The Drowning Kind - Jennifer McMahon Page 0,1

announced a new pool rule: We must never, ever do such a morbid thing again, or she’d ban us from the water altogether.

We knew we shouldn’t play it, but it was Lexie’s favorite, and she always won. We only played the game when we knew Gram was in the living room watching her afternoon programs and wouldn’t catch us. But still, the idea that she might, made it seem extra dangerous. Gram didn’t get mad often, but when she did it was like one of those summer thunderstorms that shook the house to its very foundation, that had you hiding under the covers, praying for it to pass.

Gram had grown up at Sparrow Crest. She’d been married here, under a big canopy set up in the backyard. She had her babies here, three healthy girls born in the upstairs bedroom with a local midwife attending. She swam in the pool every day, even did cold plunges in the winter, chopping the ice until she had a hole wide enough to slip into. She’d strip off her parka and ski pants to reveal her polka-dot bathing suit, then lower herself feetfirst until only her head popped out like a seal. She claimed it kept her young, that it rejuvenated her. Gram seemed strong and brave to me, but Lexie once told me she had a sickness called agoraphobia.

“She doesn’t seem sick,” I’d argued. The only part I understood was “gore,” which meant blood and guts and things in R-rated movies I wasn’t allowed to see.

“It’s not a sickness you can see, dummy,” Lexie shot back. “Aunt Diane told me.”

Lexie was right: Gram almost never left the house, had never learned to drive, had all her groceries delivered. She was tough enough to chop a hole in the ice and swim in January, so it was hard to think of her being trapped by her own mind.

* * *

Facedown, we floated. Lexie timed us with a fancy diving watch she’d gotten for her birthday: My record for staying under the water was one minute, twelve seconds. Lexie had gone up to two minutes. She was like a fish, my sister. Sometimes, I was sure she had secret gills no one could see. But I was a creature of land, and my heart did funny things when I was in the water and not moving to stay warm. I lost all sense of time.

I had no idea how long we’d been under now, and it took every ounce of willpower not to swim furiously to the edge and pull myself out of the pool. I kept my eyes open, scanning the darkness, searching for a glimpse of Rita: a flash of her white nightgown, a pale hand reaching up from the depths.

I knew from old photos that Rita was tiny, a girl with dark hair, bright blue eyes, that she was never a camera hog like her two older sisters. And I knew she had loved to read. Lexie and I found books she’d written her name in: Charlotte’s Web, Little House on the Prairie, the Ramona books, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Our favorite board game in the house was Snakes and Ladders because it had Rita’s name in big block letters on the inside of the box, along with a drawing of a snake and a little girl in a dress—Rita’s imaginary friend Martha. Whenever we found something with her name on it, we’d talk about why Rita had gone to the pool in the middle of the night; whether it was Mom, Gram, or Aunt Diane who found her floating the next morning. And my sister loved to torment me with made-up stories about Rita. “She’s still here, you know. She lives in the pool. Haven’t you seen her down there? When you open your eyes underwater? She lives in the pool, but she comes out sometimes.”

I pictured it, pale little Rita with her dark hair dripping wet, pulling herself up out of the pool, eyes on the house where other children were playing with her toys, reading her books.

“Listen,” Lexie would whisper late at night when she snuck into my room, crawled under the covers with me. “Don’t you hear that? That squish, squish, squish of footsteps? She’s coming for you. Coming for us both.”

* * *

My fingers and toes were numb. My lungs were crying out for air. My heart was banging inside my chest, but I held still, kept my eyes wide open.

We floated, my sister and