him shiver despite the warmth of the air.
They were deep into the lava field when Josh pulled the truck off the road into a narrow parking area.
Michael looked around, seeing nothing but the vast expanse of lava. “Where’s the goldfish bowl?” he asked.
“At the end of the flow,” Josh told him. “There’s a path a little farther down the road, but this is as close as you can park to it. Practically nobody knows about it.” The five boys scrambled out of the truck, slung their air tanks onto their backs, and picked up the bags they’d filled with regulators, masks, fins, and life vests. Josh led them down the road two hundred yards, then stepped over a pipe that ran parallel to the asphalt pavement.
“What’s that?” Michael asked.
“Water pipe,” Jeff Kina told him. “It’s too hard to bury it in the lava, so they just lay it along the surface next to the road.”
They were picking their way through the lava now, but Michael saw no sign of anything that looked like a path until they came to a sign that warned them against overnight camping. “This is really a path?” he asked as he gingerly made his way across lava that looked sharp enough to slash him if he so much as touched it.
“That’s the neat thing,” Josh explained. “If you don’t know exactly where it is, you can’t find it.”
“I know where it is, and most of the time I still can’t find it,” Rick Pieper muttered. “Last time I came out here, I almost tore my feet off.”
“Quit bitchin’,” Kioki told him. “It’s easy.” Then, a second later, he lost his balance, instinctively put a hand out to steady himself, and howled in pain. “Goddamn it, I hate this stuff!”
“So go back and wait in the truck,” Josh told him.
“No chance,” Kioki shot back. “I’m okay.”
Forty minutes later they came to a small cove that was almost completely landlocked by a long tongue of lava that protected it from the open ocean. While the pool itself lay serenely still, no more than twenty feet away the heaving sea clawed at the embracing arm of rock. It was as if a hungry animal were attempting to dig its prey out of a protective burrow. The surf snarled, and angry fountains of foam spewed into the sky like the anticipatory saliva of a beast about to feed. For a long time Michael stared at the spectacle, wondering how safe the pool really was.
“It’s okay,” Josh Malani told him, once again accurately reading his thoughts. “There’s only one channel into the pool, and it’s over on the other side, in the lee. There’s hardly even any current, and I won’t be more than a couple yards away from you. Okay?”
Michael nodded, still unsure if he wanted to go into the water, which seemed to have darkened even as he stared at it. He told himself it was only his imagination, since the moon was shining as brightly as ever. The other guys were already stripping their clothes off, and soon all of them were naked and helping each other strap on their tanks and check their regulators. Then, one by one, they went into the pool, until only Michael and Josh were still on the beach.
“You want to skip it?” Josh asked. There was nothing of his usual mocking tone now, and Michael guessed that if he decided to chicken out, Josh would make sure the other boys thought it was his own idea to stay out of the water. In fact, he suspected Josh might even go as far as to slash his foot on the lava, if he thought that’s what it would take to convince everyone that Michael hadn’t lost his nerve.
He looked at the water once more, then punched Josh on the shoulder. “Let’s do it,” he said.
They backed in until they were up to their waists, then Michael checked his regulator one last time, lowered himself, stretched out, and rolled over.
The water closed around him, and, as it had on his first dive, the world changed.
It was nothing like the daytime dive. The sunlight was gone, and with it the Day-Glo colors of the coral and the fish. Now the water was infused with a silvery glow from the moon, and the fish that darted among the shadows of the pool appeared as no more than phantoms. Here and there phosphorescent creatures glowed, and occasionally a fish glimmered brightly as the moonlight caught its