The Space Between Trees by Katie Williams

loud a process as possible. I wait until she sits back again, cracking the can and letting it fizz.
    “But then, in April or so, there’s the swim unit. It’s terrible. The water’s cold, and they use too much chlorine, so everyone’s eyes turn pink. We have to wear the school suits, which smell like oatmeal. And, at the end of the unit, Kenk makes everyone go off the high dive.”
    Hadley sucks the overflow from the top of her can. “It’s the worst, right, Hadley?” I say. “Don’t you think? Swim unit is the worst?”
    I stare at her, and Mr. McCabe looks at her, too, so that she has to respond. Finally she nods, once, a little dip of the chin like she can hardly stand it.
    “So the high dive is really tall, Mr. McCabe, and lots of kids are sort of . . . well,
scared
of it. But no one thinks Zabet will be scared, because like I said, she’s been so good at gym and first pick for the teams and all that.
    “Well, the thing is, I can tell that really she
is
scared of it, really scared of it—maybe more scared of it than the rest of us. She doesn’t say that to me or anything, but she keeps looking at the board, likewhen we’re doing other things, and she asks me once if I think that Kenk will make us go off it again this year.”
    “Zabet wasn’t scared of heights,” Hadley says, but the story is mine now; I’m in it, and I let it roll right over her.
    “The high dive is different. Lots of people who aren’t normally scared of heights are scared of a high dive. I mean, it’s the difference between standing on something high and
jumping off
something high, right?” I say it simply and I picture Zabet, the board above her like a gallows, her flat freckled cheeks tipped upward. “So Friday, the last day of the unit, Zabet doesn’t change into her suit. She tells Kenk she’s sick, that she’s got”—I glance at Mr. McCabe and feel my cheeks heat up—“her period. But, Kenk is Kenk. She says that it’s not an excuse and to put on the suit. I sit with Zabet while she changes, and she’s going off about Kenk and how unfair she is. I don’t tell her that I know it’s not really Kenk, that it’s really the high dive that’s got her upset, because there are some things you just might as well not say to Zabet.”
    I’m glad when Mr. McCabe nods at this observation of mine, because it was only a guess based on what Zabet was like when she was younger. I’m glad, too, that I know something about Zabet that is still true.
    “Well, we’re late because of all that, so when we come out, everyone is already around the high dive, but no one’s gone off it yet. Kenk is telling us that we don’t have to do a perfect dive or anything. We can cannonball or just jump or whatever we want as long as we try it. We have to try it. And we’re all shivering in these oatmeal suits and hating Kenk, who’s in her gross, evil sweat suit and doesn’t even have to get wet, much less jump off a skyscraper. Zabet is nextto me, and she’s shivering more than anyone, even though she never gets cold.
    “Then Kenk tells us to line up. Right away, everyone looks at Zabet. In fact, they just line up behind her. See, she’s always the one to do it first, whatever it is.
    “I’m trying to catch her eye, but she won’t look back at me. Zabet. She just walks over to the ladder, puts her hands right on the rungs, and starts climbing up the damn thing . . . sorry . . . the thing. So we’re all down there on the ground, watching her just go. You wouldn’t believe it. Really, you wouldn’t. She goes right up, step after step, all the way to the top. Then she walks out to the end of the board, just like that.”
    The crazy thing is, as I’m telling them this, I can actually see Zabet up there—the racerback of her suit, the frazzled rope of her braid—she’s blurred, all the details gone because she’s up so high with the fluo rescent lights sending yellow down on her head. I can see all of our faces tipped up, too,