“Course I do,” Jason said. “She thinks you’ll go to war because Robert did and I did, or that you’ll decide it’s cool to be like me, that maybe you’ll get arrested or do drugs or, God forbid, screw a girl. I think mainly she’s afraid you’ll learn to think for yourself. Are you allowed to do that, little brother? Form opinions? Live your own life? Does she even know you’re here?”

I didn’t answer. I didn’t have to.

“Here’s the deal.” Jason stepped closer and draped an arm across my shoulder. “I make the dive and we go out this Saturday. All day. The two of us.” He squeezed my neck. “A brother should know his brother.”

I studied those bright, cold eyes, and something twisted inside, like grease and old metal. Did he want to know me at all or was he just messing with me? I replayed his homecoming from war: the bitterness and unanswered questions, the family fights and all the ways he’d changed. How many days before the first arrest? How long before the heroin? I stepped away from what I saw in those eyes, and his arm fell to his side. “I don’t want you dying because of me.”

“A deal’s a deal, little brother.”

“I mean it,” I said.

“I know you do.”

He gave the grin and the wink, and looked so much like our dead brother it hurt. Kicking off his shoes, he shrugged off the shirt, and I saw all the places he’d been wounded in war, the bullet holes and burn marks and ragged scars. Beside me, Chance was small and tense and staring.

“Jesus Christ.”

“Shut up, Chance.”

Jason ignored my friend, and that felt about right. This was about us, alone. “Why are you doing this?” I asked.

“You know why.”

“I really don’t.”

“Don’t be stupid. You know exactly why.” He pushed his cigarettes into my hand. “You keep those dry for me. I’m going to want one, after.”

“Jason, listen…” I ran out of words.

He turned and started walking, and Chance gave a strange, small laugh. “No way, dude. No way he dives.”

People stared as my brother moved out onto the stony beach, and I thought a few of the older guys recognized him. A couple of them nudged each other and whispered, but Jason looked neither left nor right. He made a shallow dive, and slid beneath the surface for a dozen beats. When he rose, it was into an easy crawl that took him out from shore.

“No way,” Chance muttered. “There’s no fucking way.”

Across the quarry, Jason pulled himself onto the face of the cliff, and was pale against the rock. He made the ascent with effortless grace, and by the time he reached the top, word of his identity had spread along the beach. I saw it in the whispers.