Fireball Read Free

this started, our summer vacation had been fairly casual. Mostly we went cliff jumping at Pool 99. We’d take Julian’s car, or a bus to Riverside Drive, then hike in past the ‘No Trespassing’ sign and follow a trail down to this stony, sun-baked beach by Seymour River. Technically, we weren’t supposed to be there. Pool 99 isn’t as sketchy as Lynn Canyon, but over the years a bunch of kids have still died there. They died hitting bottom, or landing wrong in the water, or being held under by currents. They died all sorts of ways, but none of them had been worth anything. Then a kid died who was rich and smart and played tennis, and it became this huge tragedy. The papers wrote it up and his parents tried to sue, so the district put this shitty wooden fence around the area and closed it down.
    That never kept us away, or anybody else, either. Come summer, Pool 99 is always overrun by about eight hundred sweaty, noisy teenagers. If we got there early, before the crowds, it was all right. Otherwise there could be problems. Chris and crowds didn’t mix. If you put him in a group of people, a little pocket would immediately form around him. Like on those soap commercials – when all the grease sort of moves away from the detergent.
    If he felt like it, Chris could huck huge gainers and front flips and suicides. He was stoked on cliff jumping, but he couldn’t stand being around all those treats, talking shit to each other and showing off for their girlfriends. So when it was packed, he never jumped. He just chilled. The three of us had our own spot, near the base of the cliffs, that people knew to leave for us. We’d throw down our towels and spark up a bowl and check out the girls through our sunglasses. Julian always wore this pricey Hawaiian shirt that he’d bought at a store in Park Royal, just in case any chicks came over to talk to us. Sometimes they did, too. He thought it was because of the shirt, but I’m pretty sure it was because of Chris.
    â€˜What do you think? Should we jump one of those mothers?’
    â€˜Fuck off, Jules.’
    Julian loved talking about cliff jumping, but he hardly ever did it. Heights terrified him. Also, he didn’t like taking off his shirt. Not because he was fat – he had huge muscles from all the protein powder he gobbled – but because of his birthmark. He had this weird, fist-sized birthmark in the middle of his chest, right over his heart. It was bizarre. It freaked people out, including me, and Jules knew it. He kept that birthmark under wraps.
    â€˜Come on. It’ll be sweet.’
    I said, ‘Go ahead, man.’
    He didn’t, of course. None of us did. We just sat there. Chris lit a smoke. The sun coated the canyon with a thick yellow glare and the rocks beneath our towels felt hot as a grill. Above us and to the right, clumps of people had gathered on the cliffs, waiting their turn. They went in one by one, like lemmings, and after each jump there was always a lot of hooting and cheering and applause. Some were jumping Superfly. That’s nothing. Even Julian had jumped Superfly. A few others were jumping Logs. It’s twice as high and pretty sketchy, but not too bad. I never go higher than Logs. Actually, hardly anybody goes higher than Logs. To jump Cooks, you have to climb onto this stump and leap blind through all these tree branches. Then you still have sixty feet to go before you hit water. Even if you lan d perfectly, you always touch bottom jumping Cooks. That’s what Chris told me, anyway. And if you land wrong, you just straight up die – which is how it got its name. People started calling it Cooks because that was the name of this kid who got killed doing it. Not the rich kid. Some other kid.
    That afternoon, a couple of guys were jumping Cooks.
    â€˜Look at these clowns,’ Julian said.
    They were older than us and had those fake, doughy muscles that the guys from West Van