“Go,” repeated the guy behind us. Others shuffled impatiently.
“Chill, I’m going,” I said. I crossed the top of the falls and stepped into the churning water. I swayed and stuck my arms out. Once I’d maneuvered myself onto my butt, I pushed against the rock with my palms and pulled with my heels until the current swept me up.
“Woo!” I yelled. “Yeah!” I flew-splashed-slid down the rock, arms flung high, and dropped hard into the deep water at the bottom. Everything went slurry and quiet. Everything was green. I kicked my legs and shot up, shaking the water from my hair.
Treading water, I pivoted back toward the falls and watched Roby pick his way across the top. He positioned himself close to where I had, but a little farther to the left.
“Roby, wait!” I cupped my hand around my mouth. “Roby! That’s where the hole is! Move farther over!”
Too late. There was a collective intake of air from the crowd as Roby torpedoed into the hole, and then a chorus of moans when he ricocheted out and smacked down hard on his tailbone.
“That was rough,” I said when he surfaced in the water beside me. “You okay?”
He grimaced. Then he rolled his eyes back so that only the whites were visible and stretched his mouth into an openmouthed frown. He looked like a Muppet, the skinny orange one that only says “Meep.”
“I broke my ass!” he said with a heavy southern accent.
“Dude, you look deranged,” I said, laughing.
“Because I broke my aaaaass!”
“You sound deranged.”
“Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow,” he said, paddling in a tight circle and possibly gripping his butt cheeks. The water was too dark to know for sure. “I should have worn water wings.”
“On your ass? One per cheek?”
“Or a unicorn floaty.” He shook his head. “Ooo, no. No unicorn floaty.”
I deepened my voice. “Son, you’ve got a unicorn floaty up your ass.”
He slapped a slice of water at me, then thrashed to the shallows and clambered onto a flat rock. To a toddler squatting in a nearby puddle, he mournfully said, “I broke my booty.”
The little girl, who wore a bloated diaper and a shirt that said DON’T MAKE ME CALL GRANDPA! gave him a disappointed glance.
I swam over, draping my arms over the rock. “You know what I love about you, Roby?”
“I feel like this could take hours,” Roby said. “But sure, go for it.”
“You’re not afraid of looking ridiculous,” I said. “At all. In any way, shape, or form.”
“I’m touched,” Roby said.
“As you should be,” I said, hand to heart. I was playing with him, but I meant every word. “No matter who’s watching. No matter who’s listening.” I gestured at a nearby grandfather type who was videoing either Roby or, possibly, the toddler wearing the DON’T MAKE ME CALL GRANDPA! shirt. “No matter who happens to be recording the moment for posterity . . . you, Roby Smalls, are one hundred percent fine being a total idiot.”
Roby flat-eyed me. His shins were white and plastered with damp hair. His shirt clung to him in pleats.
He made his meep face and bleated, “I broke my aaaaass! I broke my aaaaass!”
I cracked up and muscled my way onto the rock. I didn’t clamber, as Roby had, but exited the water the stud-boy way: a strong arm heave followed by a smooth half-twist that landed me on my butt. I nudged Roby and directed his attention to a placid stretch of the river a short distance from the waterfall, where the girl in the red bikini stood waist-deep in the water with two other girls.
Three girls, all in bikinis, all fully cute.
“We should swim over and say hi,” Roby said.
“Should we?” I said. I wasn’t wearing a T-shirt, just my swim trunks. I wondered if I was freakishly pale.
One of the girls had dark hair pulled into pigtails, with water dripping from the ends. She smiled, and I fell a little bit in love with her. Even if I don’t know a girl, or even if I know her but don’t necessarily like her, I’m all the time falling in love for brief, intense spurts.
Roby lifted his hand. “Hey there,” he called in a deeper voice than normal.
The girls giggled.
“Hi,” said the dark-haired girl.
“Hi-ii,” said the girl in the red bikini. She stretched it into two syllables.
The third girl, tall and with braces, gave a shy wave.
I made a sweeping gesture to acknowledge the distance between us. “Can we . . . ?”
“It’s a free river,” said the girl in the red bikini.
“They want us to go over,” Roby said out of the side of his mouth.
“You go, and I’ll follow,” I said.
“You go, and I’ll follow.”
“It was your idea.”
“Oh my god, shut up.”
“You shut up!”
The girl in the red bikini rolled her eyes. The other two giggled, shot us glances, and giggled some more. Girls and giggling, damn. Giggling is like breathing for them.
Giving up on us, the girl in the red bikini turned and flicked a quarter into the air. It flipped over and over, winking in the sunlight, then fell with a ploosh into the water.
“Kiernan, you’re up,” she said.
The girl with the pigtails — Kiernan — dove into the water. Several seconds later, she emerged, holding the quarter high as she dog-paddled back to her friends.
“Nice!” Roby called.
Kiernan flashed him the sort of smile older kids give younger, less important kids. It wasn’t a mean smile. Just impersonal, like a “Stay Off the Grass” sign.
“I think they like us,” I deadpanned.
“How could they not?” Roby flexed his arm. “These muscles aren’t for show, you know.”
Kiernan flicked the quarter, and the girl with braces dove after it. Kiernan and the girl in the red bikini tracked her progress and shouted encouragement.
“They’re trying so hard not to stare,” Roby commented. “They’re infatuated with us, clearly, but they want us to think they’ve completely forgotten our existence.”
“They’re pretty convincing,” I said.
With their backs to us, the girls threw the quarter and dove for the quarter. It started to seem funny.
“We blew it, didn’t we?” I said.
“I wouldn’t say we,” Roby said. “But you blew it, yeah. I’m pretty embarrassed for you.”
“I’m embarrassed for myself. But maybe it’s not too late.”
“How do you figure?”
“Easy,” I said. “I’ll bow out, since I’m the fool who messed things up, and you can make your move.”
“You’d do that?”
“You bet I would.” I glanced at the girls. “Go on over now. Why not?”
“Why not indeed?” Roby said. “Though I do have one small tweak to the plan.”
“I’m listening.”
“You go first,” he said. “I’ll follow. For real, man, I’ll be right behind you.”
When Roby grew so cold that his lips turned blue, we got out of the water. The bikini girls got out soon after. Roby called, “Goodbye, ladies!”