I glance over my shoulder to make sure most of our teammates have headed into the locker room. Pooja pauses at the door and shoots me a look, but I wave her off.

“Okay,” I mutter. “Let’s get this over with.”

Jack laughs. “It’s really not that scary.”

“Easy for you to say. You’re so tall, the world is like your high dive.”

“It’s not like you’re exactly short.”

My heart is in my throat. I swear to god he’s tilting on purpose, walking right up to the edge like he’s daring the slightest gust of wind to topple him.

“No, but I clearly have a much stronger respect for gravity than you.”

“Then just pretend it’s the deli’s Twitter account. We all know you don’t have any respect for that,” he says cheekily.

Before I can respond, he straightens up and propels himself toward the water, contorting his body so fast, I could blink and miss it. In fact, this might be one of the first times I haven’t missed it. The dive team makes me so nervous that as a general rule I try not to look at them during practice or meets, in constant fear of watching one of them belly flop or smack their heads on the board.

But I couldn’t look away from him if I wanted to. It’s mesmerizing, like his body isn’t his own for those brief few seconds. I’m used to Jack being all in motion at once, all foot-tapping six-foot-something of him. But I’m not used to motion like this: smooth, seamless, practiced. He projects himself off the board and somersaults in the air and twists and then glides into the water with an almost soundless kind of grace.

I forget to breathe until he’s poking his head out of the pool, shaking his hair out of his face.

“Your turn.”

My jaw drops.

“You don’t have to do anything fancy. Just jump.” He mimes it to me, treading water as he holds a flat palm up and pretends his finger is me, leaping off of it.

I’m still replaying Jack’s dive over and over, reeling from it. I always thought it would be so scary to watch, but it was exhilarating. So fluid and over so fast, I didn’t even have a chance to be worried something would go wrong.

That confidence does not, however, extend to my own abilities. “Yeah. Yep. Sure.”

“Five-year-olds jump off this board, Pep.”

“Five-year-olds don’t understand mortality.”

“Y’know, the longer you wait, the worse it’s gonna get.”

He’s right, of course. He swims over to the edge of the pool, and I inch to the ladder, propping my arms on it and taking a deep breath before hoisting myself up a few rungs.

“How’d you even learn to do that, anyway?”

Jack’s voice calls up from the bottom of the ladder. “You’re stalling.”

I climb up another rung to satisfy him, but I’m genuinely curious. “How does a person just like—know that they can do that? And not die?”

“I mean, same way you got fast at swimming, I guess. Practice.”

My palms are so sweaty, I can’t stop myself from imagining what would happen if I slipped right now, just went splat on the pool deck. It seems kind of stupid that it’s full concrete down there. Shouldn’t there at least be some kind of padding around the high dive?

“Seriously though.”

“Well—I don’t know. We did a lot of silly little-kid dives. Then my mom would take us to a trampoline place downtown, where we’d practice flips and stuff.”

“And instead of joining Cirque du Soleil and becoming their latest freaky twin act, you decided to slum it here?”

“As flattered as I am in your faith in us, I’m not that good of a diver. I’ve eaten it more times than I can count.”

I shut my eyes for a moment, just before I reach the top. “Don’t tell me that.”

“Pep. You’re gonna be fine.”

There isn’t a trace of mockery in his voice, not even the usual light teasing. The words are so steady that for a moment, I feel like I’m on the ground again, instead of way too many feet away from it.

“In fact, I think you’re gonna like it.”

I open my eyes again and ease myself to the top. The board is thick, but it’s still slick with water from the dive team’s practice. I pinch my toes to feel the roughness of it underfoot, to convince myself I’m not going to slip.

“I feel like I’m walking a plank.” My voice sounds breathy in my ears. “Like Wendy in Peter Pan.”

“Just imagine whatever weird dessert you’re going to make based on this experience,” he says. “High Dive Cream Pie.”

“Acrophobia Apple Crisp.”

Jack lets out a sharp laugh. It echoes across the pool deck, reminds me how far down he is and how far up I am. “There you go.”

I teeter to the edge and glance down. The pool is empty. It’s just cold enough now that the usual gym regulars who take over the pool after Stone Hall clears out of the lanes have taken to more winter-appropriate exercises, and the stillness of the pool gives it an eerie quality, like the water isn’t really there.

“Hey,” says Jack.

I want to turn to look down at him, but I don’t trust myself to do it without losing my balance and teetering right off.