Surviving High School

was gone, flying through the air. He did a graceless flip and a half before landing in a near belly flop down below. The crowd exploded in applause.
    A few seconds later, Ben surfaced and looked up at Emily.
    “It’s really nice in here!” he shouted. “You should come down!” He looked back at his friends and started to chant, “Em-i-ly! Em-i-ly!”
    The others joined in. “Em-i-ly! Em-i-ly!”
    “I don’t have a suit!” she shouted at them, but the crowd only chanted louder.
    “It’s like that old song!” shouted Ben. “Come as you are!”
    Emily looked down at her dress. She imagined the pool water soaking through the fabric and how much it would weigh as she tried to surface, how stupid she’d look with it fluttering around her on the way down, like a girlie pink-and-white parachute.
    “Em-i-ly! Em-i-ly!”
    She imagined what Ben would think of her if she didn’t jump. Then she pictured opening the door to face a belligerent Dominique, and a shiver ran through her. She took off her shoes and swung her legs over the balcony. Ben looked up at her and smiled.
    “I don’t have any spare clothes!” she shouted at him.
    “You can borrow some of mine!”
    “We won’t be able to get back into your room!” she warned.
    “I’ll pick the lock! Come on!”
    She jumped.
    For a moment, time froze as she hung in the night air, the pink ruffles of her skirt floating up past her waist, up to her shoulders. The crowd cheered and called her name as every pair of eyes followed her trajectory. And then, suddenly, the water parted beneath her feet and enveloped her.
    She opened her eyes beneath the water’s surface to see the soft pink of her dress, now darker with the wet, floating around her like candy-colored seaweed, and she wondered if there’d ever been a time in history when girls had to swim in long, flowing ball gowns. That definitely couldn’t have been good for their race times.
    As she began to push to the surface, she saw Ben swimming toward her, a big smile on his face. As he got closer, he put a hand on her shoulder and pulled his body close to hers. He closed his eyes and moved his lips close to Emily’s.
    Wait a second , she thought. Is he trying to… to kiss me?
    A dozen pairs of legs kicked beneath the pool’s surface a few feet away, and the sound of music and laughter filtered softly through the water. She wondered if anyone at the edge of the pool was looking down and watching them. This definitely wasn’t what she’d had in mind when she’d imagined her first kiss.
    Suddenly, Emily’s head felt light, and she realized she hadn’t taken a breath since she was up on Ben’s balcony. She needed some air. Now. Two competing impulses took hold: Press her lips against Ben’s or swim to the surface and breathe. A first kiss or oxygen? She wasn’t sure which one she wanted more.
    A moment passed, and Ben stayed in place, looking into her eyes and smiling. But he didn’t move forward to kiss her, and after a few seconds, Emily’s need to breathe grew so overwhelming that she had to swim to the surface.
    A second later, Emily gulped air and treaded water as her dress floated up around her. She felt her now-exposed legs kicking through the water and tried to remember if she’d worn her stupid underwear with the pattern of kittens playing with balls of yarn.
    She hoped that down below Ben was keeping his eyes closed and that he’d surface soon. After a few moments, he swam up beside her and inhaled deeply.
    “Hey,” he said. “What, uh, happened just then?”
    “I needed a breath.” She started swimming backward to the edge of the pool. “You didn’t, uh, look while you were down there, did you?”
    “I wouldn’t dare, kitten ,” he said. “You wait here. I’ll get you a towel and a change of clothes.”
    He pulled himself out of the pool and ran inside, his wet boxers clinging to his thighs as the nearby crowd whooped at him.
    As Emily reached the pool’s edge and struggled to heftherself out, waterlogged dress and all, she looked up to see an angry stiletto-heeled figure staring down at her.
    “At least now you’ll have to change out of that stupid dress,” whispered Dominique, crouching down and leaning over the pool but not offering Emily any help. “Don’t think this means Ben is yours. Just because the two of you took a little swim—”
    As Emily climbed farther out of the pool, Dominique tried to stand up, but her foot landed on Emily’s soaked skirt and