It felt like running through a field of nettles naked.
Grayson knew to avoid the tentacles. Diving into the deep water he wove his way down through the sea of purple jellyfish and out of reach of their tentacles.
Swimming on the surface, a pair of bright orange garibaldi greeted me. Garibaldi were fish that resembled giant goldfish. Usually they inhabited the shallow coastal waters along rocky shores with lush kelp beds, where they could hide from predators behind the veils of kelp. Seeing them swimming so far offshore was very uncommon. But they were a protected species and there were many garibaldi living off the shores of Laguna Beach, and also along the shores of Catalina Island. They were attracted to bright orange or tangerine colors, and whenever I wore a tangerine swimming cap, they swam around my head. It wasn’t until a friend pointed it out to me that I noticed the garibaldi had sharp front teeth, which they used to crack open the soft shells of spiny sea urchins. Then they popped the round orange roe balls out of the shell and ate them whole.
This pair of bright orange garibaldi seemed to be mates. They swam side by side very close to each other through the long, slowly waving tendrils of brown kelp. And they swam around my head, checking to see if I was a garibaldi invading their territory. Theyseemed satisfied that I wasn’t. They swam to within a few inches of the oil rig. I watched them become two orange dots in the dark blue sea.
Grayson continued his dive, deeper and deeper into the enormous sea, and I watched him. Why are you going so far down? I felt myself getting a little nervous. How long can you hold your breath?
Be careful, Grayson. Be really careful.
Grayson’s fluke became a tiny waving gray Y in the light blue depths and then the Y disappeared into the darkness. He dove so far down, one hundred or two hundred feet, that I wondered how he could stand the pressure changes in his ears and head. How could he equalize that pressure so quickly? How come his ears didn’t rupture? Would he have enough air to return to the surface?
I knew Grayson was born to swim and dive to great depths but I still held my breath with him. Unconsciously I always did this when I was teaching people how to swim. I never wanted them to run out of air on the bottom of the pool and have a bad experience. I held them by one arm and pushed them back up if I thought they were going to run out of air. I tookanother breath and ran out of air again. I took another breath and repeated taking breaths twenty more times. He was still gone. I looked at my watch. He had been underwater for at least five minutes.
Was he okay? Would he return? Where was he?
The sun shifted suddenly, highlighting the water below so that it was possible to see down into the deep.
I said to myself, This is the dumbest thing I’ve ever done, swimming so far out without a boat. Then I thought, No, I’ve done dumber things, like the time I was five years old and decided to climb down into a rock quarry, alone, so I could see the shiny red cranberries floating in a natural pool way down at the bottom of the bog. It was dumb when I tripped on a rock, slid down a cliff, and nearly fell into the quarry, but luckily I caught a tree branch and hung on until my mother found me. Yep. That was dumb. It was almost as dumb as the time my brother convinced me to jump out of the Hatches’ barn window to test if the snow was soft or hard before he and his friends followed. It was hard. And it really hurt. It was dumb, but I did something dumber than that when I was seven and I kissed Craig McQuade. That was really dumb.Yep, but that wasn’t the dumbest thing you’ve done: Remember when you and Sue and Kari and Kittridge had a sleepover and you toilet-papered John Mill’s house? And he caught you? Remember the time you went ice-skating on a pond after you’d been told the ice was too thin, and it was? Remember the time you said the S-word and your grandmother
Grayson knew to avoid the tentacles. Diving into the deep water he wove his way down through the sea of purple jellyfish and out of reach of their tentacles.
Swimming on the surface, a pair of bright orange garibaldi greeted me. Garibaldi were fish that resembled giant goldfish. Usually they inhabited the shallow coastal waters along rocky shores with lush kelp beds, where they could hide from predators behind the veils of kelp. Seeing them swimming so far offshore was very uncommon. But they were a protected species and there were many garibaldi living off the shores of Laguna Beach, and also along the shores of Catalina Island. They were attracted to bright orange or tangerine colors, and whenever I wore a tangerine swimming cap, they swam around my head. It wasn’t until a friend pointed it out to me that I noticed the garibaldi had sharp front teeth, which they used to crack open the soft shells of spiny sea urchins. Then they popped the round orange roe balls out of the shell and ate them whole.
This pair of bright orange garibaldi seemed to be mates. They swam side by side very close to each other through the long, slowly waving tendrils of brown kelp. And they swam around my head, checking to see if I was a garibaldi invading their territory. Theyseemed satisfied that I wasn’t. They swam to within a few inches of the oil rig. I watched them become two orange dots in the dark blue sea.
Grayson continued his dive, deeper and deeper into the enormous sea, and I watched him. Why are you going so far down? I felt myself getting a little nervous. How long can you hold your breath?
Be careful, Grayson. Be really careful.
Grayson’s fluke became a tiny waving gray Y in the light blue depths and then the Y disappeared into the darkness. He dove so far down, one hundred or two hundred feet, that I wondered how he could stand the pressure changes in his ears and head. How could he equalize that pressure so quickly? How come his ears didn’t rupture? Would he have enough air to return to the surface?
I knew Grayson was born to swim and dive to great depths but I still held my breath with him. Unconsciously I always did this when I was teaching people how to swim. I never wanted them to run out of air on the bottom of the pool and have a bad experience. I held them by one arm and pushed them back up if I thought they were going to run out of air. I tookanother breath and ran out of air again. I took another breath and repeated taking breaths twenty more times. He was still gone. I looked at my watch. He had been underwater for at least five minutes.
Was he okay? Would he return? Where was he?
The sun shifted suddenly, highlighting the water below so that it was possible to see down into the deep.
I said to myself, This is the dumbest thing I’ve ever done, swimming so far out without a boat. Then I thought, No, I’ve done dumber things, like the time I was five years old and decided to climb down into a rock quarry, alone, so I could see the shiny red cranberries floating in a natural pool way down at the bottom of the bog. It was dumb when I tripped on a rock, slid down a cliff, and nearly fell into the quarry, but luckily I caught a tree branch and hung on until my mother found me. Yep. That was dumb. It was almost as dumb as the time my brother convinced me to jump out of the Hatches’ barn window to test if the snow was soft or hard before he and his friends followed. It was hard. And it really hurt. It was dumb, but I did something dumber than that when I was seven and I kissed Craig McQuade. That was really dumb.Yep, but that wasn’t the dumbest thing you’ve done: Remember when you and Sue and Kari and Kittridge had a sleepover and you toilet-papered John Mill’s house? And he caught you? Remember the time you went ice-skating on a pond after you’d been told the ice was too thin, and it was? Remember the time you said the S-word and your grandmother
Similar Books
