Glass Animals
by Stephen V. Ramey
As best Malcolm could read, the sign had said “No Glass Animals in Pool.” The sign lied. Standing on the diving board he saw them: glass crocodiles, translucent hippos, sharks. They skimmed just beneath the surface, yawned cavernous mouths through passing wave troughs. The skin of his shoulders bunched.
“Come on,” Janiqua said. “Don’t be such a chicken.” She fidgeted on the diving board to his right. Her board dipped and rose, making a rhythmic squeak.
“I ain’t chicken,” Malcolm said.
“Whatever.” Squeezing her nose between her fingers Janiqua leaped. The board groaned and chattered. Malcolm watched Janiqua’s woman hips lift and twist, watched her hand come down off her face and lead her to the water’s surface. At the moment of impact, Malcolm saw shards, a bright welling of angles and planes from the water; he imagined his brother’s forearm, the needle digging at scabbed skin like a shovel lifting grass.
Malcolm pulled into himself. He smoked weed, but had so far resisted the hard stuff his brother sold. His life was looking more and more grim, though, and it was probably only a matter of time. This last suspension was about to turn into expulsion; the advocate had told him to brace himself. Without school there was no way out of the hood for him.
Water splashed his legs, splattered his baggy swimming trunks. Janiqua was in the pool, glass animals snapping after her. He watched her panicked strokes, her thrashing legs as she tried to escape them. If he was smart, he would jump now while they were distracted.
He bent his knees and let his weight sink. The board bounced, but he pulled back from the actual leap. Him escaping anything was about as likely as jumping and not coming down. Gravity was another rule on another sign he couldn’t read.
At the far end, Janiqua pulled herself over the pool’s lip. Teeth clung to her, fell away as she stood, skittered back into the pool. Malcolm looked down. Glass animals were already jostling for position beneath him, mouths and eyes snapping.
“Come on, Malcom!” Janiqua stood at the far end, wringing ropy wads of her hair. “If I can do it, you can. Ain’t nothing you can’t do if you set your mind to it.”
What the hell, Malcolm thought. Maybe gravity was wrong too. Maybe he would jump and never come down, just lift up and up, above the pool, above Janiqua, above the rusted chain link fence, above the rusted water tower, above the boarded crack houses on Sampson Street, above the whole damned city, up and up and up until he would never have to come down again.
The muscles of his legs gathered at the thought of it, his breath sealed in, his heart calmed to a steady pound. The board bowed down beneath him, tipped him closer to the pool. He felt the glass animals pushing out of the water, straining to reach his toes, chlorine breath hot on his skin. But he knew the board would rebound; it would bear him up and throw him high as the other board had done to Janiqua. If he had faith in anything it was consequence.
As his toes lost contact, he felt the sky open above him.
Stephen V. Ramey lives in New Castle, Pennsylvania. His work has appeared most recently in Foliate Oak, Bartleby Snopes, Eschatology, and Berg Gasse 19. He co-edits the annual Triangulation Anthology from Parsec Ink and blogs about that process. This story began as a prompt at Show Me Your Lits, a site dedicated to literary flash.