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

“You’re swimming,” Max said.

“What?” I answered, fingering the ridges on Sophie’s forked tail.

“Swimming or floating at least.”

I looked at the deep pool of water surrounding me. Size and scale swelled and shrank; the sky turned back into water. The moon became a whale again. And then I felt the fish tank smallness, the eyedrop confinement of the massive animal. I closed my eyes and saw a wild expanse of ocean big enough to reduce the whale to a comprehensible proportion. I let go and imagined a body of water large enough to accommodate schools of ten thousand of the alabaster creatures. The water engulfed my mind, swamped my brain, crashed on the insides of my eyelids. The water in the tank took advantage of my moment of panic, flying up my nose, burning my eyes, and tearing into my throat. I grew faint and slipped off the raft.

“Mel,” Max cried, grabbing the back of my hair. “Mel!”

The top of the water slipped away. The white whale became black. Max’s words were drowned out by the curtain of water between me and the surface. My ears and throat opened, and the water crashed in. It broke through all the barriers of my body, rushing and roaring and pulling me down. I thrashed and kicked. And then I felt the silky tentacles, the graceful arms of my brother, around my waist.

Max drew me into the crook of his elbow, as I knew he would. I relaxed into his arms and let my head sink into his chest as we rose to the surface. Our heads broke through the water, and I snapped out of my reverie, choking and sputtering.

“How much of that stuff did you swallow?” Max asked, helping me up onto the platform.

“I don’t know. I just closed my eyes, and the water seemed to expand.” I scrambled away from the water’s edge.

“You just plunged off the raft and headed down. I think you’ve had enough water for one day. Do you mind sitting here while I take Sophie for a swim?”

Max dived from the platform, more like a dolphin than like a whale, and headed for the middle of the tank. He popped out of the water and beckoned to Sophie with his arms. I tried to trace their progress under the water, but they were lost in the unlit circles. Two minutes later, Sophie’s head crested the surface; then her whole body breached with Max sitting on her back. He waved at me before the pair plunged below the surface again.

After several trips around the tank, Max brought Sophie over to me. “It’s time to say good-bye,” he said as I reached for the whale. He hauled his dripping body out of the water.

“Bye, Sophie,” I whispered. She turned around and dived back into the depths of the pool—the moon eclipsed by the night.

In silence, we headed down the ladder. In the hallway, I slipped my clothes on over my wet bathing suit. Outside, the night had turned cold, and the sharp January air pinched my wet skin. The rain had stopped, and a few lonely flurries started their languid descent from the sky.

Max started the car and turned on the heater.

“Thank you,” I said, beaming at my brother. I was shaking all over—trembling with the memory of my plunge and the magnificence of the whale. And I was trembling with delight at discovering that the other girl in my brother’s life was a giant sea beast.

Eleven

The week after our trip to La Gaite theater was a week of rain. In Holland, a rare blue sky can immediately darken and be disrupted by bullet-sized hail; five weather systems can pass through in a single day, throwing the city from relative warmth into freezing rain. A twenty-minute walk can take you through a year’s worth of weather. Like my magician, the Dutch weather distracted with an honesty—a golden fan of sunlight leaking from behind a cloud—while it put the finishing touches on the storm waiting in the wings. Unlike the rain that flooded my childhood, drowning our house, the Dutch rainstorms passed by swiftly, eager to take their havoc elsewhere. The Dutch rain didn’t threaten, but performed, showing off its dexterity, its scope of pressures and wetnesses. It wasn’t dangerous and malicious like the rain that had made the river rise and the house fall down around my family. It was cheeky and wicked. It spoiled a blue sky without warning, fell on one side of the city but left the other dry, and it teased—hiding in an oppressive blanket of gray for an entire day without falling.

At night, Toby and I were carried off to sleep by the rain tapping on the roof—and in the mornings, we were summoned awake by fresh gusts of wind driving the rain against our small window. We had traded the permanent sunshine of Las Vegas for its opposite: an unceasing backdrop of gray. The rain washed away the thrill of Leo’s party and obscured the faded glory of La Gaite. The weather made exploring the city forbidding. So I remained in Piet’s house, letting one day slide into the next as I watched the old man dig through his boxes, holding up memorabilia from Theo’s triumphs for Toby.

And then, one morning we both woke up agitated. I’d slept later than usual, the constant gray of the sky making it hard to distinguish the morning hours from the early afternoon.

When I opened my eyes, Toby was standing in the attic doorway, staring at the window. “Rain.”

I pushed my head into my pillow, struggling to regain the warmth of sleep.

“Why does it always have to rain? I feel like I haven’t seen daylight in weeks. And there’s nothing I can do about it.” He looked into his palms.

“So come back to bed.”

“That doesn’t help.”

“Maybe in your dreams it will be sunny.”

“You don’t want to hear about my dreams.” Toby moved to the window and watched