Magic Mansion by Jordan Price (best fiction books to read .txt) 📕

Faye instead. He almost catapulted her right to the center—she weighed next to nothing, and her foot felt as small as a child’s against his palm—but at the last moment he reined in and aimed her closer to the pool’s side. She splashed down, went under, burst back up with a wand, then swung herself out over the edge. Sue followed close on her heels, but the seconds the jump-start had gained Faye proved to be crucial.

First wand to Red Team.

John swung his legs into the pool. Immediately, he was startled by the feel of the rods beneath his feet, uncomfortable to stand on, and strangely slippery, too. Wherever a number of them had fallen parallel, they functioned as a sort of conveyor belt, rolling the contestants out of their strides.

And if that wasn’t enough, there were cameras to avoid. And splashing.

And screaming.

He was unsure who’d started the screaming. Possibly Jia—the water was unexpectedly cold. But the manic energy spread fast, and pretty soon Muriel was whooping, Kevin was bellowing, and Bev was hollering over the top of it all, “Not that one! The other one next to it!”

John went under and picked up two wands. Were they ten inches? Ten and a half? He emerged and compared them. They were the same size. Or were they? Maybe they weren’t. Maybe he was holding them wrong. And maybe, in his apprehension, he would throw away the longer wand if he wasn’t careful, thereby letting victory slip right through his fingers.

Honestly, don’t be such a drama queen. The words popped into John’s mind as if dear departed Casey had been commentating on the whole fiasco, lounging on the sidelines with a mai tai in his hand and a lazy smile on his face. If nothing else, you get to ogle the cute twink in the gold trunks. So live a little. Relax.

John took a steadying breath, then searched through the splashing, screaming, wand-waving melee. Sue and Faye stood outside the pool, dripping on the tile floor, adding to the chaos by shouting encouragement at their teams. Muriel slogged through the water with her hair a mass of heavy gray tangles that covered her face. She seemed to be laughing. Jia bobbed up holding her nose with a wand hooked awkwardly in the pinkie finger of that hand. She compared two lengths of wand, threw one back in, then held her nose and went under again. Ricardo broke the surface of the water with a wand in each hand, compared them, and tossed one away while Bev shouted, “Not that one!”

Kevin lurked behind them, eyes riveted to the spot Bev was pointing at.

And despite the fact that he was standing nearly chest-deep in water, John felt somewhat…soiled. Because while he did want to win—enough to launch his new teammate into the pool—it just didn’t seem right to prey on the Gold Team’s strategy.

You can’t control what other people do, Casey used to say. You can try, but the only thing you accomplish is driving yourself crazy.

Too true. John took a deep breath, bent his knees, and went under.

The pool consisted of inflatable blue vinyl sides with a rigid framework holding it up, a sort of semipermanent structure that could be disassembled and stored in the garage at the end of the season. With all the harsh studio lights shining on and through it, the water took on the gentle blue cast that it would in a much deeper pool. It was cold, as if it had recently come from the garden hose. And all the splashing was stirring up plenty of bubbles.

John turned his attention to the wands. They covered the pool’s bottom like a fantastic black coral reef. He saw them, beheld them…and then looked deeper. An image popped into his mind. Pine needles. Of course. What else would cheap lumber be made from but fast-growing pine?

The lumber held a stronger sense of itself than a man-made object might, and so it was quite possible that the longer pieces might be located by something a bit more precise than simple trial and error. If only John could figure out, between the splashing and the timer and the cameras, how to communicate “length” to a thousand simple pieces of wood.

Normally, John would take a few breaths to center himself. Underwater, this was not very practical. He closed his eyes, opened them again, and willed himself to feel stillness. A pair of gold trunks flashed by, and…my, what an ass. Stillness. Not so easy. He stood, broke water, took a breath, and went under once more.

He focused on the wood again. It felt somehow…scattered. Baked dry, lathed into smooth regularity, chopped into bits, and painted black. Despite its confusion, it did, however, seem to be “listening.”

John sent the tendril of thought: long?

No, no, no. Not long. The image of the green-needled tip of a tree reaching toward the sky fleeted through his mind. Now that was long.

John broke the surface again. Three minutes had elapsed. He began to doubt he could convey the concept of “twelve inches” to a bunch of painted dowels in fifteen years, let alone fifteen minutes. He took another breath and went under once more.

He pictured a tall tree, and a small tree, and he conveyed that for as long as he could hold his breath. When his lungs began burning a few images drifted up from various wands…but it was more along the lines of, Yes, this is where I came from.

John surfaced again. Jia was swinging herself out of the pool at four and a half minutes to ensure they’d gain another time advantage over Gold Team’s five-minute member. This counter-strategy had stirred up more chaos than the wand-diving. Faye was hauling her out, shouting, “Go! Go! Go!” while Sue leaned into the edge of the pool, screaming, “Stay in, Muriel. You might as well just stay in now!” Muriel, blinded by her own hair, slid on a dowel and splashed under. Ricardo came up with a