Chapter 24

I woke up and went through my now standard morning routine. Bathroom to pee, porch to masturbate with Mom, and then shower before eating breakfast. Just before I put my first bite of breakfast in my mouth, there was a knock at the door.

“Are you two expecting someone?” Dad asked.

I looked at Sara. She shook her head no and I just shrugged. I wasn’t expecting anyone, and I was almost certain Sara wasn’t either. Mom opened the door to see who it was.

“Good morning, are Sam and Sara still here?” I heard the voice and instantly recognized it as Jeremy’s.

“Good morning, Jeremy, you are up awfully early. Everything okay?”

“Everything’s great!” I heard Jeremy reply.

“We are just having breakfast. Do you want to come in?” Mom asked.

“Oh no, no. That’s okay. Just let them know Mina, Mona, and I will be down at the pool when they are done, please. Thanks!” I heard the sound of Jeremy running off the porch, most likely to meet up with the twins.

I shoveled my breakfast into my mouth as fast as I could. Sara, seeing what I was intending, did the same thing. Dad gave us a glare and Mom flat out looked like she was going to lose her mind.

“What on earth do you two think you are doing eating like a pair of wild hogs?” she demanded.

Both of us had the right idea to look chagrined at Mom’s words. She watched us for a minute, but neither Sara nor I moved. We didn’t even chew the food in our mouths or wipe the remnants still on our faces. Mom just huffed her displeasure and we hurriedly finished off our plates. Slower than before, but there was no mistaking the fact we were still eating too fast.

Sara and I managed to get away from Mom’s ire once we finished eating and did the dishes. We said goodbye to both Mom and Dad as we ran past them on our way to the pool to find our friends. The three of them were sitting on the edge of the pool with their feet in the water. They were giggling when we showed up. They didn’t notice us until we sat down next to them.

“Hey!” said Mina, or maybe it was Mona.

I waved hello along with Sara and Jenny said, “Hi.”

Once Jenny, Sara, and I had our feet dangling in the water we all started talking about what we would do today.

“We can go to the sauna today, can’t we?” Jeremy asked, again.

I laughed and both Jenny and Sara immediately answered with, “NO!”

Jeremy even pouted when the girls said no. Mina and Mona started laughing at him and pushed him around between them playfully. He looked up and grinned at the two identical twins and playfully shoved them back.

It wasn’t long before we were all in the shallow end of the pool. Jenny on my shoulders, Mina or Mona, I still wasn’t sure was on Jeremy’s shoulders and that left Sara on the other twin’s shoulders. A three-way chicken fight broke out. Usually in these situations the bottom person could try to help by shoving the other bottom person across from them. I couldn’t do that; I was too short, and Jenny and my combined height was significantly lower than the other two pairs.

I held onto Jenny’s thighs in a death grip. She felt the pressure of my hands and used me as an anchor to really lunge further than you normally would. I had to constantly shuffle my feet and keep them as wide as I could, so we didn’t topple over.

It was no use. Sara and the twin on Jeremy’s shoulders double teamed against Jenny and me. Their combined force drove me back and I quickly lost my footing and both Jenny and I fell backwards into the water. I came up sputtering and Jenny came up laughing.

With Jenny now on her own two feet, she took it upon herself to attack the other two bases in hopes they would drop their charges on their shoulders. I quickly joined her and before long everyone was dumped into the water. We all laughed and made our way over to the diving boards. Other folks had been funneling in since we’d gotten here but the traffic was pretty light on the high board. The low board had a steady stream of kids trying to splash someone’s grandparents in the hot tub.

The twins climbed the taller ladder first, but they didn’t go flying through the air like I expected. The first one took three large steps, bouncing on the end of the board, legs straight down and her arms straight up in the air. When her feet landed on the board, it flexed, shooting her up into the air. She tucked her head down as she folded in half. All the while her legs stayed perfectly straight, and she performed the most graceful double front flip I had even seen. Then she entered the water without a splash at all, just a small boiling of water. I just stood there with my jaw hanging as I watched her pop back up and climb out of the pool.

“What?” She asked when she walked past me on her way to the ladder for another dive.

“I’ve—” I started saying but Sara cut me off.

“That was a-maz-ing!”

“Oh, thanks. Mina and I have been diving since we were old enough to climb the ladders at the pool back home,” Mona said with a huge, proud smile on her face.

“If you liked that, watch this,” Mina declared from her place on the high board.

Mina took the same approach as Mona had just a moment before. Three large steps with a jump at the end of the board. When she landed, the board sprung her up into the air. Instead of a double front flip dive, she flipped only one time, but she twisted so fast in the air I wasn’t sure how many times she went around. She plunged into the water in a perfectly straight, vertical line and again, no splash, just the boiling of water where she broke through the surface.

Again, my jaw was hanging as low as possible. I distinctly heard people clapping and looked around to see who it was. There were a dozen kids and even a couple parents standing on the side of the pool watching Mina and Mona perform their dives. I moved over to the edge of the deep end and sat next to the ladder they would use to climb out after their dives. Sara sat next to me and watched the twins, as well as the attempts from Jenny and Jeremy.

The twins went through every dive they knew a couple times each, and every time they hit the water, they surfaced to hear the applause from all of the spectators. Jeremy tried to do flips and twists like the girls, but every time he did, he would hit the water with a loud smacking sound, and everyone would wince. Jenny did standard dives but every time she did them, they got cleaner and cleaner. Mina and Mona would tell her things to try each time she climbed up the ladder.

When Jeremy had finally put his body through enough abuse and his side and back were beet red, he joined Sara and me on the edge to just watch. Mina and Mona started working on their backward dives. They would stand on the very edge on the board, their toes the only thing touching the edge and their heels hanging over the end. They did back flips, back flips with a twist, and what they called inward dives where they flipped forward, but then jumped up and back away from the board.