Holding Your Breath: Lila

Underneath the surface of the pool, Lila opened her eyes and felt the sting of chlorine rushing up against them. She tilted her head up. Above her, the water was coated with fuzzy yellow patches where the sun’s rays hit it, making it seem like a piece of painted glass from her summer camp art class with light blue and yellow tempra paint blotched all over it. Her long brown hair floated in the water around her head, and Lila wondered if maybe she looked like a mermaid from the top half up. She moved her skinny arms and legs in circles to keep her body planted under the water, even though her breath was running out and she could feel herself starting to float up to the top. She turned her head and looked to her right side where Jenni was doing the same thing, a mass of Texas cheerleader blond hair making her look like a weird alien octopus. Lila knew she could outlast Jenni. All Jenni did all summer was cheerleading camp, but Lila did gymnastics camp, soccer camp, dance camp AND twirling camp. She for sure was in better shape than Jenni, even if she didn’t have Jenni’s perfect blond hair and blue eyes. Lila could for sure always win when they played to see who could hold her breath longer underwater.

There she went! Yeah! Lila saw Jenni tilt her tiny little nose up towards the water’s surface and head up as quickly as she could. Lila lasted just a few seconds longer. Just long enough that there wouldn’t be any question about who had come up from under first. She closed her eyes and all she could hear was the sound of the pool water sloshing up against the sides of the pool. She could feel some warm spots on her skin where the sunlight had fought far enough through the water to actually warm her. She loved the moment, when your head got all spinny from almost losing all the air in your system. It was like you were in one of those virtual reality games in the mall where things felt real and not real all at the same time.

Lila couldn’t hold the air in any more. She blew bubbles out of her mouth while she pushed herself up towards the top of the water with her arms. She came out gasping and sucking the air into her lungs. Hot, sticky humid air like you find around a pool. It felt like she was inflating herself back up. Making herself into some puff-n-stuff kind of thing. Not like the lean mermaid she’d been underwater. She turned herself around in the water, floating and using her arms to push the water. Jenni had already taken the best pink floaty raft and was twisting her hair into a million little braids.

“Okay fish girl. You win. We’ll go again though. But who’s got the best raft now? If you’d given up and come up from under, you’d be on the cool pink raft instead of that old woman silver raft. So there!”

Lila smiled and started swimming to the side of the pool where the silver raft her mom used was floating, spitting water out of her mouth the whole way there. Jenni was her best friend. They’d been best friends since they were babies and Jenni’s family moved in down the street from Lila’s. Their mom’s were both stay-at-home moms then, and they’d march up and down the street to each other’s houses every day to gossip and eat lunch and have coffee and, Lila guessed, whatever adult women did. That was years ago, though. Or at least it felt like years ago. When the girls had started school, both of their moms had gone back to work. Lila’s mom liked to say, “I’m not sure how you think we’ll pay for all your prom gowns and a sweet sixteen party and all the other things you need to have if both of us aren’t working!” Lila figured though that her mom had just gotten bored staying at home all day. Lila got bored at home all day, too. Summer seemed to stretch on forever. Some days she had one of her endless camps to keep her busy, but most days it was just her and Jenni floating around in the pool or watching dvds or playing The Sims to see who could build the better family. Lila couldn’t wait to start school again in the fall. The two of them would be in the fourth grade this year. It was their last year in the elementary school before they moved up to the middle school. Next year, in the fifth grade, there would be dances and a cheerleading team and they’d change rooms and teachers for some of their classes. And they’d be best friends just like always. They always went shopping together right before school started so that they could pick out lots of matching clothes. Some days, if their moms didn’t have to go to their jobs until the afternoon, they’d convince each mom to French braid their hair exactly the same way – Jenni with her perfect, shiny blond hair and Lila with her thick, dark Mexicana hair. Best friends forever. That’s what their favorite matching pink hoody sweatshirts said.

Lila climbed onto the side of the pool and launched herself onto the silver raft, spraying splash water all over Jenni on the way.

“Liiiiila! It’s cold! I’m gonna get you for that.”

Lila’s dad had said earlier that he had seen that the rainstorms from the day before might happen again, but right now the sun was burning down on them, turning Jenni’s skin a perfect tan and making Lila even darker. It looked like a perfect afternoon.

***

The first thing you need to know about best friends is that they will do anything to make sure they stay best friends. There may be fights (especially fights over cute boys who play football and wear adorable red ball caps and always make the honor roll), but best friends always make up in the end. Boys can’t really break up best friends. There will be competition about who has the better hair or who gets her period first or who has the better dress for the Christmas dance or who can hold her breath underwater longer, but in the end, each girl will help the other one pick out her prom dress and will insist that their dates take them to prom in the same limo. They will take a picture hugging each other on graduation day, and they will send each other cute little ‘I miss you cards” from college. Years later, they will take a trip together once a year to a spa or a beach to catch up and have “girl time’.

There will probably even be weeks, sometimes months, where best friends don’t speak because they’re so angry at each other for making plans to go to the movies without asking the other one to go or for telling some other friend the secret that they SWORE they’d never tell, never ever ever ever. Those will always end though after they run into each other in the mall, accidentally about to buy the same pair of shoes.

Yes, the thing you need to know about best friends is that they will do anything to stay best friends. And really, there’s no boy, no competition, no silly little piece of gossip that can threaten best friends. There’s really only one thing that can threaten best friends. Another girl who wants one of the dynamic duo for her best friend. Especially if that girl is the prettiest, wealthiest, smartest, most popular girl in the about-to-be-fourth-grade class.

***

“My dad is such a dork. He totally said it was going to rain today.”

The girls had been floating in the warm sun for 15 minutes. Kind of starting to get drowsy and close their eyes now and again. Kind of half talking.

“I think your dad is a sweetheart. Where is he? Is he at work? Your dad is always at work. My dad, too. I hope we never marry guys like that.” Jenni had been best buds with Lila’s dad for as long as either could remember. Both girls were like second daughters to each other’s families, but Jenni and Lila’s dad had a special bond. Jenni was so spunky, and the two of them would shoot baskets or throw footballs in the back yard. Lila’s dad always told Jenni she was way too girly and somebody had to teach her a little bit about the inner tomboy in her.

“Yeah, he’s at work. But my mom is here. They’re freaked out about Shanna missing. They said no little girls were being left alone during the day for creepy men to come and snatch away.”

“Is that what people think happened to Shanna? Some man snatched her away?” Suddenly, Jenni’s voice had dropped to a whisper and she didn’t look anything like an almost-fourth-grade girl anymore. She looked like someone much older.

“Jenni, shhhhh. We can’t talk about it here. If you need to talk about it, we should go up into my room. You need to be careful what you say.”

“No,” said Jenni, “Let’s float around a little more. What if your dad was right and it’s going to rain? I have to do a solo routine at cheer camp tomorrow. I want to be tan for that. Let’s flip over. We can make up stories while I get my stomach even with my back. Yeah?”

“Cool!”

“Here, give me your hand. We can hold hands while we float and that way we won’t get too far apart from each other.”

***
The other thing you need to know about best friends is that they can keep secrets. In fact, nobody is better at keeping secrets than two best friends are. Secrets are one of the key foundations to being best friends. To really be a best friend, you have to be willing to tell your best friend EVERYTHING. If it would go in your diary, not the online version you show the world, but your real diary, then you need to be willing to tell it to your best friend. Otherwise, what’s the point of being best friends? What kind of best friend are you if you wouldn’t put the power of destroying you in your best friend’s hands? If you wouldn’t do that, do you really trust your best friend? Do you really love her?

Keeping secrets is how best friends prove that they are best friends. One best friend may know that the other one really did lose her virginity to Brent Stanley in his older brother’s car after the basketball game, but when the rumor starts floating around school, the best friend will say, “That’s total bullshit. She’s my best friend. I’d KNOW if that had happened, and I’m telling you it’s just Brent making stuff up to seem like he’s a stud or something. She’s totally holding out for somebody better than Brent Stanley. I mean, seriously. If that kind of thing were true, I wouldn’t even want to be her best friend anymore.” But later that night, in the secret club room of one of the girls’ bedrooms, the girls will talk about how Brent Stanley was just practice so that she’d know what she was doing later.

Best friends keep secrets. It’s what they do. You can never believe anything one best friend says about another because they always have an agenda to protect each other. They’re best friends forever. They have matching ankle bracelets to prove it.

***

Shanna’s family moved from Houston to Dallas at the beginning of the summer and right into a house in the same community as Lila and Jenni’s. Shanna looked just like Jenni. Same long blond hair. Same blue eyes. She was taller, but Jenni’s mom kept telling her she hadn’t gone through her growth spurt yet. Shanna was a cheerleader too, but she’d moved to town too late to sign up for summer cheerleading camp at the community center. Shanna wasn’t a shy kid. It didn’t take her long to make friends with all the kids up and down the streets. She had TONS of questions. What were the teachers like? Who were the cutest boys? What did kids here think was cool? Wow, kids in Houston weren’t like them at all! What shoes should she buy for back to school? Should she ride the bus or maker her mom drive her to work? Which was cooler?

It was really clear that Shanna’s favorite target for “cool questions” was Jenni, and that made sense. Every kid on the street could see Jenni and Shanna being perfect twin Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders in ten years. Their hair pulled into identical blond ponytails. Wearing matching cheerleading uniforms. Probably even with the same earrings on. Shanna started showing up at Lila’s house in the middle of the day to ask the girls if she could come swim with them. Lila’s parents were never, ever rude, so they’d invite the new little girl in. But as soon as Shanna came out to the pool, Lila became the girl who got left out of the conversation. Shanna would ask Jenni questions about the girls in cheerleading camp and boys and all the things that Lila and Jenni usually talked about. But she’d ignore Lila unless Lila’s parents were around. As soon as Lila’s mom or dad came out by the pool to check in on the girls or give them lunch, Shanna would start talking to Lila like Lila was her new best friend.

Jenni didn’t even seem to notice it at first. “Lila! You’re crazy. Shanna really likes you. Think how awesome we’d be as a threesome! We’d rule the school. You, me and Shanna! Nobody could stop us. Just give her a chance. I don’t understand why you don’t like her. She’s so much fun.”

Just hearing Jenni defend Shanna made Lila’s stomach tighten up in knots. Was Jenni blind? Didn’t she see how this girl was coming in here and trying to steal Jenni away from Lila? Jenni had been Lila’s best friend FOREVER. There wasn’t some third girl in that equation. They were best friends. Best friends forever. Shanna was just looking for a time and a place and a way to convince Jenni that she didn’t want to be Lila’s best friend anymore.

Of course Shanna started inviting Jenni to do things without Lila around, and whenever Lila would ask there was always an excuse for why. “Lila, we totally called you to see if you wanted to go to the fun park with us, but you were at soccer camp,” or “But you don’t even like horror movies. We just thought you’d rather not come to see a movie that you don’t even like!”

It got worse and worse over the first part of the summer. Before long, Shanna and Jenni had matching yellow t-shirts with pictures of little ducks on them. When Lila asked Jenni why they hadn’t bought one for her, Jenni just quoted Shanna. “Jenni, Shanna said that yellow doesn’t look good on people with brown skin. It’ll make you look like you’re sick or something. We just didn’t get you one because we didn’t want to make you feel like you should have to wear something that was going to look gross on you.”

Lila couldn’t understand why it was that Jenni didn’t see how Shanna was trying to break them up as best friends. She cried and cried at night when the two of them went to the mall or the community center without calling her. When the two of them chatted away floating on the two rafts in the pool, Lila floated down to the deep end and practiced holding her breath underwater for as long as she could. At least underwater, she couldn’t hear them talking about their plans for when school started. She got really good at holding her breath underwater.

It was a Thursday. Shanna and Jenni had gone to watch the boys play baseball at the community center. Lila had moped around her room and played on her computer. It was around ten o’clock when she got an IM from Jenni.

JenniCheer99: I need 2 talk 2 U.
LBug: I’m home. Call me.
JenniCheer99: Can’t call. Can I come over?
LBug: Is Shanna with U?
JenniCheer99: No. Need 2 talk 2 U about her.
JenniCheer99: R your parents home?
LBug: No. Next door at neighbors playing cards.
JenniCheer99: Meet me at the front door in 10.
LBug: It’s too late. Your parents won’t let U come.
JenniCheer99: Sneaking out. C U in 10.

Whatever had upset Jenni, Lila couldn’t wait to hear. She checked her hair once in the mirror and headed down to the door to let Jenni in. Ten minutes later, Jenni showed up in the door in her pajamas. And she’d been crying. Lila grabbed her by her hand and pulled her up the stairs, “Hurry up. If my parents come home and see you, they’ll call your parents and bust you.”

In Lila’s purple bedroom with a real sky with clouds painted on the ceiling, the two girls sat cross-legged on the bed. Jenni reached out and took both of Lila’s hands, “You were totally right about Shanna. Lila, you wouldn’t even believe the terrible things she said to me tonight. I don’t even want to tell you because you’ll get so pissed, and you’ll totally think I’m so stupid for falling for her. I can’t believe her! She’s so terrible.”

“Just tell me what she said, Jenni.” Lila felt her heart warming up. Her best friend had come back to her, and together they were going to remove the thing that had tried to break them up.

“She said that when school started, she and I couldn’t be friends with you anymore because nobody would think we were cool if we were friends with…with…”

“What, Jenni? What’d she say?”

“She said that nobody would want to be friends with us if we were friends with a greasy, low-class Mexican whose mom should be cleaning our kitchens instead of living in the same type of house as us. She said we needed to start a rumor that you’d done something horrible and embarrassing so that nobody would like you and we’d be able to stop being your friend. She asked me to tell her something that we could tell everybody about you that they’d believe so that we’d be able to stop being your friend. Lila! I didn’t even know what to do.”

Lila felt like she’d just been hit, hard. Her parents had only hit her once, about a year ago, when she’d used the F-word in front of them, and even that hadn’t felt as shocking as this feeling right now. Did kids think of her as a low-class Mexican? She had lots of friends. It was Texas, there were lots of Mexican kids in her school. She’d never even thought that somebody could hate her for that. And Jenni. Had Jenni betrayed her? Was Lila going to go from being one of the most popular girls in the school to the kind of girl nobody would sit with during lunch. Jenni knew all of Lila’s secrets. What had she told Shanna?

“Jenni, what did you tell Shanna? Is everybody going to be hating me when school starts?”

“NO! I didn’t tell her anything, Lila! We’re best friends, you and me. I always thought Shanna would be like our third. I guess you’re just smarter than me. But listen, so I told her that you were my best friend and I wasn’t going to do that. And she told me that I’d better think about again. She told me that no matter what, everybody was going to want to be her friend when school started, and that if I didn’t help her get rid of you, she’d make everybody hate me too. She said she’d make both you and me the most unliked girls ever for the rest of school. She said she was always the most popular girl, and she always decided who the most popular girls would be, and I could join her team, or I could be on the losing team. That’s what she said! Oh, Lila, what are we going to do?”

Jenni started crying again, but Lila was suddenly very happy. Her best friend had come back to her. Jenni had seen the light. She’d seen that they needed to stick together, and in the moment when it counted Jenni hadn’t betrayed Lila.

Lila said, “Jenni, if she comes to school in the fall, she’ll ruin it for both of us. She almost stole you. Think about what she can do once school starts. And she knows all about you now. She can make everybody hate you.”

“I know,” cried Jenni, “We have to to something. What are we going to do? What if everybody ends up hating us? What are we going to do?”

***

You also have to know something about ten-year-old girls. They are not such little girls. We treat them like little girls because as a society, we have decided that children should be innocent and protected and sheltered and not have to fight for survival.

But what we forget is that if it were only up to nature, a ten-year-old girl would be almost a full adult, and it would only be a year or two before she would need to ensure herself of the best mate, the best hearth and the best position to get the best meat and treasures from her tribe. So while we can create rules that say that we should treat ten-year-old girls like dolls and puppies, what nature determines is that ten-year-old girls are almost women. And as almost-women, they are old enough to understand their survival instinct. There is a tribe, no matter how big or how socialized, and they need to protect their place in that tribe.

We spend a lot of time trying to figure out what makes little girls be mean to each other. We blame it on the media, on society, on consumerism, but there is a more simple truth. Little girls are actually almost-women, realizing they need to fight to survive. And no matter how much society we put around things, at some point they need to play out their natural instinct to assert superiority and secure their spot in the tribe.

***

“Hey, Shanna, it’s Jenni. I know what you can say about Lila. I have a copy of her diary right here. I stole it when I was over there. I don’t want to say anything over the phone though. You know, cause what if somebody hears? Let’s totally meet someplace private. Can you come over to my house? We have that storage shed in the back yard where my mom keeps all the holiday decorations. Nobody’ll hear or find us in there.”

Jenni hung up the phone and looked at Lila. “Oh my God. I can’t believe we’re going to do this.”

“We have to, Jenni. Don’t chicken out on me now. You can do your part right?” Lila was full of determination and her eyes had a scary glow to them.

“You’re right,” Jenni said. “I know we have to. I can do my part. Just don’t be late.”

Shanna showed up about an hour later. She and Jenni held hands as they snuck out to the storage shed, going quietly like spies to make sure Jenni’s parents didn’t see where they were going. Jenni’s parents never actually locked the storage shed, and Jenni and Lila had hidden in there in the cool a lot of times to share secrets. Jenni led Shanna into the shed and climbed up onto a box once they were in there to pull the chain and turn on the simple maintenance light that was hanging in the middle. The two of them sat down cross-legged in the middle of the shed. Behind Shanna, boxes labeled “Christmas lights” and the big, plastic tree Jenni’s parents never took all the way apart after the holiday made Jenni think about last Christmas when she and Lila had been given computers for Christmas. Behind Jenni, the giant inflatable Easter Bunny that her mom put out in the yard every spring filled up most of the space.

Jenni handed Shanna Lila’s purple diary with silver stars on it. “Here’ just start reading. There’s a lot in there to pick from.”

Shanna grabbed the diary out of the Jenni’s hands and started anxiously reading page-by-page. “I’m glad you realized what you needed to do, Jenni,” she said. “I’m telling you, you and me. They’ll all want to be our friends. But we can’t carry dead weight like Lila around. She was only popular because she was friends with you.”

Behind the giant inflatable Easter Bunny, Lila felt her chest burn again. So this is what anger felt like maybe? Whatever it was, it was the thing that made sure she was able to do what she did next.

As Shanna kept thumbing through the diary, Lila snuck out from behind the Easter Bunny with the piece of electrical tape they’d cut from the roll they’d stolen from Lila’s dad’s tool shelf earlier. Before Shanna ever sense that Lila was there, Lila put the electrical tape over Shanna’s mouth so that she wouldn’t be able to scream. As soon as she did it, though, Shanna started to scream and hit at Lila, and the noises were louder than Lila thought they’d be. Jenni moved her and pushed Shanna down and sat on her, but the girl kept kicking and screaming. “Quick, we have to move quick!” hissed Lila. She handed Jenni another roll of electrical tape and she took her roll off of her arm. Shanna was kicking and screaming, but with both Jenni and Lila sitting on top of her, she wasn’t able to get up. Lila took her roll of electrical tape and started rolling it around and around Shanna’s head until it covered up her nose and eyes and mouth completely, and Jenni rolled her tape around Shanna’s ankles and wrists so that she couldn’t move. Shanna stopped screaming.

“Is she dead?” Asked Jenni, when the noise stopped.

“She may just be faking so that we’ll undo her and she can run out of here,” Lila said. We may not have enough tape on her to actually suffocate her. What do you think?”

“I don’t know,” said Jenni, “What do you think we should do with her next?’

Lila got up and started yanking at the tape around Shanna’s ankles and wrists. “I don’t know. Do you think if she were still alive and we left her here, she’d be able to get the tape off of her?”

“No way. There’s a whole role of tape on there. How’s she gonna get it off?”

“We should leave her here for a few weeks,” said Lila with finality. “We can’t do anything with her until we’re sure she’s really dead. So, if we haven’t killed her yet, we need to make sure she starves to death. I don’t know how long that would take, but I bet we can find it on the internet.”

“You think?” asked Jenni, “What if she really is dead? What if she starts to smell and my parents notice it? What if somebody comes into the shed for some reason?”

“We don’t have any choice,” said Lila. “Here, help me drag her behind the Christmas boxes or something.”

And so the girls moved Shanna behind the box with the big plastic “Noel” candles that Jenni’s mom put that the entrance to the sidewalk every Christmas and left her there. Every day, they came in and poked at her body, but she still felt warm and made little whimpering sounds. On the tenth day the sounds stopped, but she still felt warm to the touch. On the twentieth day, when Jenni snuck in to check on her in the morning, she was cold and felt like Jenni’s grandmother had felt in her coffin.

“Lila, I think we need to move her now,” Jenni had said one day at the pool. Lila had just nodded and said, “We just need to know the next night your parents aren’t going to be home.”

That night was four nights later when Jenni’s parents went down the street to a neighbor’s house to watch the televised debate between the two candidates for mayor of Dallas. They’d almost decided to invite all the neighbors over to their house to watch the debates, but at the last minute they’d decided to have a cookout a few days later. After all, since the new little girl in town had gone missing, there had been more parties to keep everybody’s spirits up. It had been almost four weeks now. Every day it looked less and less like that little girl would be found. Jenni’s parents told Jenni she would have to either come down the street with them or go and spend the night at Lila’s. With that other little girl missing, they weren’t leaving their daughter alone in the house.

Jenni happily headed towards Lila’s, and an hour later the two of them snuck out of the house and down the street on their bikes. If anybody asked, they’d just say that Jenni had forgotten something at her house and they’d run to get it. If their parents got upset about their being out and unsupervised, they’d just play dumb and promise never to do it again.

At Jenni’s, the task was quick and simple. Shanna’s taped-up body was heavy, but they didn’t need to drag it too far. There was a well in Jenni’s backyard for water storage. It was like a cistern. The water when through a filter and eventually got used in Jenni’s house. The girls had looked the filter stuff up on the internet, and if flat out said that animals could get into your well and die and it wouldn’t be in your water at all. The girls parked their bikes in the back yard and went over to open the grate on the well at the back corner of the yard. They had always gotten yelled at as little kids not to play near it. What if they fell in? So Jenni’s mom had planted rose bushes with thorns all around it to keep the girls away when they were running wild.

The grate was heavy, but between the two of them they were able to undo the safety bolt and slide the grate over. Shanna’s body was heavy, too, but the two of them were able to drag it across the back yard and drop it into the well. By the time they got back to Lila’s house, they were sweaty and gross, but they were also lucky. Lila’s parents had been watching the same debates on tv and hadn’t even noticed that the girls were gone. “Mom, we’re going to take showers now,” Lila yelled.

“Okay, honey. There are clean towels in the basket in the hallway.”

A day later, the strange summer rains started and the well filled three quarters full. The girls looked down to see if they could see Shanna floating on the top, but it was too dark to see anything and all they could smell were roses.

***
After Shanna went missing, the town went into lockdown mode. Everybody felt the most sorry for Lila and Jenni because they had both been friends with the missing little girl whose parents kept appearing on the local news begging for any information about their daughter. Everybody invited them over to play and commented on what strong little girls they were being, still going to cheer camp and gym camp and soccer camp and putting on brave faces for the world.

But Jenni hadn’t been the same since that night, and everybody noticed it. She slept a lot and had to be dragged out of bed by her mother and forced into the shower every morning. Unless it was Lila’s pool, she didn’t want to be anywhere near water, and she started insisting on drinking nothing but bottled water because there might be germs in normal water, even if it had been filtered through her mother’s special drinking water pitcher. She got stomach pains for no reason and kept breaking out in unidentifiable rashes. Her parents took her to a therapist who said that this kind of depression and anxiety was normal for a child who had just lost a best friend to some kind of tragedy. They just needed to keep and eye on her and make sure they talked openly with her about what she was feeling.

To her parents, she put on the best face possible. And though they were worried about her, they were also patient with her.

To Lila, the full effect pulled out. “Lila, we did that to that girl. Are we evil? Are we evil, evil people? Do you feel like this every day? I feel crazy? Am I crazy? I wake up and I swear she’s right there in my room. It’s like she keeps following me around. I keep waking up in panic that she wasn’t really dead and she’s somehow come back. Or whati f my parents look into the well? Or what if part of her finger comes out in the garden hose?”

And then Jenni would start panic breathing and crying and Lila would crawl behind her and hug her and say, “We did what we had to, Jenni. Nobody’s going to find her. You need to just forget it ever happened. That’s what you need to do. Just forget that it ever happened. It’ll be easier when school starts and we’re not bored all day. You’ll have so much to do you’ll forget about all of this. And she won’t be able to hurt us at all. She can’t even hurt us now.”

***

That was a month ago. By the end of the summer, Jenni seemed like she was back to normal to everybody. Worrying about her tan. Going out to movies and the last summer baseball games. Going shopping for back-to-school stuff, since school started in just a week. To Lila, something still seemed off with her, but Lila was just happy to have her friend back.

“Hey, let’s see who can hold their breath longer again,” said Lila. They’d been floating on the rafts for so long it had gotten hot, and the idea of being underwater sounded great to Lila. She’d even let Jenni win this time. Any little thing she could do to get her best friend’s spirits back up.

“Okay!,” said Jenni and slid off the raft. The two girls swam down to the deep end where they could push themselves down deep under the water instead of maybe losing because they accidentally popped out in the shallow end. “On three we both go under,” Jenni said, “One, two, three…”

Both girls pushed themselves underwater. Lila opened her eyes to look up at the yellow patterns on the surface again. Sometimes, when she was alone in the pool, she played this game by herself just because it was so relaxing. She looked over at Jenni. She couldn’t come up too early or Jenni would know that Lila let her win. She needed to wait until Jenni started to the surface and then just shoot up right ahead of her like she’d lost all of her breath.

Lila blew a few bubbles out of her mouth. They’d been down for a long time. Why wasn’t Jenni coming up? She never held her breath this long. Lila really was running out of breath. Jenni really was going to beat her this time!

Finally, Lila couldn’t stay under even a minute longer. She made her body into a straight line and pushed towards the sunlight on the top of the pool as fast as she could, sucking in as much air as she could as soon as she broke through the surface. As soon as she had her breath back, she swam over to where Jenni was underwater to go back under and get her attention to tell her she could come up now. Jenni must have been practicing! This had to be a record breath holding.

Lila dove back under the water and opened her eyes, but as soon as she was under, something happened to Jenni. Jenni rolled her body over so that her face was towards the bottom of the pool and her back was towards the sunlight and started floating limply up to the top of the pool

Her eyes were open, but she didn’t look at Lila.

Her mouth was open, but she wasn’t blowing air out of it.

Before she could even notice the top of the water or the sunlight or the quiet, Lila was out of the water and running into the house.

“Daaaaaad. Something’s wrong with Jenni! You have to come help Jenni! Jenni’s not breathing. Daaaaad!”