Free Dive by Adele Griffin

told, I didn’t mind hogging Lyle for myself. No more sharing.
    Lyle wasn’t exactly as pleased. He fussed and fumed and even went over to Dogger’s, poking at him with questions about how long you’d been planning this, why didn’t you want to live with us, why wouldn’t you come home. I could have told him Dogger wouldn’t have the answers, at least not the ones Lyle was looking for.
    Tell Dad to get off my case, you said to me, calling collect when you spared it the thought. Tell him to send my transcripts so I can enroll here, otherwise I won’t go to school at all.
    He wants you home.
    I’m here now. Gina’s going to phone him any day, soon as she gets around to it. There’s two bedrooms, so she’s still got her privacy. She told me it was okay. Besides, I met this amazing girl, Steph, and she’s teaching me windsurfing.
    What about Daphne?
    What about her?
    There wasn’t anything to answer. I figured if you didn’t want Daphne, you didn’t want anyone, since Daphne was the person you tolerated the easiest. And of course, Mom came to your rescue. In a letter to Lyle, she said that living in such a small town all your life, she expected anyone sane would go mental.
    Your mother is making a statement at Dustin’s expense, Lyle said as he handed me the letter. That was the first time I ever heard him say your mother in that bad, my-fault way.
    But he transferred your school records. Both sides lose in a contest of stubbornness, Lyle explained, and Dustin will come home when he needs me.
    Maybe Lyle really believed it, maybe he was just talking to persuade himself, but the fact that you’d be back soon wasn’t the kind of thing to question Lyle about. Not right then, anyway, when missing you was like mud on his heart.

“W ELL, GET AN EYEFUL of you!” Mom says when I meet her in the motel lobby, doing a sort of pop and spin away from the dingy glass sliding door where she’d been studying her reflection.
    I go to hug her at the same time that she tosses me a small, silver-wrapped package, which I have to step back to catch.
    “What’s this?”
    “Something small. A nothing thing. You look really great, Ben.”
    I shrug my shoulders but I feel not too bad, especially after my long shower and Mallory’s comb-out of my hair. She even knotted my tie a special Frenchy way.
    Lyle hadn’t been as helpful through the time of me getting ready. He just kept going on about Mallory spending too much money, even though I told him it was her pleasure. I wished I could have tossed out that slippery French expression about how only the first step costs. That would have fixed him.
    But when Mallory was done, Lyle softened up and said that he didn’t even recognize me. Which is how Mom is looking at me, too. I’m not one for liking the feel of church clothes, but when I saw myself in the mirror, it was something. I could have passed for a teenager.
    “You can open that now, or anytime,” Mom says as we walk out to the parking lot.
    But the present turns out to be weird, a bracelet made out of rope. A girl present. I look at Mom for a couple of seconds to see if she’s kidding, before I say thanks and slip my hand through.
    “It’s soft,” I tell her. There’s not much else to say.
    “It’s a friendship bracelet. Everyone out here wears them. It’s all natural, made out of hemp,” Mom explains. “You can make anything out of hemp. Shirts, anything. It’s wonderful.”
    “Okay,” I say but then I tuck the bracelet behind my watch, out of sight. It doesn’t go with my sharp Frenchy look.
    “Do Lyle and his lady friend have dinner plans?” Mom asks as we get in her car, a small buggy car, the kind she always likes to drive.
    “Her name’s Mallory. Chinese takeout and pay-per-view,” I answer. “But first they were going back to the hospital to check on Dustin. He was asleep last time.”
    “Lyle mentioned that you weren’t ready to deal with seeing him, earlier.”
    “Hospitals are creepy,” I