Hidden Valley (D. SWING)

II. Wet

Splash!

A loud crack of bodies smacking the water pulled her right back in to where she belongs. This lake means a lot to her and Dalvin. Don didn't get his license first but he did learn to drive first. The moment he learned to drive, they'd take the church bus and drive the whole gang down to the lake. The whole gang included everybody that could fit on there without it looking suspicious. It was a stretch but they always made it work.

"Damn, D!"

He laughs dolphin tailing himself back to the edge of the dock. Cynthia floats around watching him with the knowledge that he's about to do something spectacular. A slight twitch in her right eye as her tense body tries to grow used to the idea of Don all of a sudden being, not attractive, but somewhat sexually appealing. She's counting down the moment that someone near her openly praises his features, she wants to know her own reaction. Don stands on the dock, adjusting the strings of his trunks. He'll never forget the day he saw Jim Hawkins dive in the pool but come up without his trunks. He only had to look a half an inch above his knee to get the picture. Unfortunately for Don, he needs all the trunk coverage he can get. If the roles were reversed, Jim would've saw Don's entire package.

"Come jump, D!"

"Hold on," Don laughs, tying the strings of his trunks as tight as he can deal with. "I gotta' keep my shit in place!" Everybody laughs, watching Don. Everybody always keeps their eyes glued to Don when they're near water. He's bound to steal the show whether it's on accident or on purpose.

Once his lower-body attire is completely secured, and set in place, he looks around the water, scanning all of his friends faces of anticipation. He can see Cynthia floating around laughing, it brings a gigantic, genuine smile to his acne-free face. Again, for an entire summer, he didn't get to talk to her. He kind of wondered why she never called him, why Dalvin never gave him the phone, why she never asked Dalvin to give him the phone. He's just as much her family as everyone else. He guesses it simply slipped her mind, as if that were any more acceptable than the other screwed up excuses he made for her. Don's not going to say anything, he'll get over it silently.

"Okay, I'm finna' go," Don announces.

Nobody turns to face him because the entire time, he's got all eyes on him. The dock is nothing like a diving board, yet, it's where his abilities made their big debut. Meaning, he can make wood into a mansion regardless of the conditions. With a great big leap, his tall, lanky body flings into the air as stiff as a board. A quarter of a millisecond into his five foot jump, he does a three-sixty spin before tilting his body one-hundred and twenty degrees forward and diving directly in to the water. He swims down to touch the bottom and picks up a pebble for the hell of it.

Once he's back on the surface, all of his friend's cheers are kind of hard to hear with the water in his ears. He swims over to Cynthia, who is sitting with her friends Tasha and Marlene. "You still collecting rocks?" He taunts, handing her the pebble.

Cynthia laughs. "If you don't get the hell out of my face!" Tasha and Marlene give one another a look. "I didn't even think you would remember that, it was one time! That was it!" It seems that Cynthia's memory is failing her because that is exactly what it was not. She collected rocks very often but she never did anything with them. She kept them all in a grocery bag until one day the grocery bag ripped and all of the ants that sat on the rocks filled her bedroom. After that, her Big Mama shut down the whole operation.

"Cyn, it wasn't one time!"

Don's words are bound to trigger a playfully argumentative response from Cynthia. Marlene and Tasha begin to slowly swim away from the pair. The two friends know that Cynthia and Don have a certain kind of bond that they can't compete with on their best day. In certain moments, Cynthia and Don get to acting like Don was literally in the delivery room when she was born. They could tell this would become one of those moments. In these moments, it's either leave or be left. Cynthia and Don will, without a doubt, wander off because they're too busy caught up in the conversation.