You couldn’t pay me to go back to those years, but sometimes I wake up in a sweat and for one second it’s all there: chlorine, sunburn, sour gummy worms, and the screaming of my best friend on the high dive.

The pool at Huntington Estates wasn’t fancy. A cracked blue rectangle wedged between the tennis courts and the dead-end road where the rich kids parked their dad’s BMWs and threw up tequila. In 2003, the big draw was the old-school diving board, the kind that bounced so high your vision went static for a second and then came back all at once in a snap—chlorine-sharp, raw and weird, like a lightning bolt to the teeth.

Me, Cam, and Tyler spent every day there, sun-up to close. We all had different reasons. Cam’s mom worked doubles at the hospital and Cam didn’t like being home alone because his stepdad watched Fox News and kept a gun in his sock drawer. Tyler lived in a house with too many windows, too much light, and no one to tell him what to do. My house was the sort of place where my dad never looked at you unless you’d disappointed him, which, for me, was most of the time.

The pool opened every year on Memorial Day, and for us it was the real new year, not January. Summer began at the first shriek of cold water down your back. The first daring cannonball. The first time you pretended you didn’t care if the lifeguard noticed you, but you cared so much it made you sick.

That year, we were thirteen, and the only thing that mattered was getting on the board after dark. The pool closed at 9, and the managers locked the gates, but Cam knew a gap in the fence behind the dumpsters where you could squeeze through if you didn’t mind scraping your knees on the broken concrete. We waited for the grown-ups to leave, then crept over—three ghosts in Dollar Tree flip-flops, adrenaline peaking.

The first night, it was a dare, like all the best and worst things. Cam said, “Bet you won’t do a flip,” so I did. Landed wrong, felt my back slap so hard it sent me underwater until everything was greenish black and the world blurred. When I came up, Tyler was laughing, Cam was silent, and I felt like I’d touched something electric. Like the world was wide open, anything could happen, and maybe we’d live forever if we just stayed out after curfew and broke a few rules.

We made it a ritual. Climb the fence. Moonlit dives. Echoes off the water. Someone always brought snacks: Jolly Ranchers, Mountain Dew, Sour Patch Kids. We told stories about the bottom of the pool. How it got colder as you went down. How if you held your breath and listened, you could hear other kids, long gone, still laughing beneath the surface.

Tyler was always the bravest. He did flips, twists, back dives. Once, he did a dead-man’s float and stayed under so long Cam started screaming, thinking he’d drowned. Tyler came up grinning, said, “I could’ve just kept going, man. Felt like nothing down there.”

Cam didn’t laugh. I never saw him get scared before, not really.

After that, something changed.

It was the summer everyone’s parents started fighting. Every phone call was a slammed door. You could feel it, thick as humidity, in every house with the blinds drawn and the TV up too loud.

The pool became our church. The only place you could breathe.

Then Cam brought the bottle.

He’d found it in his mom’s closet—pink and plastic, filled with peach schnapps. We passed it around, coughing, our eyes watering. It tasted like rotting Jolly Ranchers and made my throat burn. I felt a shiver pass through me, the sort of thing you get before you realize you’re about to do something stupid and unforgettable.

Tyler took the biggest swig, his face twisted like he wanted to spit it out but wouldn’t to give us the satisfaction. Cam went last, holding the bottle like it was radioactive. “Let’s do something sick,” he said, his voice shaky.

He pointed at the high dive.

The board was old—peeling blue paint, rusted bolts. We’d been jumping off it since we were kids, but always during the day, when there were other people around and the sun kept everything honest. At night, it looked different. Taller. It swayed when the wind picked up, creaking like a voice you didn’t trust.

“I’ll go first,” Tyler said. He was already climbing the ladder, schnapps-brave. He got to the top, turned back, and did a perfect swan dive, toes pointed, arms straight. For a second, he seemed suspended there, above the blue-black water, glowing.

He hit the surface clean, barely a splash.

I climbed next. My heart was pounding, schnapps hot in my stomach. I got to the edge and almost chickened out. The streetlights made the water look bottomless. For a second, I saw my own reflection down there—warped, too old, mouth open like I was screaming.

I jumped anyway. For a second, it felt like falling through the sky. My feet hit water and everything washed away—the fights, the guilt, the feeling I was always doing something wrong.

Cam took longer. He got halfway up the ladder, then stopped. “Don’t be a bitch,” Tyler said, laughing. Cam’s hands were white on the rungs.

“I’m not,” Cam said, but his voice was so small I almost didn’t hear it.

“Come on, dude,” I said. “Just do it.”

Cam’s face was pale in the pool light. He looked older, scared and angry. For a second, I wondered what he saw up there—if it was just the diving board, or if it was every bad thing he couldn’t name.

Finally, he climbed to the top. Stood there forever. The board bent under his weight.

“Do it, man!” Tyler yelled.

Cam closed his eyes, took a step forward, and jumped.

He landed weird, legs all wrong, arms flailing. There was a slap and a crack. He didn’t come up right away.

I was already swimming to him before Tyler yelled. The water felt heavy, sticky, like it was trying to hold me down. I found Cam face-up, coughing, his nose bleeding, one arm bent at a bad angle.

We dragged him out, both of us shaking.

Cam was crying, snot mixing with blood, schnapps breath hot on my cheek. “Don’t tell anyone,” he begged. I promised. Tyler did too.

After that, we didn’t go back for a while. The summer dragged on, long, slow, ugly. Cam wore a splint, told his mom he fell off his bike. We hung out at my house or Tyler’s, watched movies we’d already seen a thousand times, bored and restless and angry.

At the end of July, we got the news about Tyler.

His parents found him in the garage, car running, doors closed. They said it was an accident, but no one believed them. I never saw his house after that, never saw the way the sunlight hit the pool the same way, never climbed the diving board again.

Cam and I drifted apart. I still saw him sometimes, walking through the neighborhood with his head down, arm still a little crooked. We’d nod, but never talked about the summer, the board, or Tyler.

Sometimes, late at night, I’ll drive past the pool. It’s chained up now, high fence, “No Trespassing” signs everywhere. The diving board is gone. They ripped it out after a local judge ruled it a liability.

I still hear Tyler laughing—right before he’d jump, every single time.

There’s this thing I do, sometimes. I hold my breath underwater, like we used to, until my lungs are on fire and my head is full of static. I listen for the voices at the bottom of the pool, the ones Cam talked about. Sometimes, I think I can hear them.

Tyler’s is the loudest. He’s not saying anything, just laughing, the way he used to when nothing could touch us. I float there, suspended, listening, until I can’t hold my breath any longer and have to come up for air.

Every time, it feels like falling. Every time, it feels like coming back from somewhere I’m not supposed to be.

If anyone ever asks, I tell them we were just kids, just stupid, just looking for a place to belong. I never tell them about the board, or the schnapps, or the way the water felt that night—too cold, too deep, too full of ghosts.

But sometimes, when I close my eyes, I’m there again. The high dive. The moon. The laughter.

The moment right before the fall.

By Sarp Sozdinler

Sarp Sozdinler

Sarp Sozdinler has been published in Electric Literature, Kenyon Review, Shenandoah, Masters Review, Pithead Chapel, Flash Frog, Vestal Review, and Fractured Lit, among other journals.
His stories have been selected as finalists for the Los Angeles Review Short Fiction Prize and the Passages North Waasnode Short Fiction Prize​. ​His work has been selected or nominated for
several anthologies including the Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions, and Best Microfiction. ​He edits the online journal The Bulb Region​ when he’s not working on his first novel. Find his work
at www.sarpsozdinler.com or online @sarpsozdinler.

adolescence coming-of-age friendship pool risk summer tragedy