Chapter 72: Hold on

Once when I was a little girl, I went to a birthday party at a friend’s house. It was after my mother had left, and I wasn’t often invited to parties anymore. These people weren’t native King residents, and they had a pool. Since I knew how to dive, I was a minor celebrity, which was a welcome relief from the notoriety I’d been dealing with since I was seven.

I stood on the diving board, looking down on the upturned faces of my classmates as they watched me prepared to execute a dive I’d been bragging I could do. I had the right form and a good takeoff, but something happened between the board and the water. Instead of sluicing into the water, I hit it square with my stomach—a classic belly flop.

I didn’t know what was worse: the mortification over completely messing up on my dive, or the way it felt like I couldn’t breathe for long, excruciating moments afterwards.