Blue Hole Back Home: A Novel by Joy Jordan-Lake Read Free Book Online

her still a little shaky from the gun going off.
    Jimbo flashed her the dimple that said that was the right answer.
    But I wasn’t missing the chance to get the jump on Jimbo’s getting his usual jump on me. “In that case,” I said to them both, “Geronimo-o-o!” And I flung myself on my backside before I’d finished the word.
    The proper, and unused, path down to the Blue Hole wound slowly, switching back on itself to avoid erosion. But the one we all took threaded straight through the trees and the outcroppings of rock, the course always slick with a carpet of leaves and loose soil. From the top, a good eighty yards up, just before the path tipped into descent, hemlocks and oaks blocked any view of the water below. But even from high up above, even if you weren’t listening for it, you could hear the rumble and rush of the stream that fed into the Hole. On a hot summer’s day, the mere sound of the stream spoke coolness and mercy, pulled on us, tumbling, helpless, to where the water pooled for us, waiting.
    Well into my slide, I slammed feet-first into an old yellow poplar on the way down, and Bo rolled in next and, shoulder first, hit the boulder before me. We crashed and careened the next several lengths of the path, Jimbo cursing me and my future offspring all the way down. We landed in the usual heap, bruised in the usual places, at the mud beach on the north bank, where the stream indulged itself with a final flourish of small waterfall before becoming the Blue Hole. Panting, we rolled on our backs to watch the new girl, sliding—stiffly, of course—on the towel, her long red cotton skirt tucked around her ankles as she descended.
    I clapped a couple of times for her. Then, noticing the sweat blossoms flowering on my tank top, I began shedding my clothes down to my suit.
    Still on his back, Jimbo made the baseball referee’s sign for an out in the new girl’s direction. “Disqualified!”
    “What?” I laughed at him.
    “We can’t be allowing that kind of behavior. Look at her.”
    I looked at her. “What about her?”
    “Way too smooth and clean. What would it lead to if we all did it that way?”
    The new girl levitated to her feet without the use of her hands, and dusted off her skirt, which was not anywhere dirty from what I could tell. And I came close to saying, disgusted, how behavior like this—this princess act—wouldn’t likely turn Em’s truck into a pumpkin, or a proper coach, either.
    Her gaze swung out toward the Hole, whose clay sides and black bottom silt had been churned up all day, suspended now in water that was deep rusty brown. Granite boulders rimmed the pond, and mountain laurel and hemlock provided shade like umbrellas at street cafes: The Blue Hole was a study in greens and grays and browns and rust-reds, with round punctures of pink where rhododendron blooms still hung on to life, badly wilting.
    I followed Farsanna’s eyes. “Okay, so nothing here at the Blue Hole’s blue except sky. It was never officially named, really,” I told her. “We just call it that.”
    She examined the scene. “There are many crocodiles here—or no?”
    I laughed at her, laughed out loud at the thought: a croc slithering out from under a pink rhododendron. “We get a water moccasin every once in a while—and nobody tells their mommas. That’s rule number one. And we get mosquitoes as big as a baby’s fist. They attack in a swarm, like the moccasins will. But just make sure you look where you land when you jump in, and you’ll be all right. Before you jump in.” I waited for her to go big-eyed or back away from the edge.
    But she nodded, taking it in, not even rattled. I couldn’t help but like that about her. Bo saw it too. His head swung around with interest at her not squealing or acting squeamish. She had just earned herself points.
    “So,” I asked, “does this look anything like where you come from?”
    She glanced down at her toes, already sunk into the red clay that