Will tossed his rock into the bottom of the pool. Then he looked in disconsolately. They were waiting for him to stop being unhappy over the waterless pool. He glared.
“I guess he could fill it,” said the girl to Will's brother.
“You can fill it up, Will,” said Dennis. “I'm sorry.” But he wasn't looking at Will. He was looking at his own clothes. They opened a door and went inside.
Will had seen an empty pool. He was conscious that because he was eight, he had only so many things to remember. Older people remembered more things. They insisted it was that way, and now Will thought so too. Dennis was twelve and he was forever remembering--for example, homes they'd been in that hadn't meant anything to Will.
Did you have to close a drain to fill a pool, like in a bathtub? He shook himself. The air was cool and he decided he was glad he had long pants.
He found a faucet between two tiny bushes and turned the hose into the pool. The water thinned into a ribbon as it fell and exploded on the blue tile at the bottom. A gray cat was there, playing with a tennis ball. At one point it lost the ball into the pool. It gaped over the edge, then went into the house--it had its own little cat-door. Will knew about cats. They could get you in trouble. If you cooped them up, they would make sure the adults knew it. Once at the old farm they trapped a cat. Cats weren't supposed to like sugar, but that's what they trapped it with. They put it in the wastebasket that usually held the toys no one played with. The cat was better than the toys because it hated them. The boy with the jaggedy teeth came and said, hey, I used to have me a cat like that. He talked funny when he talked and he was always in trouble but he was happy. Hey, let me see that there cat, the boy said. He tried to sock it one and it bit him in the arm. Then he went to tell the nuns about it and they spanked Will and Dennis. Then Dennis spanked Will again for getting him in trouble. They had to throw the cat away. They threw him out their window and watched him run off across the orange roof.
The pool would take a while to fill, Will observed. He went inside. The kitchen was dark and made out of bricks. Everything hung on the wall; it was like a store. There was a bucket of pears and Will felt his throat move. Pears made him allergic. The refrigerator was yellow and it had pictures maybe the girl had painted, held on by little magnets like ladybugs. Will thought about taking one ladybug to give it to his mother at home. They had a refrigerator as well.
His brother appeared from nowhere. “Want a banana?” he said.
“No,” Will said. “To swim.”
Dennis looked out the back window. A long moment passed as he appeared to be staring at the pool. Then he stooped to talk right in Will's face. “This has to be secret. You can't tell anyone. Do you understand me?”
This was something Will didn't like being asked.
“I mean, if Mother finds out you went swimming,” Dennis said, and stopped with a cloudy sigh.
Will nodded. It made him feel like his bladder was full. He couldn't keep secrets so well. Every time he wasn't going to say something, he did. Dennis knew it, too. Or he knocked over the milk if it was the last glass in the carton. Or even if he waited until last to see the glass kaleidoscope so no one would jostle him, he dropped it anyway--it slipped through his fingers, and the bits of jade and glass and foil soldiers blossomed on the floor. Or he forgot that one day he couldn't eat pears. That was when their mother was brand new. “Allergic to pears!” she cawed, looking at the papers that came with Will from the old farm, and she seemed so aghast that Will doubted himself. But the grains swam on his tongue and crammed in like sugar bees at the back of his throat. Then he threw up so hard he fell off his chair.
“I can't keep secrets,” Will said.
“I know. But you have to,” said Dennis. He shook Will's shoulder kindly, like an adult shaking a fencepost. “Eat what you want,” he said. “We won't get in trouble.”
Will nodded to make him go away. Dennis switched on the TV in the next room and disappeared to wherever he'd come from. Will looked at the TV but it made no sense to him.
The kitchen was dark. Its high rickety shelves went all the way to the ceiling. A collection of tiny crosses was mounted underneath. On the shelves sat plates, all in white, fragile and thin, with china curls just visible to him, and higher, hints of holiday dishes, vases, fragile-handled pitchers, animals made of glass too fine to pick up.
He wondered about food. But it was not his mother's kitchen, and he did not believe Dennis. He did not know the rules of what you could eat and where you would find it.
The cat sat next to its full water bowl and stared at Will with opaque eyes.
Someone banged on the door and said something. Will wandered out; he wasn't sure where the door was. It was in a little room at the end of the living room. When he opened it, a man stood there, dressed in red, with a clipboard and an enormous red, white and blue pen.
“Here to read the meter,” the man said.
“Hah?” said Will. The man was tall and fat. He made Will feel very small.
“The meter,” the man said. He held out a plastic square with some writing on it and a photo. The photo was a picture of the man's own face. “It's in the basement. But I can come back when your parents are here.”
The thing Will was supposed to do was not tell anyone. Did this mean to let the man in or not? He looked behind him but no one was coming to help.
“Sure, come in,” Will said. “I live here,” he added.
“Sure, okay,” said the meter man. He pushed by Will as if he lived there as well. His steps made the whole house creak. He went through the kitchen and opened a door with steps behind it; then he rumbled downstairs like a barrel on legs. Will waited in the kitchen. His stomach disagreed with him. But there weren't other doors that might have been the pantry closet. There were too many drawers and cabinets to count, but he began counting anyway. The wood there shone and smelled like lemon.
In what seemed like a second the man was banging back up the stairs. “Hi,” Will said.
The meter man tipped his cap. “In the basement,” he explained again. “These old houses. That's all I need.”
“Help me find the sugar,” Will said.
The big man in red straightened up and looked at Will.
“Come on,” said Will. “It has to be here somewhere.”
“I reckon it does,” the meter man said. He glanced at Will like he was asking permission. Then he put aside his clipboard and touched along the high shelves until he brought down a canister the color of pennies. He shook the canister and opened the top.
“There you go,” he said.