How to Breathe Underwater Read Online Free Page A

glass. “Looks like Kool-Aid.”
    “She gets all crazy,” said Peter. “Watch.” Peter lifted the glass high into the air, and Clarie ran toward him. “You can’t have it,” he said.
    Clarie jumped up and down in fury, her hands flapping like limp rags. Her mouth opened but no sound came out. Then she curled her fingers into claws and scratched at Peter’s arms and chest until he twisted away. He ran across the kitchen and onto the deck, holding the glass in the air, and Clarie followed him, screaming.
    The ragged-haired brother and sister looked at each other, arms gloved in white bubbles. In one quick movement they were off the stool, shaking suds around the kitchen. “Come on!” said the boy. “Let’s go watch!”
    Benjamin grabbed Ella’s hand and pulled her toward the screen door. The children pushed out onto the deck and then ran toward the tree castle, where Clarie and her brother were climbing the first rope ladder. It was dark now, and floodlights on the roof of the house illuminated the entire castle, its rooms silver-gray and ghostly, its ropes and nets swaying in a rising breeze. The children gathered on the grass near the trampoline.
    Peter held the glass as he climbed, the red water sloshing against its sides. “Come and get it,” he crooned. He reached the first room, and they heard the wall-door scrape against the trunk as he pushed it open. Then he moved out onto the oak limb, agile as the spider monkeys Ella had seen at the zoo. He might as well have had a tail.
    Clarie crawled behind him, her hands scrabbling at the bark. Peter howled at the sky as he reached the hostage room.
    Benjamin moved toward Ella and pressed his head against her arm. “I want to go home,” he said.
    “Shh,” Ella said. “We can’t.”
    High above, Peter climbed onto the platform from which they had jumped earlier. Still holding the glass, he pulled himself up the tree trunk to the crow’s nest. High up on that small railed platform, where the tree branches became thin and sparse, he stopped. Below him Clarie scrambled onto the jumping platform. She looked out across the yard as if unsure of where he had gone. “Up here,” Peter said, holding the glass high.
    Ella could hear Clarie grunting as she pulled herself up into the crow’s nest. She stood and reached for the glass, her face a small moon in the dark. A few acorns scuttled off the crow’s-nest platform.
    “Give it!” she cried.
    Peter stood looking at her for a moment in the dark. “You really want it?”
    “Peter!”
    He swept the glass through the air. The water flew out in an arc, ruby-colored against the glare of the floodlights. Clarie leaned out as if to catch it between her fingers, and with a splintering crack she broke through the railing. Her dress fluttered silently as she fell, and her white hands grasped at the air. There was a quiet instant, the soft sound of water falling on grass. Then, with a shock Ella felt in the soles of her feet, Clarie hit the ground. The girl with the ragged hair screamed.
    Clarie lay beside the trampoline, still as sleep, her neck bent at an impossible angle. Ella wanted to look away, but couldn’t. The other children, even Benjamin, moved to where Clarie lay and circled around, some calling her name, some just looking. Peter slid down the fireman’s pole and stumbled across the lawn toward his sister. He pushed Benjamin aside. With one toe he nudged Clarie’s shoulder, then knelt and rolled her over. A bare bone glistened from her wrist. The boy in purple overalls threw up on the grass.
    Ella turned and ran toward the house. She banged the screen door open and skidded across the kitchen floor into the hall. At the doorway of the meditation room she stopped, breathing hard. The parents sat just as she had left them, eyes closed, mouths open slightly, their sound beating like a living thing, their thumbs and forefingers circled into perfect O’s. She could smell the heat of them rising in the room and