“Mom!” called Melissa. “Cody did it! He put his face in the water!”
Sharlene put her book down on the arm of the lawn chair. She stood up to get a better look. “Let me see!” she said.
“Come on, Cody, you can do it one more time,” urged Melissa.
Cody scrunched up his cheeks. He took a big breath. He leaned over from his waist and dipped his face in the water. He threw his head back up in a shower of sunlit water drops, sputtering and gasping.
“Bravo!” shouted Sharlene. “Way to go! And kudos to the instructor.”
Melissa grinned. She surveyed her little brother, slippery and wet as a minnow, and said, “Now I’m going to teach you how to do a dead man’s float.”
It was Melissa’s day to jump.
She stood on the smooth sun-warmed rock at the top of the cliff and gazed down into the still, green bay. Dark shadows clung along the base of the cliff, but farther out the water sparkled in the sun.
The cliff was higher than she remembered. Melissa’s knees felt weak.
She bit her lip. “One, two, three,” she said softly.
She braced her back and willed herself to go but her legs felt stuck to the ground.
For a second, Melissa closed her eyes. Far out in the lake a loon warbled.
You’ll love it, Alice had promised. You’ll feel free like an eagle.
Melissa opened her eyes. “One, two three…” She sucked in a huge gulp of air and leaped off the cliff.
She felt a whoosh of air on her arms and face. Everything spun around her in a blur of green and blue. Then she hit the water with a great splash.
She sank down, down—much deeper than she had expected. She was lost in a cool, dim green world and she felt a moment of panic. Her chest was going to explode. Then she turned her head up to the light and swam with steady strokes, feeling the strength in her arms from days of paddling.
She burst out into a blaze of blinding sun and blue water.
She gasped, feeling the air pour into her lungs. “Whooo-eeee!” she hollered. “I did it!”
Melissa took her time paddling back to the cabin, the warm sun seeping into her shoulders and back. That morning, Sharlene had asked her if she wanted to go back to Huntley. “We’ve got two weeks left until school starts,” she said. “We don’t have to stay here if you don’t want to. We can move into our new place a bit early, I’m sure.”
Melissa thought about the new apartment. She couldn’t wait to move in. But there was still so much she wanted to do at the lake. “I want to stay,” she said.
Two weeks. She dug her paddle deeper and made her plans. Bonnie Hill had invited them to the guest ranch to go horseback riding. Melissa had never been on a horse but she was pretty sure she could do it. And there was the fair. She had decided that she would enter some of her drawings. And Sharlene had predicted that Cody would be floating any day now.
Ted had dropped by in the morning and told them that the fire ban was lifted. He was coming for supper and Sharlene had promised that they could roast hot dogs on a campfire and make something called s’mores out of graham crackers, chocolate and marshmallows. Sharlene said s’mores were one of the best things about summers at her grandpa’s cabin.
Melissa’s stomach rumbled as she paddled past the island. Their cabin came into view. Sharlene was reading in a lawn chair and Cody was playing in the grass with his dump truck. Melissa rested the paddle for a moment and waved.
Sharlene had talked about their new life. Melissa had waited and waited for it. Now she knew it had crept up on her without her knowing. She grinned as she dug her paddle into the smooth water and felt the canoe surge forward.