Landon changed in the same bathroom he’d tried hiding in. He looked at himself in the mirror, removed his ears, patted his belly, and grinned. He knew he could cannonball. He marched outside, and everyone was lined up around the pool. When they saw him, they cheered, waving their hands and grinning. He wished he could have heard it, but in a way, the silence helped him not to get nervous.
Jonathan Wagner stood on the end of the diving board, and it bowed beneath his tremendous weight. Landon gulped as the big man began bouncing up and down on the end of the board. After half a dozen jumps, he launched himself quite high, dipped, tucked, and plummeted into the water.
A geyser exploded. The column of water shot at a sideways angle, though, drenching a good dozen people, who scattered. Landon laughed at the sight of their happy screaming. When the crowd recovered, everyone began to clap and chant. Landon read their lips.
“Lan-don, Lan-don, Lan-don.”
He was briefly reminded of wind sprints, but pushed that ugly thought from his mind and climbed up onto the board. The sandy surface scratched his feet. He strode out to the end, where he curled his toes over the lip and felt the flex of the board beneath him. He knew he couldn’t get as high as Wagner and he knew he wasn’t nearly as big, but technique was very important when cannonballing, and that he had.
With all eyes on him and the chant of his name on their lips, Landon got into a rhythm, up and down, flexing his legs, getting more height. When he was ready, he took one last jump for balance, launched himself, and tucked like a true human cannonball. When he hit the water, he fought to keep his form and felt the water explode beneath him. Then the suction drew his body into the void with tremendous force.
He let his momentum carry him down until his knees scraped the bottom of the pool, and there he floated, suspended in water and joy until his breath ran out and he sprang off the bottom, breaking the surface to a new round of silent cheers.
He knew by everyone’s reaction that he’d won.
Even Jonathan Wagner slapped him on the back, giving him a big thumbs-up. Then Bamiro raised Landon’s arm high in the air and said something while people cheered even more.