“Okay,” she says, letting out a long breath, as if she’s been holding it all this time. The goggles hang around her neck. “What is this place?”
“This,” I say, “is the Blue Hole. They say it’s bottomless, or that the bottom is quicksand. They say there’s a force in the middle of the lake that sucks you down into an underground river that flows right into the Wabash. They say it leads you to another world. That it was a hiding place for pirates burying treasure, and for Chicago bootleggers burying bodies and dumping stolen cars. That in the 1950s a group of teenage boys went swimming here and disappeared. In 1969, two sheriff’s deputies launched an expedition to explore the Hole, but they didn’t find any cars or treasure or bodies. They also didn’t find the bottom. What they did find was a whirlpool that nearly sucked them down.”
I’ve ditched the red cap, gloves, and black sweater, and am wearing a navy pullover and jeans. I’ve cut my hair shorter, and when she first saw me, Violet said, “All-American Finch. Okay.” Now I kick off my shoes and yank off the shirt. It’s almost hot in the sun, and I want to go swimming. “Bottomless blue holes exist all over the world, and each one has these kinds of myths associated with it. They were formed as caverns, thousands of years ago during the last ice age. They’re like black holes on earth, places where nothing can escape and time and space come to an end. How bloody awesome is it that we actually have one of our own?”
She glances back toward the house and the car and the road, then smiles up at me. “Pretty awesome.” She kicks off her shoes and pulls off her shirt and pants so that, in seconds, she is standing there in only her bra and underwear, which are a kind of dull rose color but somehow the sexiest things I’ve ever seen.
I go totally and utterly speechless and she starts to laugh. “Well, come on. I know you’re not shy, so drop your pants and let’s do this. I assume you want to see if the rumors are true.” My mind draws a blank, and she juts one hip out, Amanda Monk–style, resting a hand on it. “About it being bottomless?”
“Oh yeah. Right. Of course.” I slide off my jeans so I’m in my boxers, and I take her hand. We walk to the rock ledge that surrounds part of the Hole and climb up onto it. “What are you most afraid of?” I say before we jump. I can already feel my skin starting to burn from the sun.
“Dying. Losing my parents. Staying here for the rest of my life. Never figuring out what I’m supposed to do. Being ordinary. Losing everyone I love.” I wonder if I’m included in that group. She is bouncing on the balls of her feet, as if she’s cold. I try not to stare at her chest as she does because, whatever else he is, All-American Finch is not a perv. “What about you?” she asks. She fits the goggles into place. “What are you most afraid of?”
I think, I’m most afraid of Just be careful. I’m most afraid of the Long Drop. I’m most afraid of Asleep and impending, weightless doom. I’m most afraid of me.
“I’m not.” I take her hand, and together we leap through the air. And in that moment there’s nothing I fear except losing hold of her hand. The water is surprisingly warm and, below the surface, strangely clear and, well, blue. I look at her, hoping her eyes are open, and they are. With my free hand, I point below, and she nods, her hair fanning out like seaweed. Together, we swim, still linked, like a person with three arms.
We head down, where the bottom would be if there was one. The deeper we go, the darker the blue becomes. The water feels darker too, as if the weight of it has settled. It’s only when I feel her tug at my hand that I let myself be pulled back up to the surface, where we break out of the water and fill our lungs. “Jesus,” she says. “You can hold your breath.”
“I practice,” I say, suddenly wishing I hadn’t said it at all, because it’s one of those things—like I am make-believe—that sounds better in my own head.
She just smiles and splashes me, and I splash her back. We do this for a while, and I chase her around the surface, ducking under, grabbing her legs. She slips through my grasp and breaks into a breaststroke, clean and strong. I remind myself that she’s a California girl and probably grew up swimming in the ocean. I suddenly feel jealous of all the years she had before meeting me, and then I swim after her. We tread water, looking at each other, and suddenly there’s not enough water in the world to clean away my dirty thoughts.
She says, “I’m glad we came.”
We float on our backs, holding hands again, faces to the sun. Because my eyes are closed, I whisper, “Marco.”
“Polo,” she answers, and her voice sounds lazy and far away.
After a while, I say, “Do you want to go look for the bottom again?”
“No. I like it here, just like this.” Then she asks, “When did the divorce happen?”
“Around this time last year.”
“Did you know it was coming?”
“I did and I didn’t.”
“Do you like your stepmother?”
“She’s fine. She has a seven-year-old son who may or may not be my dad’s, because I’m pretty sure he was cheating with her for the past few years. He left us once, when I was ten or eleven, said he couldn’t deal with us anymore. I think he was with her then. He came back, but when he left for good, he made it clear it was our fault. Our fault he came back, our fault he had to leave. He just couldn’t have a family.”
“And then he married a woman with a kid. What’s he like?”
The son I will never be. “He’s just a kid.” I don’t want to talk about Josh Raymond. “I’m going in search of the bottom. Are you okay here? Do you mind?”
“I’m good. You go. I’ll be here.” She floats away.
I take a breath and dive, grateful for the dark of the water and the warmth against my skin. I swim to get away from Josh Raymond, and my cheating father, and Violet’s involved parents who are also her friends, and my sad, deserted mother, and my bones. I close my eyes and pretend it’s Violet who surrounds me instead, and then I open my eyes and push myself down, one arm out like Superman.
I feel the strain of my lungs wanting air, but I keep going. It feels a lot like the strain of trying to stay awake when I can feel the darkness sliding under my skin, trying to borrow my body without asking so that my hands become its hands, my legs its legs.