Dive Read Online Free PDF Page A

’Cause I’m never coming home again.
    But Lyle’s sad, I answer you. He needs you back. Even if I don’t, not really, not anymore.
    But you’re way better than me at being Lyle’s kid, you say.
    “You think?” I ask out loud, and my own real live voice freaks me; not just because of how it bursts out by accident, but because it sounds way too happy.
    Boy am I a jerk.
    I look over at my new neighbor, Eggcheeks, to see if he’d heard me talking, but he’s rolled over on his chin and snoring. I take care not to elbow him. I know how to keep a promise.

I T WASN’T UNTIL AFTER I saw you dive that my hate feelings about you changed some. The town pool and tennis club had opened for the summer, my first summer at Lyle’s, and one day we all went over for swimming. I was feeling not-so-good with the day at first, on account of Mom. She was wearing her new pink two-piece. Pink is her favorite color, but like everything else, Mom took it to the extreme. The rest of the mothers had on one-piecers, some of them with attached lettuce-leaf skirts. Mom seemed to have a spotlight shining on her stomach, from the way people’s eyes kept straying to it.
    Lyle wasn’t bothered. He liked Mom’s uncarefulness. She was different from his clients, who wrote Lyle thank-you notes about how they finally stood up and spoke their piece in front of the boss or auditorium or wedding banquet, after reading his book. Mom had no shyness of the Other People, no worry about how she expressed herself in public.
    Still, I bet there were better expressions than giving the whole town a whopping eyeful of your stomach whether they liked it or not.
    Dustin’s going to dive for us, I hope, Lyle said, starting in on you right away. You were walking apart, a couple of steps ahead and to the side, pretending like you weren’t with us.
    I don’t know about that, you answered without turning around. My back’s stiff. Which was your inside-out way of letting Lyle know you were still mad about mowing the lawn. It was your weekend chore, and while you never talked against it directly, your comments circled in shadowy rings around your main complaint.
    One dive, Lyle persisted.
    For me, added Mom.
    You kept walking, your hand reached around massaging your back.
    When Lyle said you could dive better than anyone in town, I had my suspicions. I thought Lyle was making an angle on the positive. “An Angle on the Positive” is the title of chapter three in his book, about how important it is to concentrate on the good parts of yourself so that you can face your audience with brave eyes and a steady voice. I figured you needed those positive angles more than I did. You were the one Lyle whispered to Mom about, the one who had taken to sleeping in a tent in the middle of your room and hanging around with a bunch of kids who wore black T-shirts printed with skulls and dripping-blood words.
    Maybe he’s forgotten how to swim, Mom said, teasing.
    That’s not going to work, Gina, you answered.
    The afternoon loafed on, with Mom and Lyle standing waist-high in the shallow end water, talking and leaning their backs against the wall, and me doing jackknives with a kid I knew from my class who had decided to stop beating me up now that second grade was almost over. His friendliness made me feel good. I took it as a sign of an easier time in school next year.
    You spread a towel over the warm concrete along the pool edge and watched the other kids jumping and diving off the low, middle, and high dives. Your legs were crossed at the ankle and wedged up to your chest, your arms hugged your shins, and your nose dug into the space between your knees. You stayed like that all afternoon, until the sun had quit warming the top of the water and families were packing up to go home.
    Are we leaving now? I asked, after my new friend had been called back and hauled away by his family. My fingers are getting peely, see?
    In a little while, Mom said. We’re waiting to see if