The Ghostwriter Secret by Mac Barnett

Author:Mac Barnett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Published: 2010-07-28T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XXIV

UNDERWATER CHAOS

ACCORDING TO THE BAILEY BROTHERS’ DETECTIVE HANDBOOK:

Shawn and Kevin consider themselves experts on jumping out of tall buildings. And do you know their favorite place to land? Not a barge full of soft garbage (Bailey Brothers #7: The Great Landfill Caper), or a hay cart (#16: Danger Flies the Coop) or even a truck full of pillows (#21: The Message in the Factory Whistle). That’s right! It’s water! Whether they’re taking swan dives off abandoned lighthouses on Benson Bay or the rocky cliffs of Acapulco (in Mexico!), when it comes to a safe and splashy landing, there’s no better surface than good old H2O!

Steve Brixton also considered himself an expert on jumping out of buildings, although he typically ended up injuring himself in the process. But he fell now with confidence, anticipating the cool, chlorinated cushion of pool water below him. He entered the water feet first (Steve couldn’t do a swan dive even when his hands weren’t tied behind his back), plummeted downward, and came down mightily on the bottom of the pool.

Water may be soft, but a pool’s floor is not.

Steve’s hands were smashed between his butt and the concrete, and a sharp pain shot from his wrists to his nail beds. Bubbles streamed from his nose.

Air. Steve pressed his legs hard against the bottom and shot upward, bursting from the surface of the water like a breaching whale. He saw Dana a few feet away, doing some awkward kicking stroke with his hands behind his back.

Steve took a deep breath in through his nose, at the same time sucking in water from the towel in his mouth. The key was not to panic. The water stung his throat. Just stay calm and don’t panic. He sank back down in the water.

Again to the bottom and back to the top. This time Steve turned and looked up at the balcony from which he’d just jumped. It was empty. A breath and back downward. When Steve sank, he sank fast. Any kind of swimming would be impossible with this backpack. Steve pushed off from the bottom, breathed in deeply, and disappeared underwater again. Up and down, up and down, like he would do when he was a little kid, when he didn’t know how to swim and got stranded in the deep end. Slowly, with every trip to the surface, Steve moved closer to the steps on the other side of the pool. Ten feet. Eight feet. At five feet the water was just an inch or two above his head. By four feet he was walking, coughing against the towel in his mouth. He dragged himself out of the pool. Dana was out already, lying flat on his back.

Soaked, fatigued, with hand towels in their mouths, the two boys lay in the sun, the warm cement radiating pleasantly on their backs.

But not for long.

There was a loud crack that Steve instantly recognized as a gun firing. He turned his head and looked at Dana (Steve’s heart now beating loud and fast) and saw that Dana was all right—wide-eyed but all right.

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