Careening down a slope of gravel, we flew. We’d stand at the lip of the quarry, starting down slowly and cautiously, toes pushing a minutiae of pebbles, their acrid brown dust exhaling on our naked calves. Shrieking with our arms splayed, we’d dip into a sprint. I brought up the rear of our three-person train, crashing into their heels and falling flat. And when I fell, I only had to keep sliding to the bottom, sailing down into the quarry’s middle. Safe.

The next race was peeling off our clothes – shirts first, then shorts. Standing in our underwear, bearing our milky bodies to the robin’s egg sky: hers soft and rounded, spilling forth at the seams, his lined with strands of muscle, not yet strong. Our laughter burst forth unabashedly, stirring warmly with the cords of humming dirt bike clatter in the distance, cooling on the crenelated cusp of our gully. Sliding in, the dirt under our nails creeping along the water’s surface, this place was ours.

Cool water fanned our toes. Pushing off from the clay overhang of the shallows, we entered the clarity of the deep. Splashing, at first a slow ripple, glide, then sputtering kicks, we paddled toward the far side of the quarry’s pool.

A 60-foot wall rose before us, a linear height draped in craggy fossilized rock. Green beech trees gazed down on us from the tower of their rock castle as we reached its base, clinging to the edge, breathing hard from the swim. We’d skirt around this edge for hours, letting our legs push languidly from the sides and drift back in. Poking one another in the pudge at our sides, hanging on each other’s backs, smiling, laughing.

Grabbing a crawfish between wrinkled fingertips, he’d chase us away from the edge, but we’d slide back just as soon, afraid to float alone. He discovered the loose rocks gathered at our knees underwater. If you held one in your arms, just so, the weight would drag you under, further than you could propel yourself. And it was cold, cold, plummeting down as I clung to the rock. I always pushed the weight off my chest too soon, breaking the surface before they would. Our morbid fun scared me; I’d search frantically for them until they emerged, grinning and speckled with mud, hair slicked back. I didn’t like the way my lungs burned, the way my body moved, the rub of my thighs, how afraid I was … until they were back above water and I could feel my own body become buoyant again.

Once we grew tired but before the sky could change colors, we’d cast out for shore. Slow this time, our limbs weary from the day, we’d float on our backs. Chins pointed to the horizon, legs moving soundlessly underwater. Our eyelashes pasted to wet cheeks, we’d reach out to each other. Fingers interlaced underwater, we’d hold each other above it all, eyes lightly shut against the future before us.

We would glide on like this forever, but eventually the pebbled bottom would scrape our backs. And then we were scrambling to get our clothes on, all mismatched underwear and awkward sunburns, silent, silent. We’d make our way back up the hill, the cacophony of sneakers in gravel guiding us home.