Amanda and the High Dive

It was Friday, and the Swimming tournament had ended in the early afternoon. After the awarding of the medals, the swim teams, their coaches, their families and the rest of the volunteers went to a local restaurant for a celebratory ice cream.

Amanda sat at a table with a group of children and listened attentively, to them as they talked excitedly about their feats during the previous week…meanwhile making inroads on a Large Hot Fudge Brownie Sundae.

After the swimming teams and their families left, the coaches and volunteers remained behind. Amanda ordered another hot fudge sundae – the small size this time – and took it over to her friend Cheryl Kazkowski’s’s table, despite the fact that Cheryl was sitting at a table with Teague, the tournament director with whom she’d had that run-in her first day, and who had snubbed her the next day at the coffee shop.

“Hi, Cheryl,” she said in a low voice. “I’m about to take off.”

“Amanda, thanks for all your help this week,” Cheryl replied, in an equally low voice.

“It was fun. Thanks for asking me.”

“Are you headed back to Bimini?”

“No, I’m off to Palau. We’ve got a pretty exciting gig there.”

“Oh, what’s happening?”

“Well, you know that the waters around Palau are chock full of sunken ships and planes from World War II, right?”

Cheryl laughed. “I know it now.”

“Well, it’s always been a wreck diver’s paradise. And of course every year there’s more and more scuba divers, and a lot of ‘em don’t follow the scuba diver’s code – they dive into these wrecks and they steal things from them. Some of the wrecks are degrading rapidly.”

“That’s terrible,” said Cheryl. She might not know anything about Palau but she knew scuba divers, like tourists to any other location, were never supposed to take souvenirs away from the sites they visited.

“Yes,” nodded Amanda. “But there’s no way to stop it short of forbidding scuba divers there, and posting guards underwater to prevent the thefts – and that’s never going to happen, of course.

So, on the one hand we’ve got the fact that scuba divers are going there and destroying the wrecks, and on the other hand we’ve got the fact the fact that most scuba divers can’t even get to Palau…it’s so far away from the US and the UK. It’s even far away from Japan.

So, we’ve got a client who wants to create a “Little Palau” off the coast of Bimini…recreate the wrecks of Palau in an area more easily accessible to the US.”

“How’s the government of Bimini going to take that?” asked Cheryl.

“Well, I don’t know,” laughed Amanda. “That’s our boss’s problem. But he’s paying us to map all these wrecks, and that’s what we’re going to do.”

“So all three of you are going?”

“Yes…we’re leaving on the Scylla on Sunday.”

“You’re going to love it, I know,” said Cheryl. “Now, do you want a ride back to the pool?”

“No, I’ve got my…”

Amanda’s hands dropped to the pockets of her jeans, in the left hand of which was her wallet. She stopped. “Oh, dear. I’ve got my wallet…but I don’t have my purse. It’s back in the locker room at the pool.”

Cheryl laughed. “Not to worry. I’ve got a key to the pool. I’ll take you there.”

Teague watched them leave.

Had he heard right? He wondered. He had thought that Cheryl had said that Amanda didn’t have a job, that all she did was laze around on a beach all day and scuba dive, frittering her life away. But from what little he’d heard of their conversation, she did have a job…indeed, had her own business.

He’d watched Amanda, during the rest of the tournament, and seen how well she got along with the kids, and liked what he’d seen. She’d been so patient, so attentive, and so obviously enjoying herself and cheering enthusiastically for all the kids. And today, at the restaurant, he’d liked the fact that she’d had no scruples about devouring not one hot fudge sundae but two! You didn’t see many svelte women who did that!

Teague looked at his watch. They’d probably left the pool by now…how long did it take to grab a bunch of keys, after all. But perhaps he could catch her in the parking lot and apologize for his behavior when they’d first met.

But as it turned out they’d had plenty of time.

When Amanda and Cheryl had arrived at the building housing the pool, they’d gone in and walked along the pool deck to get to the locker rooms. Amanda had looked up to see the high dive board, and gotten a sudden idea.

“Cheryl,” she said, “I haven’t high dived since I was in college. Would you mind…I just want to try a couple of dives.”

Cheryl had laughed. “If you want. You’d never catch me up there. “

So it was that when Teague arrived at the swimming pool, it was to see Cheryl’s car still in the parking lot. He walked in, and paused in the doorway to the pool. Amanda was on the high dive, lithe and beautiful in a white swimsuit – 30 feet above the water.

Teague stopped in the doorway and watched, as she calmly walked to the edge of the board, bent her knees, and launched herself into space. She wrapped one arm about her waist, the other about her head, and spun around a couple of times before extending her arms and cleaving the water cleanly.

She emerged from the water to the sound of clapping from Cheryl Kazkowski.

For some reason, Teague remained where he was. He watched as Amanda mounted the 30m board again. What she did next really impressed him. It took courage enough to dive forward off a high board – she stood at the edge of the board…backwards. Then she seemed to fall backwards, off the board, somersaulted once, then twice, and then hit the water with scarcely a splash.

As Teague watched, Amanda emerged from the pool once more, laughing. She grabbed up a towel, and the two of them walked back into the women’s locker room.

Teague returned to his car and drove away. It was a pity, he thought, that Amanda Sutton was going to Palau. He’d probably never see her again…and he found himself regretting that.