Seven Tears into the Sea by Terri Farley

I’d reach the Inn in two minutes, and though I’ve never had a real job besides babysitting, it’s my opinion that anyone who’d show up an hour early for work is trying too hard.
    The middle path began as part of the Inn path, then veered left to Mirage Point.
    That’s the path I took. As I walked, tossing the apple like a juggler, I looked ahead and my steps slowed.
    Mirage Point was a finger of earth that pointed toward the Orient.
    A sturdy wooden fence marked the end of the path,to keep Inn guests from tumbling down to a watery death. There’s a rounded apron of dirt just beyond that fence, where you could watch the waves rock over the black boulders below.
    But it’s not all boulders and jagged rocks. If you stood there long enough, concentrating, you’d see a misty green circle of open water, surrounded by petals of white foam. It would take guts and a kind of faith I didn’t have to do it, but if you dove
right there,
you’d be safe.
    I dashed a hand over my forehead, surprised I’d remembered that spot so clearly. But I’d always wanted to dive from Mirage Point. Anyone could see it was the ultimate diving challenge. It would be exactly like flying.
    As a child, I’d talked all the time about trying it. Of course, my parents vetoed the idea. Repeatedly.
    Looking at it now, I could see why they had. The Point is as high as two two-story houses piled one on top of the other.
    When we moved to Valencia, my parents used my desire to leap as an incentive to give me diving lessons. They never actually said that if I got good enough, they’d let me plunge off Mirage Point, but I thought it was understood that’s what I was building up to.
    One night I found out they had other motives.
    I’d been upstairs doing homework and had come down to sharpen a pencil. I overheard them talking inthe kitchen. Mom was making pastry, and Dad was stirring nutmeg into pumpkin pie filling, so it must have been November.
    â€œIt’s perverse,” Mom was saying, “the way I keep asking myself what would have been worse—if she’d jumped off the Point, head first into the darkness, or been alone longer with that man. Neither of them happened,” she said, sounding as if her throat was raw and sore. “Why do I keep wondering?”
    â€œIt’s human nature,” Dad comforted her. “Parents rehearse their nightmares so that if the worst happens, they can go on.”
    Mom gave a grim laugh. “Our paranoia keeps them alive, I guess.”
    There’d been an avalanche of cookie sheets from a cabinet then, so I didn’t hear every word, but it turned out Mom and Dad hoped diving would tire me out. They wanted me to sleep deeply and dreamlessly.
    They also hoped I’d grow into the kind of scholar-athlete who earned scholarships, and for a while it looked like that might work out.
    I had a knack for diving.
    After those first lessons, my teacher asked me to be on the rec-center diving team. Next I made the school team. By the time I was a sophomore, I was the second-ranked diver in my region. And that’s when I quit.
    I convinced my parents I’d just lost interest, so itdidn’t occur to them to caution me not to dive off the Point this summer.
    Now that I was here, without them to yell “no,” did I want to try it?
    Suddenly it was as tempting as shedding those seven tears to see if that Gypsy boy would return. If I wanted to take that dive or squeeze out those tears, no one could stop me.
    I walked down to the Point. With each step, the sound of waves on rocks grew louder.
    Three-quarters of the way there, yards short of the fence, I changed my mind.
    A faint trail showed in the weeds. It was no wider than a rabbit’s body, and it led down to the cove. Once the trail started down, the sea grass vanished, leaving bare rocks slick with sea spray.
    That’s the path I took.
    Ever since I’d climbed out of the