“Yeee-ahhh!”
The shout was completely unexpected. As was the huge splash that followed it.
Duck sat up on his raft.
Water sloshed over him. Someone was in the water. His water.
Two more blurs raced toward the pool’s edge and there were two more shouts, followed by two more cannonball splashes.
“Hey!” Duck yelled.
One of the kids was a jerk named Zil. The other two Duck didn’t recognize right away.
“Hey!” he yelled again.
“Who are you yelling at?” Zil demanded.
“This is my pool,” Duck said. “I found it and I cleaned it. Go get your own pool.”
Duck was aware that he was smaller than any of the three. But he was angry enough to feel bold. The float sank beneath him and he wondered if one of the boys had poked a hole in it.
“I’m serious,” Duck yelled. “You guys take off.”
“He’s serious,” one of the boys mocked.
Before he knew it Zil was leaping up from beneath the water and had grabbed Duck by the neck. Duck was plunged underwater, gasping, choking, sucking water into his nose.
He surfaced with difficulty, fighting with suddenly leaden arms to stay afloat.
They hit him again, just roughhousing, not really trying to hurt him, but forcing him under once more. This time he touched down on the bottom of the pool and had to kick his way back to the surface to gasp for air. He clutched at the float, but one of the boys yanked it away, giggling loudly.
Duck was filled with sudden rage. He had one good thing in his life, this pool, one good thing, and now it was being ruined.
“Get out!” he shrieked, but the last word glub-glub-glubbed as he sank like a rock.
What was going on? Suddenly he couldn’t swim. He was on the bottom of the pool, in the deep end, under ten feet of water. He kicked at the tile bottom, trying to shoot back up, but his foot shattered the tile and sent pieces of it spinning through the water.
Now panic took hold. What were they doing to him?
He kicked again, both feet as hard as he could. But he did not rise to the surface. Instead, both feet punched through the tile. He rose not at all. In fact, he was still sinking. His feet were sinking through the tile, scraping through jagged mortar and crumbled concrete, down into mud beneath.
It was impossible.
Impossible.
Duck Zhang was falling through the bottom of the pool. Through the ground beneath the bottom of the pool. It was as if he were standing in quicksand.
Up to his knees.
Up to his thighs.
Up to his waist.
He thrashed madly but he only fell faster.
Broken tile scraped his flanks. Mud slithered into his bathing suit.
His lungs burned. His vision was blurring now, head pounding, and still he fell through solid earth, as if the ground itself were nothing but water.