From the edge of the plank, Kyle flexed his knees, sprang upwards, and repeated the process three times, each leap awarding more height than the previous, until when he could climb no higher, he jumped outward. Propelled face forward, hands stuck to his sides, his body arced like a human arrow. He closed his eyes as his forehead smacked against the surface of the water. His little sister, who watched intently from the side of the pool, heaved laughter from her diminutive frame.

“Kyle,” said the mother, who had been reading in the shade of an umbrella, “You’re going to make Lucy choke. Stop that.” She had been reading an article on living room furnishings, and as enamored as she was, hadn’t bothered to lift her eyes away from the page. Besides the slight sting in his forehead, Kyle felt wonderful, and his little sister’s laugh was the reason. Four times he had committed his famous dive, titled “Face Smasher,” and after each he had climbed out of the pool to Lucy’s hysteric laughter. After calming down, she only urged him for one more. He could stop now, listening to the commands of his mother, but his sister wouldn’t allow it. Her power of suggestion didn’t derive from physical coercion or even a shrill, nagging voice, but something far more rudimentary and basic in the brother–sister relations: Lucy simply had to pout, flare her chubby red cheeks and pucker her small mouth, and Kyle would oblige. The three year old went even a step farther by knotting her eyebrows and stretching open her eyes, the whites bared clear around the cartoonish green irises, as if a miniature and adorable psychotic killer inhabited her body.

To Kyle, not a joke or cartoon could pull giggles from him like his sister’s non-verbal expressions, and he pinched in his diaphragm to stifle the laughter. Lucy knew how her mock-serious demeanor encouraged her brother, and continued the look, eyebrows pursed, and cheeks aflame with a ruby hue. Kyle climbed the three metallic steps of the diving board, whence all of his actions required the grace of speed, for his Mother’s awareness of his plot could ruin things. (Her power and influence, at that age, was quick and strong enough to stop a boy in his tracks, even from across a swimming pool. Kyle even believed that an impassioned Mother could delay the Earth’s spinning, or stop, mid-air, his plummet into the pool.) So when his foot reached the top step, he sprinted forward and sprang from the edge of the diving board, sailing over more water than on any previous dive, and turning his head to see the awed look on Lucy’s face before the slap of the chlorinated surface hit him in the face.