Dive Read Online Free PDF

Dustin wants to go in.
    Lyle sneaked a look at you.
    Is he gonna dive? I asked.
    Only if he wants to, Lyle answered.
    You waited. I’d seen you do this before, hold the same position for so long it was like the real you had gone somewhere else, leaving your body parked behind like an idling car. You waited until Mom finally had climbed out of the pool and disappeared into the changing cabana, and Lyle was collecting our books and tanning lotions. I was at the snack center, in line for a drink of water at the fountain. I probably wasn’t supposed to have seen you either, except I was watching. Even as far back as then, I had a hunch of you that you didn’t especially appreciate.
    It happened pretty sudden. You spouted up from your towel and started running like a short-distance hurdler, fists like hammers, back-tucked elbows, puppet knees. You speeded down the side of the pool and then began to scale the ladder, two rungs at a time. Even as I scooted out of my place in line, running to get a better look, you were already out on the edge of the high-dive board, whipping it up and down in long slinging bounces.
    Then you leaped clear, and your body caught the air the way a kite catches wind. The slide of my own sucked-in breath was the only sound to go with my picture of you as I watched you fold into a smooth hand-toe touch before you stretched and tensed and dropped like a dart aimed clean through the center of the world. You hardly bubbled the surface of the water as you shot beneath it. Inside a crazy second, I wondered if you had figured out a way to disappear.
    You surfaced to the sound of people clapping, me included. It was the best dive I had ever seen off TV. Lyle was clapping too, heavy hard claps, and yelling, Atta boy, Dustin! Way to go, kiddo! but his eyes were also straining past you to the cabanas. Mom had missed your dive completely.
    But this was your inside-out way of getting back at Lyle.

M Y EYES GROGGY-OPEN TO the glass and echoes of another airport. This one is too hot and I’m stuffy inside my clothes.
    “Lyle, Lyle, Lyle,” I say. “I’m awake. Put me down, I’m not a kid.”
    Lyle stops and drops me to my feet. “The only person I know who can sleep through a plane landing,” he says.
    I take off my jacket. “Are we close by the hospital?” I ask.
    “Not exactly,” says Lyle. “It’s about another hour by car.”
    “We’ll need to rent one after we claim our bags,” Mallory says. “What kind are you thinking, Bennett?”
    “Red drop-top,” I say. “Like your other one.”
    “That’s unnecessary,” Lyle grumbles. “We don’t need that.”
    “Skinflint.” Mallory is joking, but she’s right. Lyle’s a pincher. He keeps a giant water cooler full of loose change in his office at home. Once it fills to the top, he takes it to the bank. The money he gets in exchange he puts into his retirement account, which he calls his rainy-day plan. Lyle’s as ready as Noah for a rainy day.
    Lyle uses a pay phone to call the hospital. His expression doesn’t show a hint of the news he’s getting, but he gives a quick thumbs-up when he catches me staring at him.
    “They say Dustin’s stable,” Lyle says when he gets off. “But listen to this—he’d been moved this morning from critical . Gina didn’t even tell me he was admitted to critical because of some head trauma. She didn’t even tell me!” Lyle can’t seem to stop repeating this all different ways. “She didn’t even tell me. She didn’t even tell me.”
    “But now he’s stable,” Mallory says. She makes the surface of her voice all smooth, like to remind Lyle of what the word stable means.
    Lyle catches one of his hands in Mallory’s and the other one in mine. “I’m very glad you two are here,” Lyle says. “Thank you for being here with me.”
    For a minute we stand linked and quiet while other airport people drag past us, mulepacked with luggage and snack foods.
    After we collect our stuff off the