Something brushed against my leg and I screamed.

Frantic, heart pounding, I got my forearms over the edge, planted my hands, and began to push myself up. Then I felt fingers wrap around my legs like tentacles. I thought of Declan’s drawing, had this absurd sense that I’d slipped inside it.

“Ted!” I called, reaching for him, but it was too late. I slid backward into the water, sucking in a deep breath of air before going under.

I was being pulled down to the other side of the world.

My sister looked back at me. Not some imaginary version. Not a re-creation born of denial. My sister.

Somehow, despite the darkness of the water, I could see her clearly and perfectly. I knew my sister’s body better than my own. There was her appendectomy scar. Her muscular swimmer’s torso. Her long eyelashes, looking longer still when wet. She let go of my leg, reached for my hand. I felt her fingers entwine through my own and suddenly, we were kids again, floating, playing the Dead Game. Gram was in the house watching her programs, and Lex and I were holding our breaths as long as we could.

Open your eyes. The dead have nothing to fear.

Behind us, back on land, I felt the shadow of Sparrow Crest looming, our favorite place on earth, the house we were going to live in together when we grew up.

Jax and Lex. The X girls. Forever.

I’m sorry, I thought, wishing I could say the words out loud, but feeling she heard them anyway. So, so sorry.

And I was sorry. Sorry I’d made that stupid wish all those years ago. Sorry I’d never been able to really help her, to fix her or save her. Sorry I’d moved across the country to get away from her. Sorry I’d shut her out after Gram died. Sorry I hadn’t picked up the phone that last night.

Lexie’s fingers wrapped tightly around mine. She was as cold as the water, a girl made of ice.

She pulled me down, deeper, deeper, the water as black as the night sky.

And I made out pinpricks of light—some bright, some dim. They looked like the day Lexie took me to outer space in her cardboard rocket and held the flashlight, created her very own galaxy, making the stars spin across the ceiling, just as the stars were dancing now.

Only these weren’t stars—I saw that now as I got closer. The lights were people.

Each person emitted a greenish white glow like they had night-lights inside them, something to keep the darkness away.

Lexie kept her hand clamped around mine and was taking me deeper, toward them.

Isn’t this wonderful, Jax? she said. No one could speak underwater. But still, I heard her. It was my sister’s voice. We’re actually going to do it! Get to the other side of the world.

My lungs were screaming for air. I fought the urge to open my mouth, take a desperate gulp of water. My vision narrowed.

It was cold. So cold.

I fought against her, tried to pull away, but it was useless.

Lexie held tight to my hand. Kept pulling me down.

Down, down, down.

Who are all these people? I asked her in my mind, looking at the faces we passed.

But I knew the answer. I recognized some of them. There was little Rita, seven years old, our dead little aunt whose books we read, whose games we played.

Nelson DeWitt, who bottled water from the springs. Eliza Harding, Ryan’s great-grandmother. Martha Woodcock, the little girl who drowned at the hotel and made friends with Rita. And others I didn’t recognize but who must have drowned in the springs. So many people, swirling around us, dancing lights in the darkness. And I knew, as I floated down with them, that what Shirley had said was true, they were the source of the water’s strength.

Stay, they seemed to say. Stay down here with us Make us stronger.

I thought of my father, of Diane, of my life in Tacoma, my friends. I thought of Lexie’s cat, Pig. I thought of Declan, of all the kids I’d helped and needed to go on helping.

I can’t stay. I don’t belong here.

I fought harder against Lexie, tried to swim back up, up to the land of the living, but my movements were so slow, so weak. And Lexie was so strong.

I didn’t feel cold anymore.

On the contrary, I felt a new warmth radiating from my chest out to my arms and legs. I looked down and saw that I, too, had begun to glow.

Don’t you see? Lexie said. Both of our wishes can come true.

That’s when I felt it. Hands on the back of my shirt, tugging, jerking, trying to pull me up, away from the lights. Away from Lexie.

Lexie held out her hand, pointer finger up. I crossed it with my own.

Me and you, Jax. Jax and Lex. The X girls, always and forever.

I closed my eyes, felt myself being pulled away from her, up out of the water.

I was sorry to go.

“I’ve got her!” my father shouted as we reached the surface, as he pulled me from the water.

chapter thirty-four

June 26, 1972

Sparrow Crest

Time is a funny thing, moving so fast and so slowly. I am ninety-five this year. I don’t understand how it happened. Will has been gone for so many years; my life with him feels like a dream I had. Sometimes, I look at my life the way I flip through a photograph album. Will and I at the hotel, standing on the balcony, his arm around me. Little Maggie learning to sew, making her first cross-stitch that turned out so well, we hung it in the front hall: To err is human, to forgive, divine. Back before she met Stephen—who gave her three healthy girls, each perfect and beautiful. How I love the children! Careening through this house, bringing it to life with their chatter and giggles.

I hear what Maggie and Stephen tell them about me: She’s going senile. Don’t listen to Grandma. She doesn’t know what she’s saying.

Maybe I am going senile. Maybe I don’t know what’s real and what isn’t anymore. The other afternoon, I was sitting by the pool reading my old diary. I had the strangest idea then that what was contained in those pages wasn’t meant to ever be found. That the story of the pool and the springs belonged to the water itself. So I tossed the book into the pool. My oldest granddaughter, Linda, screamed, dove down, and got it as it was sinking. “What’d you do that for?” she asked, holding the waterlogged book up. “Look, now it’s all ruined!” She flipped through the pages, saw the running and washed-away ink. “You can’t even read it now.”

Just as well.

Later, at dinner, there was much talk about how I got confused and threw my book into the pool. They all shook their heads, clucked their tongues. I said nothing. Let them think what they will.