The Dream Jumper's Promise

Chapter 9

            Letting out the line, he knew that Tina was staring at him from under her hat, watching him for reasons beyond the anchor’s placement. Aha. What usually eluded him with her was suddenly crystal clear, if only for a brief moment. She still had some leftover feelings for him. The joy he felt in that knowledge was overshadowed by the immediate need to anchor. Feeling the pronged edge catch in the sand, he turned and smiled at the captain and she quickly looked away.  “Perfect parking job, as always,” he said.

            Tina smiled, her veil of sadness temporarily lifted. “Why thank you James.”

            “Are you diving with us?” The husband from a newlywed couple asked Tina.

            “Not today but Dave’ll take good care of you,” she said. “I’m trying to dry out for a few days.” Everyone chuckled. “Use these lights inside the cavern. You’ll be amazed at the colors.” She pulled out five underwater flashlights and attached them to the BCD jackets.

            Once again, Jamey was the last to jump in, and, descending slowly, he kept an eye on the others heading down the anchor line. The visibility was not ideal--only thirty feet of clarity. Dave would want to keep them all close because of this fact. If someone drifted more than fifty feet away, they would be impossible to see.

            Appropriately named, the main Cathedral resembled a small church inside with shafts of sunlight piercing through multiple ceiling holes like stained-glass windows. A front door and back door provided perfect access to the lava rock structure, making the dive safer than a cave dive that had only limited escape routes and total darkness. The cavern was a rare gift to Hawaiian divers, formed long ago when gases were trapped inside cooling lava rock.

            Jamey drifted through the arched opening at the end of the line of divers who’d already stirred up the silt. The sunlight bounced off the particles in the water making the murk more exciting for him. Floating in and out of the openings, Jamey recalled stolen kisses with Tina then more in this particular grotto.

            When they exited the cavern Dave counted bodies. Jamey did the same. Four. Where was the fifth? Dave signaled them to stay and hurried back inside the cavern. When he came out alone he signaled for Jamey to ascend to see if the fifth person had returned to the surface, always the plan when a diver loses the group.

            Breaking the surface, he saw Tina on the swim step, hands on hips. “What’s going on?” she asked.

            “Seen anyone up here? We only have four.”

            “No.”

            Jamey put his regulator back in his mouth and descended slowly, turning in a circle, all the way down, checking. When he reached the group he shook his head at Dave and then noticed the fifth had shown up. Dave signaled all was OK and they took off to explore the reef outside the cavern.

            But ten minutes later, when Jamey finished the dive and surfaced, he sensed Tina’s panic. “Didn’t you assume we found him?” Jamey put his hand on her shoulder and whispered.

            “Well, I hoped.” Her words came out too fast, too clipped to involve any confidence, and when she shot Dave a look of anger, it didn’t go unnoticed by Jamey. Or Dave. The worry of a missing diver had taken its toll on Tina and now she was barely able to answer questions about Lanai with the customers. Her hands were shaking. Hadn’t she said that her twin drowned? Shit! He should have surfaced to tell her the found the lost diver.

            For the second dive, the group moved around the coast to a turtle reef in front of a day attraction called Club Lanai. Fingers of coral-encrusted lava rock fanned out from the island, hiding green sea turtles under their rocky ledges. The customers had been instructed to stay away from the giant turtles. They were an endangered species and the days of grabbing on to ride them were long gone. Even touching them was taboo.