Night Swimmers Read Online Free PDF Page A

which had been trailing behind her, sank like weights.
    She had expected, had been prepared for the fact that some night the colonel might come striding out in his bathrobe. She had been prepared to shove her brothers to the opposite ladder and have them out of the pool and across the lawn in seconds.
    But this strange figure, passing behind the bushes, this she had not been prepared for.
    “Yes, I see him,” Retta said in a low voice.
    Roy struggled in his inner tube. “Where?” His round face was twisted with worry.
    “He’s gone now.”
    “I want to see!”
    Retta turned and started swimming for the side of the pool. “I’m going to find out who it is,” she said.
    “Retta!” Roy grabbed for her but got only water. Kicking desperately, getting nowhere, he tried to move after her.
    “I’m coming too,” Johnny said.
    Now Roy grabbed for Johnny, but Johnny was out of his reach too. “Wait for me!” he cried.
    Retta was at the ladder. She pulled herself up and, dropping her inner tube, moved toward the garage. Johnny reached the ladder too. Roy struggled harder.
    Retta and Johnny ran across the lawn. They paused at the garage and glanced around uneasily. Then they looked at each other.
    Roy, fighting the water and the inner tube, reached the side of the pool at last. He flopped out like a seal.
    “I want to go home,” he wailed as he ran dripping across the lawn.
    “Hush up! You want to wake the colonel?”
    Roy was less afraid of the colonel than he was of the spy. “I don’t care. I want to go home.”
    “Oh, all right!” Retta said. “I guess whoever it was is gone anyway.” Now that she was at the garage, in the light, the desire to pursue the spy had left her. She, too, was ready to go home.
    “I’ll go back for the inner tubes. You two get the clothes,” Retta said.
    She was cold now, shivering. As she ran for the pool, she felt an unfamiliar weakness in her knees. She gathered the inner tubes and, holding them in both arms, ran to join her brothers.
    Roy and Johnny were already running for the fence, their clothes clutched to their chests. Roy glanced back over his shoulder to make sure only Retta was behind him.
    Roy had never enjoyed being scared the way some children did. He put his hands over his eyes during the scary parts of movies. He put his hands over his ears when Retta told that fearful story, “I’m on the first step. I’m on the second step. I’m on the third step.” He could not bear that final “Got you!” Now that it seemed about to happen to him, he was moving the way he moved in his dreams—so slowly he could never get away.
    He glanced back over his shoulder again. This time he stumbled over a bush and fell, dropping his Chubbie jeans in the darkness.
    “Rettaaaaaa!” he wailed.
    She was there instantly. She yanked him to his feet in one swift movement. “There.” She swooped up his clothes. Holding the inner tubes awkwardly on one hip, she led him to the fence. As they scrambled over, Retta glanced back at the garage.
    The figure was there, watching as they ran away.
    “Let’s go!” Retta said.

“D ON’T BOTHER ME NOW ,” Retta said. She was pretending to watch television.
    “But I want to know if we’re going swimming again or if we’re not,” Roy persisted. He was worried. He wanted Retta to promise that they would never, ever go swimming again because he was afraid. All night in his dreams he had run without getting anywhere.
    “Of course we’re going again. No stupid spy is going to keep us from experiencing things.”
    “But there’s some things people don’t want to experience,” Roy said earnestly. He was remembering not only the evening before at the swimming pool but a long painful story a boy in his kindergarten had once told during Show and Tell about having his tonsils out.
    “Look,” Retta said, straightening, “I’m not going to allow us to grow up ignorant.”
    “I know that.”
    Roy sighed. Retta was already a stricter