Crystal Grader, Tag Cavello [best books to read for beginners txt] 📗

deep until one swam at least half a mile from the beach. The powdery blue she was seeing in the grotto from this vantage point—a blue that looked almost abysmal—was nothing more than a reflection of the sky. No way could the bottom be very far down.

Still, if she really wanted to find out what was feeding this place, it didn’t pay to take risks. The swim would be more comfortable, Marina thought, more natural, to perform topless. Confident that she was alone in this well off the beaten track part of the island, Marina untied the back of her bathing suit. She took a breath as it fell away from her high, pert breasts. Her lungs felt sprightly. Eager. Ready to work.

***

Crystal stopped reading. Her lip pursed in thought. Had Powell enjoyed writing this scene? Had he composed it with his pupils dilated and his heart on fire? She knew the answer…and she knew why. The prose was a slave to the beast that fed it. A slave, a beggar…and finally, a glutton.

***

One kick, two kicks, three. Down and down Marina dove, her smooth, slender legs cutting the water. Her mouth was tight, sealing in the deep gasp she had given her chest as well as it could. Yet a vague, distant tightness had settled over her breasts. A gentle squeeze from the hand of time. Marina opened her legs wide and gave another hard, strong kick. Nothing changed. The grotto glowed all around her. Above, the sun shined through a surface that looked a mile away.

Marina winced as a bolt of pain suddenly stabbed through her lungs. Her mouth opened to release a short, clipped cry of bubbles. It was time to leave. The grotto had defeated her…for now. But there was always tomorrow. And the next day, and the next.

Chest hurting for air, she began her ascent…

***

The book slapped closed in Crystal’s hand. Her eyes went back to the shelf. She would leaf through Powell’s other books, search for other scenes like this one (and they were there; Crystal could think of two already from two different books that involved the heroine holding her breath). But the exercise was academic. She had what she wanted.

Her next task lay in finding out how to use this newfound weapon. A simple girl, she knew, would carry it over to Powell’s house and start swinging it at him like a tennis racquet. Hi my name’s Crystal watch how long I can hold my breath GAAAAH!

That would never do. For one thing, it was stupid. Also, Crystal didn’t think she could hold her breath for very long. Marina’s time of two minutes was…insane. Thirty seconds sounded much more realistic, with a good deal of kicking and squirming.

Would Powell be satisfied with that? Would it make him excited?

Crystal thought yes. She’d gotten him excited already with twenty seconds. Were she to wait longer, show him her absolute limit, he might well fall to his knees. Then she could declare her victory. Raise her flag over his fort.

She slipped The Girl and the Grotto back onto the shelf, then went down the hall for a long bath before dinner. The tub was deep, but she filled it to the very top before getting in. She filled it to the top to find out how long she could stay on the bottom. Her objective was thirty seconds. Very easy, especially for a cheerleader.

Confident as always in her abilities, Crystal slipped under the surface and waited.

***

“Let me guess,” Hannah said on Thursday afternoon in front of the school, “cheerleading practice again?”

Crystal shook her head. “Nope. I’m staying behind to help decorate the gym for Thanksgiving.”

“You’re full of shit, Crystal.”

“Hannah, come on!” a third voice cried out.

Both girls looked in the direction of the crier, a girl whom Crystal didn’t recognize.

“I’m staying over at Gillian’s house this afternoon anyway,” Hannah explained. “So go…do your decorating.”

“It’s a holiday thing,” Crystal said, as her sister backed away.

“Sounds more like a boyfriend thing to me. Maybe I can meet him sometime.”

“Hannah!”

“Bye!”

And she disappeared with her friend into the throng of other kids on their way home. Crystal watched, shivering in the November chill. Yes, her story had been pretty lame this time. She’d been too lazy to think of anything better. Screw it, though. At least Lucy wasn’t asking questions.

Hitching up her backpack, Crystal started off towards Jackson Street.

***

The lameness continued in Powell’s living room. He read five more pages of her story out loud…and it sounded terrible. The paragraphs, and even some of the individual sentences, just didn’t want to fit together. Powell kept having to stop in order to avoid being impaled by her jagged narration, her broken syntax. It made her want to cringe. Over the past two days her story had become a funhouse of death.

“She arrived at the other side of the street just in time to see the boy run quickly, heatedly, past her and nearly get hit by the fastest car she had ever seen on this street..

“’Come back here!’ she said.

“’No!’ he shouted back.

“’Now!’ she screamed.

“’I’m not!’ he yelled.

“Another car passed. The boy jumped. And then he just ran away.”

Powell stopped reading. From the expression on his face it was clear he could stomach no more. He was standing in front of the fireplace, and for a moment his eyes darted into the flames; for a moment, Crystal was sure, he wanted to burn the manuscript.

“This is…not like what I read on Monday,” he came out with instead.

She glared at him from her usual seat on the couch. “It sucks. I get it.”

“So how would you fix it?”

“You’re the teacher. You tell me.”

“One thing I will tell you,” he frowned, “is not to be disrespectful. Not if you hope to learn anything.”

“Sorry.”

“Good. Let’s look at the scene where the boy runs in front of the car. What’s wrong with it? What does it need?”

“Cut. Simplified.”

Powell’s hand slapped the paper. “Good girl. Now cut it for me.”

Crystal took the story from him and scribbled in an alternate description of the scene. When she handed it back, it read like this:

She got to the street just in time to see the boy run in the other direction. A car’s horn blared. Brakes squealed. The boy winced as the car’s front bumper stopped mere inches from his knees.

“Better,” Powell said, nodding. “I like it. Be careful with the word the. Use it over and over again and the reader gets bored.”

“I noticed that,” she admitted. “I wanted to get around it somehow.”

Powell looked at the paragraph for a few moments. Today he wore an open gray sweater over-top of a blue dress shirt. Below the belt was the same as always: blue jeans and hiking boots.

“Okay,” he said, not noticing her scrutiny, listen to this. “She reached the opposite curb in time to see what looked like a large cat bolt in the other direction. Only it wasn’t a cat—it was the boy. She opened her mouth to scream his name just as a passing car nearly killed him. Brakes squealed; a horn blared. Then the boy was standing mere inches away from a gleaming chrome bumper.

His head shook after a moment’s thought. “Nah. I like your fix better, actually.”

“Thank you.”

“In this next part you have them arguing. But it’s too much. Remember the law of diminishing returns. Never repeat more than once, especially in dialogue like this.”

“Robert McKee again.”

He smiled at her. “Exactly. He preaches it, and he’s damned right to do so.”

“I think I’m going to learn a lot from you,” Crystal said—almost purred.

She stood up from the couch. It was time to experiment with what she’d learned earlier in the week.

“I know our hour’s almost up, but before I go can you do me the tiniest little favor?”

“Sure,” he said, glancing up from her story.

“It’s going to sound crazy at first,” Crystal went on. She could barely keep her smile from becoming a leer. Oh what a sight this man was going to make. “But it’s for cheerleading practice. I’m…sort of wondering if you could time how long I can hold my breath.”

Powell’s eyes came off the page again. This time they didn’t go back. He tilted his head, as if something odd had suddenly appeared in the fireplace behind Crystal. He blinked. The story gave a tremor in his hand.

“Hold your breath?” he at last got out. “For cheerleading? Uh…sure. Sure. I can do that for you.”

It made her burst out with laughter. “Well thank you! I’d rather practice in front of somebody than alone, so it feels more like the drills.”

“Yes,” Powell nodded. “Of course. That makes sense. This is so you can shout louder during the games?”

“Yes sir. And increased stamina overall.”

She had on a blue flower-print dress. Now she unbuttoned the top button, exposing the clavicle.

“I’ll just stand where’s there’s a little more room,” she told him, as he tried not to gape. There was plenty of space in front of the television. Crystal planted her feet on the hardwood floor, choosing an open-stance posture for balance. “Here okay?”

“Yes.” He coughed. “That’s fine.”

“Just let me get one more button. I think it’ll be easier to inhale.”

“You ah…take this very seriously, I can see,” Powell said as she bared a little more skin.

“I think cheering’s important, Mr. Powell. People need inspiration. Men especially.”

He nodded. “That’s probably true. So how long does your coach expect you to hold your breath?”

Her eyes penetrated him as she answered. “Every girl needs to do one minute. And before you ask—no. I can’t. No way.”

“I see. Well how long can you go.”

“Thirty seconds. By then I’m like…dying.”

This was the truth (though what she’d said about needing to last one minute was not; in fact, her coach never asked any of the girls to hold their breath at all). Over the past two days Crystal had been practicing at the bottom of her bathtub. But in spite of her very deepest, most determined breaths, thirty seconds was it. Her absolute, lung-wrenching limit.

“Ready?” she said, feeling like a girl dangling a carrot in front of a rabbit.

“Wait,” Powell answered. He stepped forward, towering over her. A musky odor of cologne wafted into Crystal’s nose. “Raise your arms. To the sides, like you’re giving a speech to a large audience.”

“That sounds interesting.” She splayed her fingers, letting the nails claw out at the walls. “Why?”

“It’s the way I used to practice on the swim team in high school.”

“A-ha!”

He smiled. “It provides a bigger challenge, a better workout.”

“And what is your personal best, Mr. Powell?” Crystal asked, fluttering her eyelashes.

“Maybe I’ll tell you sometime. Ready?”

He stepped back, causing Crystal’s heart to sink the tiniest bit.

“Okay. Go.”

And after the deepest gasp she could get, he timed her to the very end.

PART TWO: The Rabbit

7

 

She awoke.

It was still the middle of the night. Outside, a wind had gotten up. A million ghosts howled and swirled around the Jackson farm. Shadows of bare November branches writhed on the ceiling. Blinking at them, Crystal thought: I’m in the wrong room.

She put her feet down. A candle flickered on a small table by the door. Beyond was another, more steady glow of light that Crystal knew came from the bathroom at the end of the hall. How had she gotten all the way down here? Jarett’s room, the one she always slept in when she stayed overnight, was on the east end of the house. It made