Dive smack, p.12
Dive Smack, page 12
Most girls I know would freak over the dog reference. Not Amy. She flings her arms around Chip’s neck and slobbers his cheek with kisses. “I always lose my mind around you. You know that?”
Sully rolls his eyes at me and shakes his head. The rest of us know those two are made for each other whether Chip is ready to admit monogamy or not.
Chip reaches into the cooler and tosses me an energy drink. “Give one of these to Ace.”
I catch the red and gold can. Phoenix—now with even more caffeine!
This stuff has its place. Before intense meets. Early morning practice. Tests. But I can do Ace one better tonight. I pull two Adderall capsules from the baggie in my jacket and pop the tab on the can. I shake the contents of the capsules into the energy drink. Tiny performance-enhancing balls roll through the air in a mini-avalanche, sizzling upon contact.
“Wake up, Ace. I’ve got something special for you.”
Ace bolts upright and stumbles from the car, dark red hair matted in the back, eyes half-moon slits. “Is that a Big Mack Attack?”
“Could be. You’ll have to try it and find out.”
He clamps onto my shoulders, giving me a little shake. “I can always count on you to bring it when it counts, Mackey.”
That’s me. Expectation fulfiller. Strong finisher.
We help collect the booze and head toward the bonfire to join the larger group. Monarch Night is a dive team ritual, but the swimmers and their dates, who are supposed to be sworn to secrecy, are always invited to join the festivities. We may score individually, but we’re still one team. There are a bunch of girls hanging around some guys on the team, laughing at their jokes, and I wish Iris’s dad hadn’t shown up at the tent and screwed up our plans.
I grab a beer from the cooler and hang back looking at my phone, struggling over whether or not to send her a text. It’s also a legit way for me to avoid being too near the raging fire without being conspicuous.
Chip walks up to me with his arms out like Frankenstein and grunts. “Mmm. Fire bad.” He backhands me in the chest with a smirk and hands me his beer. “Hook me up too, brainless.”
He knows me too well.
I’m about to slip two Adderall capsules into our beers when I notice Les Carter standing slightly apart from the group, staring like he’s keeping tabs on Chip and me. Maybe to rat us out to Coach; I’m not sure. But I know I can’t trust the guy to have my back if he wants to go to Stanford. That’s just a fact of competitive sports.
“Fucking Les is watching us,” I mutter.
“Somebody should slip that guy a mickey,” Chip says. “Just once, so he’ll relax.” Chip turns, angling his body to block me from Les’s view. “Hey, Les Is More. You gonna rip that new dive of yours out here in the dark? Now that would be something worth staring at. I, for one, would love to pass judgment on that action. Not that anyone on our team would ever do that with Monarch Night being sacred and all.”
Chip to the rescue.
“I probably could,” Les says. “But I think playing it safe and clean is the way to go.”
“To each his own,” Chip says and turns his back on him.
It’s better Chip said that to Les than me since I was standing here thinking that somebody should reintroduce Les to Amy, his pot-smoking BGF. A sudden high-pitched whistle blares from the path leading to the main road, making me accidently spill half the contents of an Adderall capsule on the ground. I throw an extra one into my drink for good measure, then look up to see who’s coming. Hoping it’s not the cops.
The whistle sounds again—caw-caw—and I pause. I know that signal.
But it’s not until Chip says, “My man, Rocco Bennett,” that it clicks into place.
“What the fuck is he doing here?” I ask.
“What do you mean? Rocco always comes,” Chip says. “He’s one of our boys.”
“Not anymore. The Sharks made him co-captain.”
Chip’s face twists in confusion.
“Coach told me yesterday. Said he wanted to keep it on the QT.”
Rocco steps into the light of the bonfire and gives a round of fist bumps and bro hugs to the team, saving me for last. “Theo Mackey, the myth, the man, what’s up?”
“You forgot legend?”
“We’ll have to see about that.” We clasp hands and bump shoulders. “A little birdie reminded me you guys would be out here tonight so I thought I’d come by and make sure we were copacetic before our meet.”
“We’re good,” I tell him. “But you know I can’t let you stay.”
“Come on,” Rocco says. “You’re really gonna make me cut out? It’s not like I’m here to spy on you guys or anything. Just let me hang like old times. I don’t like the way we left things, Big Mack.”
And by left things he means telling me to go fuck myself when I made captain. Because, as he put it, things came to me too easily, which is total bullshit. Seems petty, I know. Because the real chasm between us started the night my mom died. Nobody knows this, but earlier that night Rocco and I stole some of my dad’s weed and a bottle of GP’s whiskey and got faded deep in the woods behind my house. We were so messed up he tried to kiss me. In retrospect, I may have overreacted when I pushed him to the ground, but I didn’t see it coming. I love the guys on my team, just not in a romantic way. I don’t know if Rocco was embarrassed or pissed, but he left, speed-walking through the woods to his house, and I snuck back into my room through the window where I lit matches until they almost burned my fingers, trying to forget the whole thing ever happened.
Except one of those matches got away from me that night.
It bugs me that I can remember all of this without a problem, but not other things leading up to the fire. At least not collectively, which makes what I am remembering confusing as hell.
“Are you gonna say something, man, or should I just leave?” Rocco is tugging on his ear, waiting on my response like I’m Judge Supreme, and I guess I am when it comes to Monarch Night.
“Is that what you were doing at the demo earlier?” I ask. “Hanging like old times?”
Rocco is about to explain himself when Chip, of all people, steps forward. “Don’t be a jerk, Mackey. It’s Rocco Raccoon. Let him stay for old-time’s sake? We know Andover doesn’t have any of our Monarch-type rituals.”
“It’s true,” Rocco says. “They have after-parties, but—”
“They don’t throw down like us, do they?” Chip says.
The answer is on Rocco’s face. No response needed. But he made his choice.
All eyes are on me, waiting for me to make the final call. Rocco stares at me with the dark eyes of a wounded animal behind Clark Kent glasses and the raccoon label Chip pinned on him freshman year becomes funnier. I check out the statement on the T-shirt he’s wearing under his pinstriped blazer—
MY
PEN IS
BIGGER THAN YOURS
It’s hard stay mad at him, even after everything. And it’s my bad for never telling him I didn’t care if he’s bi, gay, or whatever, just that I wasn’t.
“Fine. You can stay on one condition, Captain Bennett.”
“Cat’s out of the bag, huh?” Rocco says sheepishly.
“It is now. I’ve got a little birdie of my own.”
The collective murmur of disbelief rises up behind us on both sides. I know Coach didn’t want the guys to know yet, but that’s not fair to them or me. And with Rocco here, they were bound to find out. Why else would he come?
“You can stay, but only if my guys agree they won’t rip dives they’re planning for our meet against Andover. Otherwise, I’ll make sure they’re relegated to first-seeding bait, no matter how well they do tonight.” A few guys laugh, but I’m not joking.
“Most of us rip the same dives,” Rocco says. “What’s the big deal?”
“Maybe we do, maybe we don’t, defector. But that’s the condition. Take it or leave it.”
He raises his shoulders and surveys his old team to see if they’ll agree and a bunch of grumbled “Yeahs” and “Okays” fill the air.
“Always by the book, eh, Mackey?” Rocco says.
“He wrote the book,” Les says. “Good luck getting any new dives out of him.”
I shift my eyes to Les so I can … I don’t know, thank him or something, but he’s already walking away. I haven’t had any love for the guy recently, but he did just give me props.
“I guess we can do this one last time. You ready?”
Rocco rubs his palms together. “Yes I am, comrade. For old-time’s sake.”
A dozen flashlights click on and we hike up the wooded path to Pikes Falls. The September air is dank with the smell of wet pine needles and rotting mushrooms, but we lucked out as far a temperature goes. This afternoon hit in the mid-seventies, so it’s still reasonably warm. But when the days are warm and sunny, and the nights call for a jacket, the only thing left to follow the farce is snow. Not a form of precipitation I’m down with since it can hit without much warning. New England weather at its finest. We’ll still have weeks of undulating temperatures, but this will be our last outdoor swimming adventure. Monarch Night marks the end of one season and the beginning of another.
The swimming hole and cliffs are far enough from a main road that it’s dark out here—dark and creepy as hell. But the real fear factor for most newcomers is the Old Stone Church, the only building left unharmed when the state elected to open the Chance River, flooding four towns in the 1930s to create a reservoir. They annihilated homes and farms, forcing people to leave their livelihoods behind. The graves were exhumed from the cemeteries, and the bodies reburied elsewhere. Iris might not buy into the urban legends, but it’s common knowledge that there are buildings and houses at the bottom of the reservoir and swimming hole—ghostly remains of a once thriving New England valley—and that the people who refused to leave still haunt the reservoir, the Old Stone Church, and nearby Blood Woods.
I trample over rocks and twigs thinking about being out here with Mom and Uncle Phil. I am like her when it comes to diving, but I’m still not sure what she meant by “Don’t blurt out everything you see. Not everyone will understand.” I didn’t mention how I thought I saw her behind our old house to Uncle Phil because I’m pretty sure that was just wishful thinking. Brought on by the suffocating hope I felt that she’d make it out alive.
We’re almost to the top of the hill when I hear distant voices on a nearby cliff. “We’re alone out here,” I mutter. Mostly to myself, but suddenly Amy latches onto my arm.
“What did you just say?”
“Nothing. Don’t worry about it.” The last thing I’m ready to admit to her—to anyone other than Uncle Phil—is that my mind’s been playing tricks on me.
“Seriously. Did you hear something, Theo, because I can’t find Chip? One minute he was right behind me, and then—”
There’s a sudden hard snap behind us. Someone or something grabs Amy around the waist. She screams bloody murder as her hand is wrenched from my arm. I drop into a defensive stance as her shriek echoes through the trees before finally ending in Chip’s hysterical laughter.
“You should have seen your face,” he says.
“You’re such an ass,” Amy says. “Did you and Theo plan that whole stunt in advance?” She slaps Chip’s arm, but at least she’s laughing.
“Nope. The genius was all mine,” Chip says.
“Well-played,” Les says, holding a flashlight under his chin for ghoulish effect as he walks closer. “Don’t you know she’s a total chicken?”
“It’s true,” Rocco says. “Remember the time she got locked in the girls’ bathroom in middle school? Seventh grade, I think. The whole school heard her wailing like a banshee.”
“I remember Les was the only who let me out,” Amy says. “And that’s why he’s my BGF.” Les and Amy share a smile that makes my eyes roll back into my head. “Maybe I’ll start my own band and call it Banshee’s Scream. To hell with Bliss.”
“You can be my banshee any day,” Chip says, grabbing Amy in a bear hug. He spins her around in a circle. “Wail for me, baby.”
“Oh. I will,” Amy says. “After you impress me with a daring leap off the cliff.”
“No problem, señora.”
“Señorita,” I say. “Unless you’re ready to marry her.”
Amy puts her hands on her hips, challenging Chip to answer. He kisses her instead, his wisest move to date, and they start making out. The rest of us know by now to ditch them. We keep trekking up the craggy hill, eager to see what level of daring we all have in store for the cliff tonight.
SIXTEEN
Dive Smack: When a diver under or over rotates or twists on a dive, hitting the water with enough force to cause pain or physical injury.
MONARCH NIGHT has two hard and fast rules. One: if you don’t dive—or at least jump—you don’t get to party with the big boys. And two: underclassmen have to leave once they’ve shown the team they’re not wussies. No exceptions. One inquisitive parent wondering why their kid is home late, maybe drunk, is all it would take to end this tradition forever.
By the time I’ve had my third beer, one freshmen and one sophomore have looked over the edge and chickened out. That’s average loss. We power through the rest of the underclassmen without problems and sent them packing, ready to let the big boys play.
I crack my neck side-to-side and catch the flicker of flashlights coming from the nearby cliff out of the corner of my eye. At least the part about us not being alone out here wasn’t in my head. But if Rocco is a decoy for his new friends at Andover, I’ll kick his hipster ass this time and mean it. I spot him off to one side talking to Les whose arms are pumping like he’s mad. Rocco has his hands tucked so deep into his pockets his shoulders are by his ears. Twice Les points away from the cliff, like he’s telling Rocco to leave. Interesting. I don’t remember those two ever being friends so it’s strange to see them arguing.
I’m about to suggest that the upperclassmen start diving when Chip claps a hand on my shoulder.
“Mind if I go overboard first?”
Amy is biting her thumbnail behind him. She grins at me and I get his underlying urgency.
“You always go overboard. But yeah. Go for it. I’ll just hang here without a date.”
“And whose fault is that?” Chip says.
Mine. The fault is definitely mine on this one. I could have waited for her and the later it gets, the more doubtful it is Iris will show up.
As I turn away from the cliff’s edge, I notice a couple of freshmen lurking by the trees, stragglers, trying to play it cool.
“What are you two still doing here?”
“You let a bunch of girls stay to watch,” one of them whines, “so why can’t we?”
Easy. They’re girls.
I shine my flashlight at the whiny voice and the beam of light lands on the same pimple-faced freshman that stood in my path at practice yesterday. If I remember correctly, he actually pulled one of the only daring freshman dives tonight. He shadows his eyes with his hand.
“No freshmen. Them’s the rules.”
He points at Chip. “But that guy’s not even a diver.”
“You won’t be one, either, if you don’t haul your scrawny asses out of here.”
“He’s right.” Pimple-Face’s buddy says. “My mom will pitch a fit if I’m late. We should go.”
“If my cousin was captain,” Pimple-Face grumbles to his friend, “he’d let us stay. He doesn’t care about girls.”
Neither do half the guys on the team. That’s not the point.
He mutters something else as they shuffle away, but it’s too low for me to hear.
“Hey, tough-guy,” I call out. He turns and I shine the flashlight on him again. “What’s your name?”
“Miles Stone.”
“You pulled a good dive tonight. I’ll be watching you at practice.”
“Big whoop,” he says. “I’ll be watching you too.”
Chip cracks up. “That little punk’s got balls.”
“Yeah. I wasn’t kidding about watching him. You ready to go?”
“Prepare to be awed, my friend.”
Chip keeps a long arm pointed at Amy as he backs up several paces. He huffs out a few quick breaths, then runs for the edge and yells, “Bonzai,” as he hits the air, then turns headfirst into a couple of somersaults and disappears.
Bonzai …
I never told Chip what I yelled at the quarry that day, but that one word gets my heart racing like I was the one flying through the air. Tonight would be the worst time to have a flashback. And the fact that I have no control over them puts me on edge (pun acknowledged, not intended).
I stare at the triangle of moonlight on the water until I see him swimming toward the rocks. Little flecks of color wave in peaks around him, striving to make order out of the chaos below the surface. It’ll take Chip fifteen minutes to make his way to the top again.
I know it’s too late now, but I probably should have assigned a few people to guide everyone back. Last year, a freshman got lost on his way back up and it took an hour to find him, slowing down the whole night. Another reason Pimple-Face and his much wiser friend needed to go home.
A few minutes pass before Chip shouts, “All good,” signaling that it’s clear for the next person to jump. But I’m not sure it is. Not for me, anyway.
Ace comes forward to take his crack at diving, but I grab his arm and pull him back.
“You sure you’re okay to do this? You were wasted earlier. Rules are rules, but I can bend a few for you. It’s one of my only privileges.”
“Would you give Les Carter a GET OUT OF JAIL FREE card if he was a little wasted?”
When I don’t answer, he says, “Exactly. You don’t need to worry about me. That Big Mack Attack has got me feeling first-rate.”
I’m glad Ace is up to the task, but if he’s picking up on my tension toward Les the other guys must sense it too. I need to watch out for that.
Ace leaves the cliff in a spectacular display of height, and everyone close by sucks in a breath of awe—he is the Flying Ace after all. He does a perfect pike that makes him look suspended by moonlight before he disappears into the darkness.
