Story A Day #3 The Dive

The Dive

It was the last day of summer vacation and my friends and I were at the local pool enjoying our freedom just one more time.   Except we were bored.  There was no sun to bask in, the weather being overcast and a little cooler than it had been all summer.  Lauren, my best friend, was being particularly obnoxious and getting on my last nerve.  I should say that Lauren was only my best friend by default.  We were friends because no one else wanted to be friends with us.  We were unpopular for different reasons, Lauren because she was fat and spoiled and me because I was poor and from a broken home.  They still called them that back then.   That and the fact that she lived next door to me made ours a friendship of convenience.  But we’d had a good summer hanging out at the pool and getting nice and brown.

The ray of sunshine on this particular day though was that Melissa was with us.  She was our new friend that we had met at the pool and I thought she was the coolest person I had ever known.   Lauren didn’t like her because she was a tomboy and didn’t have any patience with Lauren’s bragging and bossiness.   I suspected the real reason was because it was clear that I liked Melissa better than her.   Melissa, who liked to be called Mel was really hot.  She was boyish and athletic, with short red hair with blond in it and a toned body.    She had a killer smile and was so confident and I wanted to be like her and I wanted her to like me.  When she looked at me with her deep green eyes I got a funny feeling in my stomach which both thrilled and disturbed me.  Mel was a girl.  I was a girl.  We were supposed to be into boys at our age.  But I never had been.  I hadn’t been into girls either, I wasn’t a lezzy or anything, but Mel got to me. I couldn’t believe she wanted to hang out with the likes of Lauren and me.

I remember the day I first saw her at the pool. She was at the top of the high diving board.  The high diving board that had been taunting me all summer to go try it out.  But I was too scared.   And there was this girl walking out there like it was a walk on the sidewalk.  I watched as she executed a perfect dive into the pool.  Amazing!   I decided at that moment that if she could do it, I could too.  So I walked over to the ladder just as she came out of the pool.   I looked up the ladder and froze.  Glancing over at Mel my heart skipped a beat.   She was gorgeous up close too. 

“Nice dive!” I said.

“Thanks, you going up?”  she asked, smiling at me.

“Oh…yeah…I…no…actually no…I just wanted to …I  I’ll see you later”.  

I ran back to my towel, face flaming,  and had to listen to Lauren laughing at me and taunting me for the rest of the afternoon. But I didn’t care because I was too busy watching Mel.   The next day she came over and introduced herself to us and she had been hanging out with us ever since. The best thing was she was going to be going to the same high school as us! We had spent the rest of the summer, the three of us, horsing around in the pool, talking about school, and working on our tans. Mel had a way of making everything so much fun.

So here we were on this last day of freedom and tired of swimming and none of us had any money for the concession stand.  Lauren stood up and stuck out her chest and looked down at herself.  She adjusted her bathing suit top and Mel and I looked at each other and rolled our eyes.  Lauren’s new bathing suit had “cups” and she just thought she was so mature now with her “woman body” and was always posing and admiring herself.   Even though I was older than her, I was small for my age and hadn’t started to develop yet.  I didn’t really care but Lauren liked to lord it over me. 

“So guess what?”  she asked.  “My mom bought me a bra yesterday..!”

Oh brother, here we go.

“Really?” Said Mel, with only a trace of sarcasm.

“Well, I need one!” Lauren pouted and pushed her chest out more.

Mel and I couldn’t help ourselves, we dissolved into giggles.  Lauren got that look on her face and I knew she was going to hurt me because I just hurt her feelings.  I waited.

“So, Lisa…this is the last day of summer vacation…”  she said in a sing-song voice.

I looked at her, confused.  “Duh…”  I said.  

“Isn’t there something you were going to do this summer?” she said looking across the pool.

Oh no, not that.  I was so hoping she would forget about this once and for all.

“What’s that?” asked Mel looking at me.   “What are you going to do?”

“She said she was going to jump off that high diving board before the summer was over.   But I don’t think she will because she’s a big scaredy-cat!”  Lauren danced around taunting me.  “Scaredy cat! Scaredy cat!”

For someone with budding breasts, Lauren was pretty immature sometimes. 

Mel looked at me. 

“You’re not afraid are you?”  she looked amused as if she didn’t expect me to be the type to be afraid of anything.   And I so wanted to live up to the look in her eyes.

“No! Of course not! I just haven’t felt like it, that’s all” I couldn’t look at her as I lied.

“She’s scared.   She goes over there all the time and chickens out.  One time she even chickened out halfway up the slide and had to come back down”  Lauren laughed uproariously and I wished I had drowned her in the pool.

“Shut up Lauren!  You and your titties..!”  I yelled.

“Have you ever gone off the high board?” Mel asked Lauren.

“NO! But I’m not the one who bragged that I was going to!”  Lauren had a point.  I had been talking about it a lot.

“Well I was going to do it today, but…I think it’s going to rain.”  In fact, the sun had just come out for the first time that day.   The traitor.

“I’ll go with you, Lisa!”  Mel said standing up and giving me a hand.  “We’ll go together!” 

I had no choice.  I couldn’t back down, not in front of Mel.  Her opinion of me mattered more than anything in my life.  If I chickened out then any cool factor I had in her eyes would be diminished.  I followed her over to the ladder.   She stood in line behind me. Standing in front of her, I was so afraid she would see my legs tremble.   Maybe she wanted to be behind me so I couldn’t back down.  I stared up the ladder slowly and people started hollering at me to hurry up already. 

“It’s okay Lisa, I’m right behind you.  I won’t let anything happen to you”.  Mel said in my ear causing goosebumps all over my body.

I climbed higher and higher, the fear building in me with each step.  I desperately wanted to turn around but I knew I couldn’t.   There were kids all down the ladder and I had done that walk of shame before.  It wasn’t pretty.   So there I was at the top.  The end of the diving board stretched ahead of me for miles and it was only an inch wide!  I would surely fall to my death before  I reached the end of it!  

“It’s okay Lisa, just look straight ahead and pretend you are walking on the sidewalk, that’s what I do”.   Mel’s voice in my ear again.   She was so close to me I could feel the warmth of her body against mine.  I wanted to stand like that forever.

“Lisa, if you do this, I promise I will give you a kiss when we get back down.”   I turned in astonishment and looked into her deep green eyes.  She was serious!   I realized how much I wanted that to happen and I started out along the board.

It was the most terrifying walk of my life!  But I made it to the end and I stood there staring way down into the pool.  I saw Lauren over by our towels walking around like a chicken.  I really needed a new best friend.  Remembering Mel’s promise, I made the jump.   Nothing fancy.  I didn’t know how to dive so I just held my nose and stepped off the board.  I heard Mel cheering as I fell through the air.   I hit the water and my hand flew off my nose and I swear half the pool went up there.   It seemed to take forever before I reached the surface gasping and spluttering and laughing because I was still alive.  I had done it!  I had faced my fear.   Mel finished her dive and swam over to me and planted the biggest kiss on my lips, right there in front of everyone!  I was embarrassed and thrilled at the same time.  My first dive.  My first kiss.  All in the same day.  This was the best day of my life.

So there we were lying on our towels enjoying our final day of freedom.  Lauren was pouting since Mel and I had come back from the dive.  I don’t know if she saw the kiss, and I didn’t care.   Life was good.  I was no longer bored and I couldn’t wait to see what would happen between me and my new best friend. I’d kissed a girl…and I’d liked it!