ONE

It seemed like a perfect morning. The sun had just begun to rise. Birds were chirping and chittering in the trees. And the house where Mason and Madison Page lived stood as tall and proud as ever.

It was the nicest house on the block—probably the whole town. Mr. Page worked in the city in some sort of bank. Mason and Madison didn’t know much more than that. But they did know he made tons of money. And because of that, they had this gigantic house. A house that had all sorts of cool things in it.

One room had an enormous flat-screen TV and three rows of large, comfortable chairs. This was the family’s personal movie theater. There was also a game room in the basement. There were pinball machines and an air-hockey table. It had another big TV screen, too, just for video games. And there was a soda machine that didn’t need any money. You just pressed one of the plastic buttons, and out came an ice-cold bottle.

Then there was the pool.

It was in the backyard, and it had a diving board and a slide. It also had a heater so the water felt bathtub-warm. There was a patio with a fire pit and an outdoor kitchen. Two guys from a cleaning service came twice a week to keep the pool spotless. Since there was no wind on this particular morning, the surface of the water remained perfectly still. It could have been a sheet of glass, reflecting a few sluggish clouds in an otherwise perfect sky.

Then, just after a flock of sparrows passed overhead, it began to change. The color of the blue became lighter. Then darker. Then light again, then dark again. The water began to swirl and churn—first one way, then the other. It was as if someone had put a giant stick in it but couldn’t figure out which way to stir. Bubbles rose to the surface by the thousands, making the water look as though it had begun to boil. Waves formed, rolling from one end to the other. Water slapped against the sides, sloshing onto the walkway. More bubbles came up, thousands and then millions. They turned into a sudsy foam, filling the pool.

Then, just as quickly as all this had started, it settled down again. The foam began breaking apart, drifting away in hunks until each one evaporated. The waves declined in stages, and the swirling vanished with one final, feeble spin. The water returned to its calm state. A sheet of glass again, reflecting the same collection of unhurried clouds. Only the shade of blue had changed. It was most unusual. A shade rarely seen in this world. A deathly shade.

And there was something at the bottom of the pool now. Something that hadn’t been there before.

****

A few minutes later, Madison came out the back door. She was like her twin brother in so many ways. Sandy blonde hair, green eyes, athletic build. And they were both thirteen. Mason had been born first, which meant he was about a minute older. And he never let Madison forget it.

She walked to where the patio ended and then froze. In the next yard, she could hear them—three kids of about her age, playing together. Wiffle ball, it sounded like. She turned as quietly as she could and began tiptoeing away.

The door swung open again, and Mason stepped out. He was dressed in a T-shirt, gym shorts, white socks, and sneakers. He had developed a bit of acne over the last year. Not terrible, but not pretty, either. It was something else Madison liked to tease him about. So far, she had been spared this condition.

She waved to get his attention, then put a finger to her lips. “Shh—they’re out there right now….”

He smiled. “Are they digging in the dirt for worms to eat?”

She giggled. “You’re awful.”

He looked over at the house where the kids lived and shook his head.

“Can you seriously imagine living there?”

“Not for a zillion bucks.”

It had been a running joke with them for years. The last owners, an elderly couple named the Clarksons, let the place fall apart. The paint was peeling, the screens had rips and tears, and there were shingles missing from the roof. The grass was too high and the shrubs were all scraggly. It looked awful.

But now there were new owners, the Halleys. A dad, a mom, and three kids. Mason and Madison thought maybe they’d fix the place up. No such luck. It turned out the father had lost his job or something, and that was the only house the family could afford. So there it sat, still rotting away.

The fact that it was right next to their house was…well, embarrassing. So when the Halley kids tried to make friends with them, that was embarrassing too. Those kids had tried everything, including knocking on their front door and leaving notes in their mailbox. The oldest one, Zachary, was in their class, and he asked them to hang out all the time. They never said yes, but he just kept asking, which drove them crazy.

He was really smart, too, which bothered them. So they made fun of him as much as possible. When he got one question wrong on a math test, they began referring to him as ‘Zac the Hack.’ A few weeks later he gave a presentation on the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. This was an explosion at a nuclear power plant in Ukraine in 1986. Radiation rained down on the nearby town of Pripyat, causing widespread illness and some deaths. Mason made jokes about how the survivors probably glowed at night, and Zac probably did too because he did the report.   

“Just the thought of hanging out with them,” Mason said, shuddering. “Ugh…”

They were off the grass now and onto the walkway that went around the pool.

“You know what we should do?” he went on. “We should—hey, what’s wrong?”

Madison had stopped and was standing on the pool’s edge now, staring down.

“Come here for a sec,” she said, gesturing with her finger.

“Okay…”

When he got there, she pointed.

“Do you see that?”

Mason looked closely. At first it was difficult to see anything. There was a light breeze now, drawing ripples on the water’s surface. Then it died down, and the water became perfectly clear again.

“Is that what I think it is?” he asked.

Madison nodded. “The locket that Grandma gave me. Yeah, that’s exactly what it looks like.”

It sat there at the very bottom, heart-shaped and shining brilliantly. The chain lay squiggled around it like a dead snake.

“But you never wear it when you’re swimming,” Mason said. “You never wear it at all.”

“I know.”

“So how’d it get down there?”

Madison shook her head.

“No idea.”

****

TWO

“Seriously, how is that possible?” Madison wondered. “I keep it on my dresser all the time.”

“No idea, Maddy-poopy.”

“Don’t call me that, zitface.”

“Sorry, Maddy-poopy. I really don’t know what to tell you. But I do know one thing for sure…”

“What’s that?”

“You should go get it!” he replied, then pushed her from behind. 

With her arms pinwheeling wildly, she let out a scream that seemed to echo from one end of the galaxy to the other. Then she hit the water’s surface and went under. When she came back up, she looked as mad as a rabid dog.

“You jerk!” she said, splashing him hard. “I just bought this shirt! Now it’s got chlorine from the pool on it!”

“Stinks to be you,” he said, his smile bigger than ever.

“And you’re lucky my phone wasn’t in my pocket! Mom n’ dad would kill you if you ruined that!”

“Considering how much time you waste on that thing, I’m surprised you didn’t—hey! Wait! NO!!!”

But it was too late—Madison jumped up, grabbed his wrist, and yanked him down. He managed a half-somersault before landing with a mighty splash.

The moment he came back to the surface—his hair in a dripping rug over his eyes—she was waiting with a big smile of her own.

“Stinks to be you!” she said, then began laughing like a lunatic.

He parted the rug and blinked away the droplets.

“Oh yeah? Well, guess what—if I get to that locket first, it’s mine!” Then he dove under and was gone.

“No WAY!!!” Madison screamed before doing the same.

She grabbed him by the leg to slow him down. He responded by reaching up and pushing her hand away. But this also meant he had to stop swimming for a moment, which was exactly what she wanted. When she tried to swim past him, he clutched her arm. This became a slow-motion slap fight that didn’t accomplish much of anything. With their lungs aching from lack of air, they gave up the battle and began moving downward again. Mason—always the better swimmer—reached the locket first and snatched it up. Madison screamed something to him that was lost in the blue. Mason stuck his tongue out at her. Then he planted his foot on the bottom of the pool and launched himself upward.

When Madison broke the surface seconds later, she already had her hand out.

“Give it back,” she said angrily. “Right now!”

But Mason wasn’t hearing her. In fact, he didn’t even seem to notice she was there at all.  His mouth hung open as if on broken hinges. His eyes were wide. And those eyes were looking all around, shifting from one place to another. 

Then Madison saw it, too. It was impossible. Just impossible. And yet she and her brother were there in the middle of it.

“Mason…” she said, her voice quivering. “Wh-what’s going on?”

He didn’t reply.

****

A POOL OF DEATHLY BLUE WILL BE AVAILABLE ON AUGUST 1ST.