Ellen’s the only one who could get me to jump.
I sit at the edge of the dock, my legs dangling into the brown water. I can’t see my feet, or the bottom of the lake, which Ellen says is at least ten feet below.
She’s a bobbing torso I splash with a cupped hand. “Scaredy-cat!” she calls, laughing, just like she did at the city pool when I froze on the high dive.
The water is her otherworld, opaque and soft, made up of everything I don’t know yet. I stand, the dock slick beneath my toes, and jump.
Cynthia Hamill 