’s heart beating hard in her chest.
“Ready,” she said.
And then they jumped.
At first, it didn’t feel like they were falling at all. There was a second, after Hannah’s legs pushed away from the concrete beneath her feet, when she seemed to fly. Straight outward, toward the dark expanse of sea.
And then, that give of gravity, the catch of oxygen in her throat, the flail of her arms, her body’s last-ditch effort to stop the inevitability of the fall. In less than the stretch of a heartbeat, the slam of her body against the surface of the pool. The roar of sound as she was submerged.
