‘This isn’t what I had in mind,’ I said, nervously peering over the side of the cliff.
‘You said you wanted to go swimming,’ Roger rolled his eyes, a few steps ahead of me on the narrow ledge. ‘To cool off from this heatwave.’
‘Yeah, in a public pool,’ I grumbled, ‘not leaping to my rocky doom.’
‘I’ve done this hundreds of times!’ he laughed, reaching the end of the ledge and clambering onto the top of the cliff properly.
I sidled past the last couple of feet and dragged myself up behind him, sweaty, scratched and much hotter than when we’d started this particular adventure.
‘I give up,’ I wheezed, rolling around on the rock. ‘I’ll just see where I can find the best air conditioning system installation. Black Rock is not the solution you promised it would be.’
‘Oh, don’t be such a baby,’ Roger chided me. ‘Besides, the way down is so much harder than just… y’know.’
He waggled his eyebrows at me and mimed performing a swan dive.
I groaned and army-crawled to the edge of the cliff, looking back at the path we’d come. Sure enough, it looked a lot skinnier than what I’d remembered.
‘Black Rock,’ I cursed under my breath.
‘So,’ Roger started, getting in some light stretches as he pointed to the water below us, ‘you want to aim for that deep-blue patch a little bit to your left there.’
‘Patch?’ I asked incredulously.
‘It’s bigger than it looks,’ he said, rolling his eyes again. ‘Kinda.’
‘Ormond, then,’ I nodded to myself. ‘Someone in Ormond has to have air conditioning. Ormond…’
‘Oh, would you relax!’ Roger laughed, apparently fully-stretched and ready to go. ‘Just follow my lead!’
‘You’re going first?!’
My anguished question met only rushing air as he sprinted past me, hurtling himself off the side of the cliff with an excited whoop!
‘You’ll be fiiiiiiinneeeeee—’ he called as he rocketed towards the purple patch of ocean, before a massive splash cut him off.
Despite the heatwave, I started to shake.