High Dive

By Jubilee Forbess

Arkansas summers are hot. It’s a known fact, like the sky is blue, dogs bark, and Colleen Hoover can’t write to save her life. During these days, when the sun scorches and blisters your skin, there’s only one place where children and their weary parents can find refuge from the heat. The community pool beckons like the pale beams of a lighthouse, shining through disastrous sweat stains. Families bumble forth, toting duffel bags full of swim trunks and elicit snacks and beach towels. They erupt onto the scene, gravel broiling bare feet, and the summer begins. Teenage lifeguards reign above, dutiful about their meager paychecks. The counter boy watches the hot dogs rotate on their metal rollers, counting down the minutes until the concessions line materializes like ants on an old lollipop. 

Somewhere in this crowd, a young me shuffles onto the scene with siblings in tow. It hasn’t been too long since we moved here. I’m cautious but eager to make new friends, though I’m unsure of how to proceed towards that goal. At the beginning of the afternoon, I tend the side of the pool. I let the cool splashes of my little brother entertain me, all the while remaining vigilant. A friend, I hope, will appear on the horizon soon. The sun swelters. The water warms. I wipe sunscreen directly into my eyes, and it stings almost as much as the realization that I might not meet my next bosom buddy at the community swimming pool. At nine years old, this means tragedy approaches me. Eventually I give up. I jump into the shallow end and play sharks and minnows with my brother. My sister bobs up and down, her floaties decorated with little bumblebees and her swim diaper with Finding Nemo icons. I’ve resigned to my fate. Today, I will not leave with the bubble of a new friendship corrupting my dour mood. Or so I think. 

A freckled girl with adorable teeth and a dashing, sunburnt energy saves the day. She paddles up to me and taps my shoulder. 

“Hi.” 

My lagoon legend! My puddle pal! My sea sister! My glacier gal! 

She sticks out a hand and introduces herself. “I’m Gianna,” she says. 

“I’m Jubilee.” 

We descend into a haze of rapid-fire friendship, complete with playing mermaids and emerging, hours later, with tears in our eyes at the very prospect of separation. 

“Will you be back tomorrow?” 

“I’m not sure.” I shake my head. “Maybe on Thursday, but I’ll have to ask my mom.” 

Gianna brightens with a new idea. “We can be pen pals!” 

I don’t remember, now, how I wrote down her address, but we stay in contact for years. She writes to me about her older brother, their holidays, pets, and more. We see each other a few more times over the summer, too, though she lives in Minnesota and only comes to Arkansas to visit family. As the weeks blur on, though, our correspondence fades to black. 

I still find solace in the water. 

I meet my best friend in third grade, and am thrilled when she invites me to her pool parties at her family’s hotel. I’m nervous to meet her other friends, but the cheerful waters are a great equalizer. 

I go to the creek with my siblings, and to the water park with my youth group, and the soft wash of chlorine never ceases to reflect light off even the most tedious summer days. I find new pen pals, one of them is a swim coach for little kids, and look for Gianna’s address in my old letter box. I can't find it. I must have accidentally thrown out her letters, or put them at the bottom of a treasure chest and sunk it in the sea for adventurous mermaids to unearth one day. 

In college, one day in March, my friend wants to go swimming and all the local swimming pools are still closed until May. We traverse, following the narrow blue lines of her map and a Reddit post, towards what we believe will be a hidden swimming hole. “There is a fork in the road,” the post reads, “Follow the sound of water to find a gem.” We hike down the rocky mountainside and I wish I had worn better shoes. The sun is setting a little bit, but no one wants to turn around and go home now, not when we can hear the dark and clear mumblings of a stream nearby. When we arrive at the bottom of the mountain, the bubbling greets us. It ends up being too cold to swim, so we throw rocks into the water and watch the sun fold herself up behind the Missouri treeline. Something about the simultaneous predictability and wildness of water sources intrigues me. It reminds me of making new friends, even when it’s frightening to take the first step, like putting one foot in front of the other until you’ve made it off the high dive. 

I look up Gianna’s name on the internet, and her smiling face appears on the screen. I can’t tell if we’d be friends now, and I don’t need to know because the shiny-wrap of childhood protects her from the greed of acquiring new knowledge. I’m glad to see her happy, and grateful that she took a chance in befriending me that day. To her, it may have just been a fun encounter with a random, homeschooled Arkansas girl. To me, it was a refreshing reminder that there was a light at the end of the lonely tunnel. 

I wonder where Gianna is swimming these days, and hope she still has the spirit to find friends wherever she goes.