The Art of Disappearing by Ivy Pochoda (top non fiction books of all time TXT) 📗

a few soft lights rose from the floor, illuminating a huge tank. “I could put on the overheads, but its much nicer this way,” he said, reappearing at my side. He was wearing his swim trunks.

I looked from my brother to the monstrous tank, “Max, that doesn’t have a shallow end.”

“I’ve thought of everything.” He unfurled a small inflatable rubber raft that he’d been hiding somewhere.

“A raft?”

“I’ll be right there. You can hold on to me.”

“All right.”

A ladder led to the top of the tank, and we began to climb. The twisted iron rungs were cold and dug into the soles of my feet. As I approached the end of the twenty-foot climb, my arms ached. Max, who took no time at all to reach the top, extended one arm and hauled me up.

“It’s deep,” I said, staring at the water.

“Over twenty feet. But I’m going to be there the whole time. You can even hold on to the side of the tank, if you want.”

My eyes traveled over Max’s skin. I could imagine settling into the 110-degree crook in my brother’s elbow as he rescued me from a watery plunge. But as I looked from Max to the water, not even the promise of my brother’s water-smooth grip could calm the panic that jumped at me from the tank. “I don’t know. I’m not sure anymore,” I said, retreating from the edge.

“Come on.” He led me back to the water and pulled me down on the cold platform. Max began to inflate the raft. I gripped the edge of the tank until my hands went numb. I looked deep into the tank, to the place where the lights faded away. As the little raft took shape from Max’s lips, the water appeared to heave and sigh with sleep, resettling in its tank like a house in the night.

Max set the raft in the tank. It looked as insignificant as a handkerchief floating in the ocean.

“Now?” I asked, my voice rising and falling like the swaying raft.

“Not yet,” Max replied. “There’s one more thing.” He got down on his knees and fanned his fingers underneath the surface of the water. He fluttered his hands, scattering droplets over the platform and causing the raft to scratch against the side of the tank.

“Max?”

But my brother couldn’t hear me. He had dipped his face into the tank and begun to blow bubbles. And now a strange clicking noise, an underwater static, rose from his head—the same noise that leaked through the keyhole of his bathroom door when he was supposed to be washing his face.

“Max?” I repeated.

After two minutes, he withdrew his head from the water. Without even the slightest gasp for air, he said, “Don’t worry.” He puckered his lips and began to chirp. The chirp became a series of squeaks. Max lowered his face to the tank and plunged his head back into the water. I leaned in to peer at the watery shadows dancing on his white face. As I watched, the white opal of Max’s face was eclipsed, overshadowed by a darkness that rose from the center of the tank. I stood up and retreated from the edge of the platform. The tank trembled as if a volcano of water were preparing to rise from its interior. I covered my eyes, squeezing them tight until I could hear the blood rush through my ears.

Then the water sighed. It gasped for breath and heaved itself over the tank, splashing my toes. I peeked through a gap between my fingers.

“Mel,” my brother whispered, “come here. She won’t bite.”

I pried my fingers from my face. Max came into focus—his face intact and above water. At his feet bobbed a gigantic creature, full-moon white.

“This is Sophie,” Max said. “She’s the first trained white whale in America.” Max uttered another series of clicks. The whale bobbed her head and replied with a staticky whistle.

I stared at the whale. She was the same white as my brother, a white that glowed, a white that sang, a white that was marbled with silver crests and valleys.

“She won’t bite.”

I tiptoed closer. Max drew me to his side and twined his fingers with mine. Together we reached out over the water. I closed my eyes, relishing the slipperiness of his touch. Our hands collided with the warm water and dipped several inches below the surface. Max pressed down harder on my fingers, driving them into the pool. And just when I began to fear the unreachable bottom of the tank, my hand hit something solid but smooth. I opened my eyes. Max had released my fingers, and the titanium white skin of the whale pressed into my palm. Her body had the texture of washed silk, smooth and chalky. Against the whale’s massive body, my palm’s diameter seemed to shrink—a pebble thrown at the moon.

“She’s so white,” I whispered to Max. “How can something be this white?” I shook my head.

The whale drew closer, sending small waves onto the platform as she rose. When her head broke the surface, I could see depressions and scars carved into her alabaster skin, like inside-out scrimshaw. I put my hands on either side of her head, absorbing her texture, which was both hard and slippery, firm but melting. A strange song, like a flute being played over a crackly radio, rose from deep within the whale—a purer version of Max’s call.

I tried to read Sophie’s head with my fingers. I wanted to memorize her curves, contours, and scars, so I could conjure her in my empty hands later on and summon the sensation of her bumps and depressions. I was so consumed by my exploration that I didn’t object when Max slid me onto the raft and brought me eye to eye with a creature bigger than our family car. I had plunged into a waking dream where scale and measure had become deformed. It was a dream in which my only choice was to accept the marriage of the real