The Carousel: Splash Fiction

This is a quick one. I'm taking an online humor writing course and I churned this out for my first assignment. I hadn't posted anything new from The Carousel in a while, so I thought it might be time to start redirecting my brain in that direction, considering nanowrimo is almost three weeks away.

The First Step



In the past, Zel had looked forward to the school year beginning, but with an entirely new group of classmates she couldn't shake her anxiety. She was grateful to have received an invitation to a pre-semester pool party even if after forty-five minutes she was still all but invisible to the host and his thirteen close acquaintances.

 

Zel accepted that some of the blame was on her; after all, she'd faded into the background almost immediately on her arrival. Instead of romping with the louder students or finding a spot to lay out with the more sedate subset, Zel had taken to doing what she always did whenever she was nervous, putting things in their proper places. At this point, the beach chairs on the side of the pool were perfectly aligned, every beverage cup was precisely filled to three fourths of the way up, the table cloths were straightened and the shoebox full of compact disks were now alphabetized.

 

She sighed, staring at the mess of colorful candies in the bowl in front of her that she felt compelled to sort and separate. I shouldn't be here, she thought. Yes you should, she told herself unconvincingly. I'm miserable here. You'd be more miserable if you thought you were missing something.

 

Two voices in her head bickered back and forth while Zel stood immobile in her spot by the snack table. Three of her new classmates scurried by, each grabbing a drink she had poured for them but taking no more notice of her than they would a lawn ornament.

 

So what now, she thought. Start on the garage? Get in the pool, she ordered herself.

 

"Screw it," Zel muttered, tossing off the T-shirt she'd been concealing her bathing suit with. She strode to the bottom rung of the still unused high diving board and slid to the top like she was defying gravity. Zel had been diving her whole life, and if anything was guaranteed to get her noticed, this would be it.

 

She stepped all the way to the edge and surveyed her potential audience. They still hadn't noticed her, but she knew the loud rattle of the diving board would soon take care of that. And the complicated dive that she was focused on would leave an unforgettable impression, she was sure of it.

 

Zel paced herself backwards, carefully gaging the distance for her graceful leap, unconsciously counting the steps as she went. Four, five, six, then nothing. Zel's mind raced with the realization that she had stepped backward off the side of the diving board.

 

She instinctively twisted her body in an attempt to keep from falling off, and while she managed to complete a full pirouette, her balance was no longer accessible. She bounced off her back and rolled into midair.

 

Still trying to recover from the literal misstep, Zel tucked and straightened, at least getting her feet pointed downwards. It was at that moment she became aware of the lower diving board which had somehow escaped her attention over the past forty-five minutes. Not having expected to land on anything other than water, her whole body went limp as she absorbed the entire impact in an unconventional impact roll, starting with her knees and thighs, continuing with her stomach and ending with her face. It was a smooth roll indeed, barely affecting the lower board's motion. She landed in the pool in what could only be described as an inverted swan dive.

 

Zel stayed underwater for as long as she could, hoping to retrieve her dignity before finally surfacing to the unanimous gaze of classmate eyes who had been confused as to where she had come from.

 

"Did you guys see that?" she asked in resignation.

 

After an undeniable pause one of her classmates responded. "No, could you do it again?"