Free Midnight Dolphin by James Carmody

line. There’s pike , what’s that Mark?’ she asked,
looking at the boy next to Lucy.
    ‘ That’s when
you bend your body at the hips Miss’ he replied.
    ‘ Good. Yes,
you bend at the hips but not at the knees. Then there’s tuck which is when you
bunch your body up tightly with your hands on your lower legs and
there’s free diving. Give me an example of free diving Lucy.’
    ‘ That’s for
twisting dives and combinations of positions Miss Baldwin’ replied
Lucy promptly.
    ‘ But we’re
going to be practicing the backwards dive today. You stand at the
edge looking away from the pool like so’ Miss Baldwin continued,
demonstrating to the five children. ‘Keep your arms tight at your
side while you bend your knees. Then you spring up and push off, so
that when you strike the water you’re looking into the middle of
the pool with your arms stretched in front of your head. Mark, I
know you’re familiar with this already. Would you like to give us a
demonstration?’
    Mark was
pleased to oblige and performed an elegant back-flip, slicing into
the water before swimming to the edge again and pulling himself
out.
    ‘ Good Mark’
Miss Baldwin went on. ‘Of course you’ve got to be absolutely
certain that there’s no one in your path and that you push yourself
away from the edge of the pool. Right, lets all have a go shall
we?’
    The five
children all took it in turns to flip backwards with varying
degrees of success. When it was Lucy’s turn she was aware that she
did not strike the pool very cleanly and that she twisted a little
when she came down. As she plunged in backwards and the water
boiled up into her eyes and face, she half expected Spirit to swim
up to her, and instinctively looked around to see where he was.
Instead all she could see was the light playing on the surface and
all she could hear were the muffled yells of the children above.
She swam over to the edge. Swimming practice just reminded her of
Spirit and the thought that she might not see him again overwhelmed
her.
    ‘ That was a
bit of a messy dive Lucy’ remarked Miss Baldwin as Lucy pulled
herself out. ‘Let’s have another go shall we? Remember, you need to
spring up and arc over without twisting. Lets have another look at
Mark.’ Lucy was stronger than Mark on the front-crawl but he was an
undeniably better diver than she was. Ordinarily Lucy would have
watched with interest but today she just couldn’t seem to focus on
what he was doing.
    ‘ Right, your
turn’ continued Miss Baldwin. ‘Off you go.’
    Lucy took her
position at the edge of the pool, looking back at the wall. With
her arms straight at her side she bent at the knees ready to spring
up and back. ‘ Just spring up and get it
over and done with ’ she thought to
herself. ‘ The lesson will be over
soon .’ Lucy sprang up but even as she did
so, she imagined Spirit and Dancer and the perfect leaps they took
from the water and wondered whether she would ever see them
again.
    Lucy leapt up
but not back away from the edge and somehow forgot to put her arms
up straight over her head. She turned in the air and crashed back
down on the ledge just under the water-line. There was a sickening
crack as her head struck the tiles and her world turned black as
she crumpled into the water.

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

Chapter
Six :
    The sunshine
crept round the curtains of the bedroom where Bethany and Megan lay
sleeping. The light seemed particularly bright and Bethany tried to
bury her face in her pillow. The light penetrated pinkly through
her closed eyelids. She opened one eye briefly to the light before
closing it again. Then she squinted with the other eye. It looked
as though Megan was already awake. Her older sister was sitting
cross-legged on her bed writing something in a book with a pencil.
Then Bethany pulled the sheet over her head in the hope that that
it would block out the rays of sunshine penetrating the room.
Instead the thin cotton sheet seemed to