The Art of Disappearing by Ivy Pochoda (popular romance novels .txt) 📕

expert in the minutiae of Max’s life—the inseam of his rented tux, the minimum SAT score it would take for him to get into a college with a good swim team, which words he missed on his French vocab quiz.

I was a devoted but powerless watcher, a lifeguard who couldn’t swim. Despite my careful vigil, Max started to sneak out of the house. After I watched him pass through the gates of sleep, I would return to my bedroom and pray for a sleep of my own. But the moment Max moved, I was jerked from a patchy slumber, attuned to the smallest disturbance in the air on the other side of our thin wall. I’d tense as I listened to him open his window, slide down the drainpipe, and alight on the soft grass below. And when I heard Max’s footsteps crunching over the gravel in our driveway, away from the river, I would exhale and wait for the stop-start sleep that came until he returned.

My twelfth birthday was a disaster. A raging storm stranded my father on a scouting trip and confined my mother to her room. Max and I spent the evening in front of the TV, devouring cake straight from the box. When I fell asleep, he carried me up to bed.

I was dreaming of a blue swimming pool covered with birthday cakes like lily pads when Max came to get me.

“It’s time to go,” my brother said, taking my arm. He put his hand over my mouth.

“Don’t you want to see your birthday present?”

I nodded and followed him to the car.

I dressed in the dark, slipped out my bedroom window, and slid down to the wet ground in a rough imitation of my brother’s method of escape. Max was already in the driveway. We crept into the car and gently shut the doors. Max lifted the emergency brake and shifted into neutral. The car rolled quietly down the wet gravel.

“Excited?” Max asked, rolling the car out of the driveway without turning on the ignition.

I nodded.

We were heading toward the city. My heart rate quickened with the acceleration of the engine. I watched Max’s right hand move from the steering wheel to the shift, flicker around the radio, and then hover for one moment above my leg before he had to return it to the wheel.

“Your present is at work.”

“At the aquarium?”

Max turned the corner into an empty lot behind the aquarium.

“Come on,” he said, popping the door locks.

“You have the keys?” I was amazed that anyone would trust my brother with the keys to an aquarium.

“Of course,” Max said, producing a jailer-sized key ring. He selected one of the twenty and fitted it into the lock on a side entrance. I held my breath.

He took my hand and led me down an empty hallway. The daytime excitement of tourists and school groups was replaced by a dark undersea world muffled by the sleep of thousands of creatures. The glow from the emergency-exit light was not enough to guide us, but Max had developed a sonar of his own, and wove around dark corners and past unseen obstacles.

He led me back to the laboratory where he worked on the weekends, testing pH levels and the algae content of the tanks.

“First stop,” he said, switching on a small desk lamp. From underneath a pile of papers he produced a gaily wrapped box from the aquarium’s gift shop. Inside was a bathing suit—a strange present for someone who doesn’t swim. I unfolded it and held it up to the light.

“So?”

I didn’t know what to say.

“Why don’t you try it on? There’s a bathroom in the hall.”

After the dark hallway, the buzzing fluorescent light that flooded the white-tiled bathroom burned my eyes. The Lycra was three gradations of blue—a light aqua at the top that melted into indigo around the stomach and finished a dark cobalt. It fit perfectly. I stood in front of the mirror and tried to imitate the diving poses I had seen Max and his team strike before they plunged into the water.

“How’s it fit?” Max called through the keyhole. I dropped my arms to my sides.

“Come in.” I tucked my hair behind my ears and snapped the straps on my shoulders.

“Perfect,” said Max. “An official racing suit, you know.”

“I know,” I replied, self-consciously wrapping my arms around my waist. I felt exposed under the bare fluorescent bulb.

“Turn around,” Max commanded.

I spun around in a graceless pirouette.

“You look like a professional.”

“A professional who can’t swim.”

In an instant, Max folded his long body in half and retrieved my clothes from the floor. “I don’t know about that.”

“Where are we going?” I asked as I tried to keep up.

“It’s better in the dark,” Max said, gesturing to the hundreds of tanks. “It’s the closest you’ll get to the center of the ocean without getting wet. In the dark, you can feel the pressure of all the animals.”

I paused and listened to the gurgle of the tanks.

“The ocean hums more than it bubbles,” Max explained. “It’s the buzz of everything inside it.”

The repetitive gurgling was teasing me.

“Come on,” Max whispered. We flew past the fish tanks. I tried to recall some of the things he’d told me about the fish, but the tanks melted into a silver swirl, a reverse floating current that allowed no time for reflection.

We headed out from the main exhibition hall and stopped at a door with orange tape and a sign that read EMPLOYEES ONLY.

“What are they building?” I asked.

“If I told you, it would spoil the fun,” Max replied, slipping underneath the plastic curtain. He fumbled with his key in the lock. I began to count the seconds. When I reached thirty-seven, Max opened the door and we stepped into a pitch-black room. I could tell by the delayed echoes of our breath and footsteps that the room was enormous.

“Wait here,” Max said, abandoning me in the darkness. Soon a low hum began to hover at the corners of the room, and