Blue

The water was a sky blue tortoise back, with nary the aftermath of a scream on the surface. 

As he looked at the pool, Travis knew that he couldn't do it. His toes gripped the gravelly surface of the diving platform, prehensile safeguards against disaster. A drop of water fell fifteen feet from the underside of the platform, as if to say, "Look how easy this is." 

But it wasn't easy. Without his glasses, the up-turned faces of the other students appeared as formless splashes of color. The blobs were wordlessly waiting their turn, waiting to show him how it was done. Travis bitterly wondered why his last name had to be Abernathy-Taylor. 

His last name was Abernathy-Taylor because his father, Dr. Martin Taylor D.D.S., had decided, on February 12th, 1994, to run off to Atlanta, Georgia with one of his dental assistants. His last name was Abernathy-Taylor because, five years later, a charming insurance salesman named John Abernathy, with an equally charming Scottish accent, had come to Travis's mother's front door to peddle his services. Abernathy-Taylor - to Travis - was alphabetical suicide at a school whose teachers were fond of ordering class presentations by last name, and had caused a string of embarrassing misfires for Travis from grades two to six. Abernathy-Taylor was the reason, on his second day of middle school gym class, he was ready to fail again, on a fifteen-foot-tall stage. 

A murmur ran through the colorful blobs, or was it laughter?  Somewhere unseen, a clock ticked.

Travis wondered if he could just stall the rest of the class period out, or fake some sort of sudden illness. Below, without his glasses, the pool was full of swirling waves of fuzzy blue and white streaks. It looked more like a blue sky, viewed from out an airplane window, than the indoor pool at Herbert Hoover Middle School. 

Two years ago was the first time Travis had ever been on an airplane. In 1997, his mother had loaded him onto a flight from San Francisco to Atlanta, Georgia, as a human olive branch, hoping that the sight of the long-neglected son would be enough to melt the iciness of the father's heart. Travis had stayed awake the whole flight, his nose pressed against the window. He had watched the atmosphere swoop by below, holding out hope for a fatherly embrace that was born out of true affection and not obligation. It was the most at peace he had ever felt. There was something calming about sitting with your own thoughts, high above everyone else, knowing that once you landed, everything would go back to being horrible and broken and wrong. 

The platform wobbled. The gym teacher was ascending the diving platform to help get the fat kid into the pool so the other kids could dive. Travis took a deep breath, and stepped forward. There was no way to escape the inevitable. The bell rang, shattering the stillness of his sanctuary. Class was over.