Chance was earnest and worried—a strange combination. I looked away as catcalls rose up the cliff, and someone far below yelled, Do it, you pussy! I found Becky Collins, a slash of brown and white. She was shading her eyes; she wasn’t yelling. “You think I’d die if I did it?”

“I know you would.”

“Robert lived.”

“Hand of God, Gibby. One in a million.”

I watched Becky, thinking of God and luck and my dead brother. The Marine Corps said he took one in the heart, and that it killed him before he felt a thing. A painless death, they said, but I didn’t buy it. “Two years ago I said I’d make the dive. I told everyone down there I’d do it.”

“You mean that everyone?” Chance pointed at the water, where even more kids were yelling up the cliff’s face. “You mean Bill Murphy, who told Becky to her face that you were a loser because your mom won’t let you play football anymore? You mean his lame-ass brother? Fuck that guy, too. He blew spitballs at the back of your head for pretty much all of seventh grade. What about Jessica Parker or Diane Fairway? I asked them both out, and they laughed at me. They’re not keen on you, either, by the way. They say you’re too quiet and that you’re distant and that you look too much like your dead brother. Listen, Gibs, you don’t owe anyone down there a damn thing. That crowd there, those people…” He pointed down. “Empty heads and bullshit and vanity. They don’t know you or want to know you. Maybe three are worth a crap, and they’re the only ones not yelling at you to kill yourself.”

I leaned out; saw jocks and stoners and pretty girls in mirrored shades. Most were laughing or smiling or yelling at me.

Do it …

Dive …

Dive, you chickenshit motherfucker …

They’d rafted up for the best view: a jigsaw of rubber and smooth skin and bits of bikini that looked like colored sails. I listened for a moment more, then studied the sky, the jagged rock, the far, familiar water. Last, I looked at Becky Collins, who, with a single friend, floated apart from the others. She was unmoving, one hand at her mouth, the other pressed across the heart. “You know something,” I said. “I think maybe you’re right.”

“Really?”

“In part, yeah.”

“What does that mean, in part?”

I disliked needless lies, so I shook my head, then turned from the edge, and started walking to the trail that would take us down. Chance followed, still worried.

“Dude, wait. What does that mean?”

I kept quiet, unwilling to share the conviction he’d put inside me. It was powerful and strange, and made me drunk with possibility.

Me alone, I thought.

Me alone when I dive …