The girl stood on a rock on the edge of the river and wondered. <\/p>\n
What if she fell in?
\nWhat if a fish jumped up, and she caught it with her bare hands?
\nWhat if someone pushed her in and she drowned?
\nWhat if she dove in head first and it was too shallow and she broke her neck and got paralyzed and she had to be in a wheelchair and people had to do everything for her, even holding her books and turning the pages for her?
\nWhat if she skipped a flat stone halfway across the lake?
\nWhat if she sat on the rock with a book and read in the sun?
\nWhat if she saw a merman?
\nWhat if she looked down into the water and saw someone looking back up at her?
\nWhat if there was a dead person stuck under the rock and he was all decomposed and the fish had been eating his body and he popped up at her like the dead guy’s head in the movie Jaws?
\nWhat if she stepped off the rock and the lake was really solid and she could walk all the way across?
\nWhat if she stepped off the rock and suddenly a set of gold steps appeared leading down into the middle of a whole underwater world but somehow she could still breathe because she has been stolen from them as a baby and that is why she never quite fit in up in the world above the water?
\nWhat if she held up her arms like Olympic divers do and all of a sudden she was on the high dive platform and she did a perfect dive and the U.S. team won a gold medal?
\nWhat if she turned around and the boy she loved was there and he kissed her right in front of the whole school?<\/p>\n
And then her mother called her over to have dinner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"