‧͙⁺˚*･༓☾ REMEMBER ME LIKE THIS — DIVER DOWN  ☽༓･*˚⁺‧͙
EPISODE ONE

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     "This is empty."

     "You took empty tanks?"

     "I..."

     "Okay, this one's a quarter full.  It's enough for one of us."

     "Love it when a plan comes together," Esme clapped her hands with a cheery smile as she listened to the boys bicker.  She'd long changed out of John B's sweats and found herself a spare swimsuit, and a buttoned-up tan summer dress that she was able to slide on when they were running out the door with ease.  "They should give us a TV show on the Discovery Channel."

     "What are you, seventy?" JJ said a little too quickly, his tone less than playful, and Esme could have sworn she saw his eyes roll back into his head.  Okay, so somebody was a tad upset with her.

     "Does anybody know how to dive?" Kiara asked, either completely oblivious to the conversation being held on the other side of the boat between his two closest friends, or ignoring it on purpose.

     "Uh..."

     "Anybody?" Kiara asked again, looking around the group for a solid answer.

     "It's kind of a Kook sport," JJ said, the faintest hint of a snicker making an appearance after he finished his sentence, almost as if he was appalled just thinking about it.

     Claire snorted, earning mixed confused looks from John B and JJ who stood on each side of her.  "Damn right."

     Pope sighed.  "I... read about it."

     "Great, Pope read about it, so someone's gonna die," JJ said, something Esme in turn rolled her own eyes at.  She wasn't sure why he was so dramatic sometimes, but then again, there was a lot of that going around.

     "Look, y-you put the thing in your mouth and breathe.  How hard could it be?" John B shrugged, looking to the group as if questioning them all personally and wanting them to reassure him that he would be fine.

     "If you come up too fast, nitrogen gets into your blood, and you get the bends," Pope deadpanned.

     "Bends like... bend over and—?" JJ said, gripping the boat to steady himself as he bent over forward while squinting as if demonstrating a sexual move.  Esme groaned, bringing her palm to her forehead with a soft smack.

     "The bends kill you," Pope said, ignoring the distress Esme was in and how she was literally facepalming at the thought of these boys carrying out their half-thought half-assed plan.

     "Right," JJ nodded.

     Claire playfully rolled her eyes before slapping JJ's shoulder.  "Idiot."

     Esme stifled a laugh.  "Guess that's that on that."  JJ then glared at her.

     "I can... I can dive," John B offered himself up.

     "You can dive.  I'm cool with that," JJ said.

     "Since when can you dive?" Kie asked.

     "I'll do it, it's fine," John B shrugged nonchalantly, but still ignored her question.

     "Let me do some calculations real quick."

     "You serious?" Kiara asked John B in a quiet voice.

     "That boat's about 30 feet down," Pope kept talking, evidently unaware of the tensions amongst some of the group.  Esme rolled her shoulders, trying to stretch out some kinks in her neck.  So much for sleeping at the Chateau.

     "Okay."

     "So it'll take 25 minutes at that depth."

     "25."

     "Which means you need to make your safety stop at about... ten feet."

     "All right."

     "For two minutes."

     "Yeah, yeah.  Ten feet, two minutes.  Got it."

     Kiara got up abruptly, seemingly growing bored of the boys standing around and the fact that the only talking was coming from John B and Pope at the moment.

     "What was that all about?" Pope asked.

     "I don't know, but I liked it.  A lot.  Uh so..."

     Esme had never rolled her eyes so hard.  She took her time being sassy, and for a quick moment she actually thought they were going to get stuck back there this time, but she couldn't help it.  "Gross."

     After a quick and almost missable scoff from JJ, Pope agreed with the tiniest smile.  "All right," he reverted the topic back to the mission at hand by looking over the tanks in front of him.

     Stepping in, JJ put his hand on his hip as he motioned to the tanks.  "Yeah.  Uh, when you... uh, when you're down there, you look for the cargo hold.  You stick this thing inside and twist and pull, okay?"

     "Stick in, twist, pull," Esme mocked quietly.

     "Yeah," JJ nodded, either purposely dismissive of her tone or unaware of her sarcasm, which was unlikely.  "My dad moved weight back in the day."

     "Who didn't?" Pope asked, earning a chuckle from Esme.  JJ stared at them for a brief moment before being interrupted by Kiara coming back to the boat for air with a splash.

     "Hey, I tied my T-shirt to the anchor chain about ten feet down.  It's where you need to do your safety stop," she said, pulling herself up.  

     Esme, as a woman who had to live with the fact that pieces of her body were sold off, had a hard time comparing her body to other women.  Meaning that she did it far too often.  Kiara, in her humble opinion, was beautiful.  But she was also humbled by the fact that Kiara had other things that she didn't, like a bigger chest, less acne, and an even skin tone.  Esme was kept afloat by many different cosmetics and high-maintenance treatments like self-tanning (because too much sun left her blotchy), and higher-priced facial wash.  In her experience, men didn't usually want to deal with, look at, or fuck ugly girls.

     The point is, Kiara had a lot of things Esme did not.  Esme wasn't really into Kiara that way, but she couldn't deny that the tanned girl was beautiful.  It honestly hurt her a little bit.  It wasn't Kiara's fault or anything, but it definitely inspired Esme to work ten times harder than she already was.  She was hoping that coming out with the group for the day would take her mind off her J.R. slash Rafe problem, but in truth, she was growing more and more anxious thinking about the bag of drugs they stole from her.  Exacting revenge wasn't exactly going to be an overnight thing for her.

     "Cool," John B said.

     "Do you need help?" Claire finally spoke up, but quietly, bending over the ladder and reaching out a hand for the curly-haired girl in the water.  There was no moment's hesitation, Kiara clutched onto Claire's hand and let the blonde lead her back into the boat.

     "Keep an eye on this," Pope said.  "You need to make sure you have enough air to decompress."

     "Okay, how much do I need?"

     "Unclear.  Breathe as little as possible."

     "No pressure or anything," Esme said with knitted brows, but she wasn't really talking to John B.  Even though they had just started to carry out this outrageous plan, she was sure all of them were feeling the heat to some degree.  There was no way in hell hearts weren't racing while even discussing the plan and all the possible outcomes.

     "Zen.  Think Zen, you know?"

     "Yeah, got it," John B nodded.

     "Look, I've tried something like this before, and granted it wasn't exactly like this, it wasn't so bad once I was actually in the water," Esme added.  "As long as you remain calm and focused, I think you will do just fine."

     Watching her with trained eyes was the hot-headed blonde, which wasn't unusual for the group, but he did have a certain tinge of ferocity in his eyes that made him stick out in a crowd.  And he was directing all that intensity towards Esme Mendoza.

     "Hey, if we get caught in the marsh, we're basically screwed, so... better get a move on," Kiara added a bit awkwardly.

     "Copy that," John B nodded again before taking his leave and flopping his way over to the side of the boat where a dripping-wet Kiara was still standing, squinting their eyes from the rays of the sun while preparing to watch John B sink down into the cool body of water.  It took him a minute, but once he took a deep breath and settled his nerves, he lifted one foot before the other off the boat and let the water consume him as he fell under.

     "Diver down?" JJ asked from the other side of the boat.

     "Diver down," Claire nodded, signaling Pope a quick thumbs up.

     Pope scoffed quietly.  "Diver down."

     That day, when John B decided to take the risk of leaping into unknown deep waters to start his quest for buried treasure, he wasn't the only person who's life would change.  Arguably, everyone who was on that boat would never be the same again, but little did they understand just how far they would have to take things just for a goose chase.  Underneath the surface level, where self-tanning and acne didn't matter at all, no one could see Esme's heart tangled in the web spun by herself, sinking to the bottom of the ocean with her friend.

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#JJ— an update after 8 months?? could this be a regular occurrence again??
either way, thank you for reading after all this time.