It was during those careless, worry-free days of childhood, when you can think of nothing worse than the boy you like discovering your feelings for him, that I first encountered Death. We were traveling eastward along the great rolling cement path we call Interstate 80. My brother and sister and I were so excited as we peered out the windows of the car at the flashing lights and giant marquis. Reno!! We were spending the night in Reno!

We checked into the Bonanza Inn that afternoon. It was one of those muggy, gray days in late autumn, so my brother, sister, and I went downstairs from our second-story room to the hotel pool. We were just blocks away from the famous Circus Circus, and the anticipation of the evening’s excursion to that tower of wonder was almost too much to bear. Trying to relax, I floated on my back in the pool, shutting my eyes so that my only sensations were of the soothing, rippling water and the rhythmic motors of passing cars on the street. My sister was sun-bathing her already nicely tanned body next to the pool. Jen was always more tan than me. Try though I might, I could do no more than to cook to a nice shade of pink, never tan. My brother was like me in that respect; he was as white as a sheet. But that was the end of our similarity as far as I could see. Wayne was also nearly as thin as a sheet, very tall and somewhat uncoordinated. And he was a boy. An older brother kind of boy, to be avoided.

There was nothing relaxing or calming about my brother that day. He was a bundle of energy and excitement, unable to keep still. Playfully, noisily, he splashed about in the pool, and I tried to tune out his frequent disruptions of my tranquillity. I floated along, eyes closed, so that I was completely unaware of the fact that Wayne had begun to practice his backstroke, his long arms pumping him backwards in laps across the pool. I continued to drift, and he continued to swim, and, inevitably, we collided. My floating had taken me directly into his path, and before I was aware that I was in his way, his powerful stroke had propelled him through the water and partially over my body. I was pushed down beneath the surface, where I was imprisoned by my brother’s body, he having frozen in panic when he realized he’d hit me. Flailing my arms and legs, struggling under the water, I suddenly realized my senses had become sharpened, galvanized by the adrenaline rush through my body that was screaming for me to take action. For a moment, time seemed to freeze, and I observed my surroundings with detachment. I could taste the chlorine water in my mouth, it’s bitter aftertaste, smell it in my nostrils that had filled with fluid. I could hear my own heart pounding rapidly in my ears, feel the pressure of the water on my ear drums. My eyes were stinging from the chlorine, and all I could see was the water around me, a pale blue from the color of the pool interior, and my brother above me, his smooth white skin showing the blue veins underneath. Then, as quickly as my mind had become unattached to my body, it was drawn back in, and I was no longer a passive observer. I was choking, sucking in water in my panic, hitting and clawing at Wayne to get out from under him. Finally, after what seemed like an endless struggle, I fought my way to the surface, spluttering and choking and feeling the chlorine I’d swallowed already beginning to spoil my lunch. I floundered to the edge of the pool, one pale trembling hand clinging to the cement rim, the other over my mouth as I coughed and half-gagged, trying to empty my lungs of the awful chlorinated water. I was gripped by mind-numbing shivers that shook my entire body. When I stopped coughing, I realized there was blood on my hand, bright vulgar red against my bluish-white water-wrinkled skin. It was then that I began to cry, warm tears seeping out of the corners of my bloodshot eyes, mixing with the hated pool water. Jen had run up the cement stairs to get Mom, and with tremendous relief I let my mother help me out of the pool and wrap me in a fuzzy, warm white towel and hug me. Weak and exhausted, I sat on a lounge chair, trembling, knowing I had just come closer to Death than ever before in my pre-teen life, and decided I didn’t not want to glimpse his ugly face again for a very long time.