I’d done it on a dare. Lexie said she didn’t think I had the guts to go out to the pool on my own in the middle of the night. She’d teased me for days until finally, I was furious enough to prove her wrong. I snuck out of bed close to midnight, crept down the stairs and outside to the pool. It was pitch-dark, and as I waited for my eyes to adjust, I heard a splash in the water. I called out to my sister, sure it was her, trying to spook me. But it wasn’t her, was it?
I shook the thoughts away. Being by the pool was freaking me out big-time. The best thing to do would be to go back inside. But not without taking a look. Just checking. “Let’s get this over with, then,” I said out loud.
I did a sweep with the flashlight beam, saw the empty patio, the still pool. The dark water sucked in the light; became a black hole with its own gravitational force, trying to pull everything around it in. I could not see the hills behind it, but I felt their presence and imagined, for half a second, that they were inching forward.
Keeping my eyes averted from the blackness where I knew the hills to be, I moved to the back side of the pool, where the outlet was, to the corner where we’d stashed Lexie’s raft. No way was I going out in that thing in the dark. I’d measure the edges, though. An experiment, I told myself.
Come on, Jax. Try it. Just for shits and giggles.
I shone the light into the raft and found the coil of marked measuring tape with the metal weight hooked on the end. “Here goes nothing,” I said, hoping the sound of my own voice would break the nervous fear jolting through me. I carried the unwieldy coil to A1 at the left-handcorner, toward the front gate. Careful of the slippery edge, I lowered the weight. As I fed the measuring tape down, it bounced along the wall of the pool and I found myself holding it fiercely, as if it might get yanked out of my hand. Surely the weight would hit bottom soon—and then it did. Of course it did. Holding the line taut, I crouched down, shining the light on the markings. 6.8 meters. I moved over to A2 and got roughly the same measurement. Moving carefully along the long edge of the pool, stopping every foot, I worked my way all the way down to A45. All spots measured between 6.8 and 7.4 meters, which would be something like 20 to 24 feet. Deep for a swimming pool, but by no means bottomless.
I felt a little disappointed—it seemed a huge letdown to see proof that there was a bottom. Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny weren’t real after all. I had a perfect vision of Lexie at ten, blue swimming cap and goggles on, shouting, “I’m going to swim all the way to the other side of the world!”
I opened my eyes, tossed the weight out farther from the edge a couple of times. I couldn’t drop the tape down straight, so I couldn’t get a precise measurement, but it was also roughly the same depth. I was crouched down, flashlight in hand, looking at the measurements on the rope when I heard a small splash from behind me, near the back end of the pool. Startled, I dropped the flashlight into the pool. I watched it sink, the light illuminating the water for a few seconds until it died.
“Shit,” I said, scrambling to my feet, turning around and squinting into the darkness, searching for some sign of movement. “Is someone there?” I pulled the rope up, held on to the last few feet of it, the lead weight swinging. It wasn’t much of a weapon, but it would have to do.
I searched the shadows, the dark shapes of chairs, tables, the umbrella, the half-deflated raft. All of it looked ominous in the dark; shadowy monsters watching, waiting, holding their breath to see what I would do next. I heard only the low murmur of the outlet stream at thefar end of the pool. I stood up, legs feeling like Jell-O, and walked to where it sounded like the splash had come from. I swung the weight at the end of the rope, thinking I’d aim for the head if anyone was there. I saw no movement. The water was still, unbroken. It was my imagination. I hadn’t really heard anything at all.
Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.
“Shut up already,” I told her. Told myself. Because Lexie wasn’t really talking to me. Just like I didn’t really hear a splash.
I imagined it because I was under tremendous stress—grieving, sleep deprived, guilty—just like Ted.
Then, as I stood in the dark looking at the black water, it came back to me. I remembered the girl I’d seen the night Lexie dared me to night swim. She was treading water in the middle of the pool. Younger than me, seven or eight maybe, with hair so pale and blond that it seemed to glow like moonlight. I was sure then, in my ten-year-old brain, that I knew exactly who I was looking at. I’d seen enough drawings of her to know. This was Martha, Rita’s imaginary friend. “Come swimming,” she’d said. I shook my head. It was against Gram’s rules. She giggled, then went under. I waited, holding my breath, counting the seconds. One minute went by. Then two. No air bubbles. No sign of movement. Behind me in the house, the light came on in Lexie’s bedroom. I turned and saw her looking out the window, watching me. I ran into the house, and she slapped me on the back, congratulating me for not being a total wimp. I never told her what I’d seen. I never told anyone. Over the years, I convinced myself it had never happened. That it was just something I imagined or dreamed.
From the front end of the pool, a dim glow blinked under the water once, twice, three times, then went out. The flashlight must be short-circuiting in the water.
“Jackie?” I heard the rusty squeak of the gate being opened andturned. Diane came through and saw me standing with the measuring tape and weight swinging from my clenched hand. “What onearthare you doing?”
Great question. “I couldn’t sleep,” I explained, trying to sound matter-of-fact. “So I thought I’d come out and… measure the pool.”
“I’m sorry, what? You’re measuring the pool at midnight? That’s totally normal and not in the least bit concerning.”
“That’s what Lexie was doing,” I said. “The notes she left were coordinates and measurements—she was using this tape to measure the depth of the pool at different points. I was curious to know if what she wrote down was accurate—”
“Come on back into the house,” Diane ordered, her jocular tone gone. She stood by the gate, holding it open, waiting for me.
“Let me just put this back,” I said, and coiled the tape up, brought it back over to the raft.
“We’ve got to replace the lights out here,” she said as she waited. “And maybe get a lock for the gate. We don’t want any kids fooling around in here when no one’s around. It’s not safe. Especially at night.”
“Good idea,” I called back.
I made my way along the edge of the pool, stopping when I noticed something right by A3. I leaned down to pick it up. “What the—”
“Everything okay, Jackie?” Diane called, taking a few steps toward me. “You’re not going to pull a Ted and end up in the water, are you?”
The dazed, removed feeling from the booze and codeine was replaced by a surge of adrenaline. Suddenly I was very awake and sober and terrified. “Everything’s fine,” I said, frozen, my heart jackhammering.
Things weren’t fine. They weren’t fine at all. Because what I was seeing just wasn’t possible.
It was the flashlight—the same flashlight that had sunk into thepool not five minutes ago. I picked it up. It was cold and wet. I flicked the switch. It turned on instantly.
There were two possible explanations for this, and standing there, holding the light in my trembling hand, I couldn’t decide which one was more terrible: Either I was losing my mind completely, or there was someone down in that water.
chaptertwenty
