Down World by Rebecca Phelps (best new books to read .txt) 📕

and place by the window so I could climb back out, and by the time I reached the shore, Brady had already dived in, wearing nothing but his shorts. I stood there frozen. Sure, a guy could go swimming in his shorts. They’re basically swim trunks. What’s the difference? But what was I supposed to wear?

Brady’s head disappeared under the water for a moment, long enough that my mind began to turn to dark thoughts of him not coming back up. I raced closer to where the water lapped the gravel, my shoes getting wet, looking for him. He popped up maybe twenty feet away and waved me in.

“You have to see this,” he said, before gulping down a huge breath and going under again. He was gone before I could even ask him what he’d seen.

“Fine,” I said to myself, quickly pulling off my Keds and jeans. I threw my clothes away from the water and ran in, diving headfirst when I felt the water reach my thighs.

It was exhilarating. In the humidity of summer, I had spent the day covered in a film of sweat. But with the cool water surrounding me, I finally felt a bit of relief.

I swam over to where I had seen Brady’s head pop up and looked around for him. I took a deep gulp, preparing to go down and look for him, when he sprang up right next to me.

“Gotcha!” he shouted, quickly tickling my sides and pulling away before I could catch him.

I couldn’t help but squeal when he did it. “What are you doing?”

“Sorry,” he laughed, though he clearly wasn’t. Brady never seemed to stay in one mood for too long. Even today, with the stress of being here, with the knowledge that Piper was still in DW somewhere, he found reasons to laugh. I realized that maybe the reason I had fallen so hard for him was because everyone else I knew seemed to drag invisible chains behind them at all times. While Brady did a couple of backflips in the water, I thought of Kieren and his sad eyes, of my mother and her secrets.

“What did you find?” I asked as he swam around me.

“I don’t know. Some sort of box. You ready?”

I nodded.

“Take a deep breath,” he instructed, and I did as I was told. He did the same, and we both dove down as far as we could.

Beneath our feet at the lake floor was indeed a wooden box, barely visible in the fading light. I paddled against the water with all my might to reach it, grabbing on to the edge of it in order to secure myself once down there. Brady had beat me there by a second, and he held up a finger and then pointed to a handle on the top of the box. He grabbed it and yanked. The lid came up. The inside was so dark that I couldn’t make anything out, but Brady took his hand and reached in anyway. Right before I ran out of breath and had to go back up, I saw a split second of telltale bright light. It was a portal.

I shot back up through the water, my head bursting through the surface, and gulped in a deep breath. My heart was racing. How on earth did a portal get out here? Did they build it? How? And my next thought, of course, was that if they’d split an atom in this lake, then the whole thing was probably radioactive. Were we both going to get cancer swimming in it?

Brady appeared next to me, but it was getting so dark, he was just a silhouette against the horizon.

“How?”

“I don’t know,” he replied. “But it’s there.”

We bobbed in the water for a bit, inching our way closer together so we could make out each other’s faces. The singing of the crickets was echoing in my ears, and tiny little water bugs were dancing on the surface around us. I knew we needed to go in, but at the same time, I wanted to stay here with Brady forever.

“At least now we know how she went in,” I offered.

He nodded, staring at me.

“Should we follow her?”

Brady looked around a bit, as if taking in the light. “Not tonight,” he decided. “It’s late. And you haven’t eaten anything. Let’s do it tomorrow, okay?”

I nodded, although I wasn’t sure he could even make out my head in this light. “Yes.”

Without even thinking about it, I leaned over and kissed him, our legs bumping into each other as we paddled in the dark water. Brady put his hand on my face, but I couldn’t tell if he meant to pull me in or push me away. It was almost like his hand needed to touch me to be sure that I existed. I pulled back a bit and searched his expression for some reaction, good or bad. But in the sinking light, all I saw was my own reflection in his deep brown eyes.

“We should get in,” was all he said.

Humiliation rushed over me. So he was just being polite after all. He didn’t want me. I had concocted this whole connection in my head, and now I had made a complete fool of myself. I swam away as quickly as I could and raced up onto the shore, grabbing my jeans and my shoes.

I walked quickly down the path, still in my underwear, though it was so dark I couldn’t see more than a foot in front of me. I stepped into my pants once my legs were dry enough and threw on my shoes, all by feel alone. There didn’t seem to be any moon tonight, and I started cursing myself for the stupidity of starting out on this expedition so late. Somewhere in the gulf behind me I could hear Brady calling out for me to wait for him, but I couldn’t.

It occurred to me after a bit that he was intentionally staying several feet behind