The Spelvins were on their yearly pilgrimage to the pond. Dr. Spelvin had grown up in Wolfeboro, a town just ten miles away; his elderly mother still lived there. Every July, he packed up his family and dragged them across the country to this cabin, a fixture in the Spelvin clan for four generations. An only child, Dr. Spelvin felt compelled to check in on his mother at least once during the summer. The old woman had diabetes and tended to ignore her symptoms until they became serious.

      Gramma Spelvin refused to come live with them in La Canada. Wacko-Land U.S.A. -- that's what she called California. The place was chock full of weirdos. One day, the hippies, the coloreds and the chinks would take over the whole damn state, provided it didn't fall into the sea first.

      Dr. and Mrs. Spelvin were in Wolfeboro this afternoon with her, no doubt sitting in the kitchen of her old farmhouse, listening to her rant and rave while a multitude of scrungy cats roamed the room, fighting among themselves and filling the musty air with great clouds of fur. At last count, Gramma Spelvin kept sixteen of the loathsome beasts, mean-tempered creatures just itching to scratch out someone's eye.

      Tom, Jeff and Joey had been excused from the excursion, thanks to the twins' allergies. Cat dander turned them into histamine mutants, puffy-eyed, snot-nosed wretches who gasped like fish out of water. Even Joey had to feel sympathy for the twins when they were in the throes of an allergy attack.

      Sometimes Mom and Dad forced Joey to go along with them to Gramma's house, even though the twins didn't have to. But since he had joined them on Sunday and endured a two-hour harangue about how long his hair was, how spotty his face looked, and how comic books rotted the mind, he had been excused today, allowed to stay propped in a beach chair and read the latest issues of the DC Comics line in relative peace.

      "Want to go for a swim, Lovecraft?" It was Jeff, lean and tan in white swimming trunks, a can of Coke in one hand.

      "Nah, that's OK."

      "That's right. Wouldn't want to get any fresh, clean water on your face, would you? You'd rather just cultivate your zits in the shade."

      "Fuck you, Jeff."

      Jeff laughed. "Listen to you. You don't know the first thing about fucking, Lovecraft. Probably never will."

      "Up yours."

      Jeff shouted at the cabin, trusting that his brother would be able to hear him from inside, "Tom! You feel like a swim?"

      Tom appeared on the porch. He held a can of Budweiser, and a fine trace of foam rimmed his lip. "Let me finish this."

      "Dad'll go apeshit if he catches you drinking his beer, Tom," Joey said.

      Tom snickered, took a last pull from the can and crushed it in his fist. "If he asks, I'll tell him you drank it, Pizza Face." He pushed through the porch's screen door and tossed the beer can into a plastic garbage barrel. He trotted up beside his twin and said, "Race you to the raft, bro."

      "You're on, chump." They ran down the pier, unmindful of the loose boards and the potential splinters, and plunged in perfect arcs into the crystal depths of the pond.

      Watching his brothers sluice through the water like blond otters, Joey wondered how he ever came to be born into this family. His father and mother were both people of normal attractiveness, neither a head-turner but still trim and unwrinkled despite the rigors of middle age. Jeff and Tom were almost otherworldly creatures, like fairy princes. Their teeth were white and straight. Their skin never erupted in acne. With a minimum of exercise, they kept their bodies lean and muscled.

      By comparison, Joey felt like a troll-child left on the doorstep, a changeling with a dark destiny to fulfill.

      He wriggled his toes as a light breeze tickled them. He reached down and scratched the webbing between the big and second toes of his left foot.

      Jeff and Tom called him "Lovecraft" because of that weird webbing. When Joey was an impressionable ten-year-old, Jeff had given him a copy of The Shadow Over Innsmouth by horror master H.P. Lovecraft. It told the tale of the surviving member of an old New England family who discovers that his forebears were amphibious monsters and that he, too, is doomed to grow webbed hands and feet before returning to the sea.

      By itself, the story scared the piss out of Joey. He felt even worse when Jeff pointed to the excess flaps of skin between Joey's toes and informed him that, even though Mom and Dad were keeping quiet about it, Joey was undergoing the same hideous metamorphosis as Lovecraft's protagonist. Tom confirmed the story but told Joey that their parents would deny any knowledge of it.

      It took Joey almost six months to get over the fear of devolving into some batrachian horror. That whole summer, he refused to go swimming, afraid he would find the pond too appealing and settle down permanently on the muddy bottom like an oversized bullfrog.

      He eventually wised up. And he eventually began to hate his brothers.

      The hate built up slowly. As a very young kid, he idolized the twins, wishing nothing more than to be just like them. Jeff and Tom tolerated him, considering him an odd but essentially harmless pest. But as the three of them began to wrestle with puberty, their squabbling took on a nastier tone. The twins, with their good looks and their good grades and their outgoing personalities, began to see Joey as a genuine liability, an ugly, creepy kid who got off on comic books, horror movies and cheapo paperbacks. As their popularity at school became more important to them, Jeff and Tom made it clear they considered Joey a family embarassment best locked away in an attic.

      Joey didn't appreciate that attitude, and he let the twins know it. Now, their animosity was out in the open, hidden only when parental pressure demanded it.

      Finished with Teen Titans, Joey wandered into the cabin and prepared a huge lunch for himself. He wasn't too keen on this back-to-nature crap, but life on the pond did have its advantages. Mom and Dad were a lot more lax in their strictures against junk food while at the cabin. They forgot most of their talk about good nutrition and stocked the larder with cold cuts, barbecue potato chips, Twinkies, Mountain Dew, boxed macaroni and cheese, and beer nuts. Joey fixed himself a bologna and Swiss sandwich with gobs of spicy mustard, washing it down with a big glass of Dr. Pepper. For dessert, he helped himself to four Twinkies.

      In his bedroom, he found the copy of Rosemary's Baby he'd been meaning to read, then headed back outside. While repositioning the chair to get it out of the sunshine, he saw Tom and Jeff standing on the diving raft, about fifty yards from shore. An aluminum rowboat bobbed next to the raft.

      Sheila Burns sat in the rowboat, looking cool and comfortable in a white bikini.

      Her father owned a cabin on the opposite shore of Brown's Pond. Henry Burns, a widowed schoolteacher, brought his three sons and two daughters to the pond for a month every year, renting his cabin during the remainder of the summer. Their weeks often coincided with the Spelvins' visits. Over the years, the children played together, taught themselves how to water ski and invited one another over for grilled hamburgers and hot dogs.

      Sheila was the only offspring at the pond with her father this year. Three siblings were in college and couldn't afford to spend a month out in the sticks when they could earn tuition money back at home. Another Burns child was attending summer school and only appeared at the pond on weekends. Fifteen-year-old Sheila had the run of the place.

      Joey watched her chat with the twins. Luxuriant brown hair framed her foxlike face. Thanks to two weeks of lying in the sun, her skin was now the color of caramels. Joey wondered whether she would taste of butterscotch if he ran his tongue down her bare arm.

      Her figure was developing nicely, considerably more womanly than last year. A small roll of lingering baby fat still overlapped the top of her bikini bottom as she sat in the boat.

      Tom said something, and Sheila laughed, a clear, sweet note that rang across the pond.

      For not the first time during the vacation, Joey missed Alison. He had wanted to stay behind in California to work on a sequel to Space Maggots with her. His parents had vetoed that idea. Now he couldn't wait to see her again. The phone calls and postcards helped, but it wasn't the same as being there.

      Sheila Burns caught sight of Joey and waved. "Hi, Joey!" she shouted. Even at this distance, Joey could see his brothers scowl, unhappy at being interrupted.

      There were times, perhaps periods of delusion, when Joey actually thought he might stand a chance of dating Sheila someday. Unlike a lot of the kids around Brown's Pond, she always spoke to him and never made him feel like a complete spastic. There had even been times when she seemed to be flirting with him.

      "C'mon in!" she called. "We can all row out to the swing!"

      Joey was not particularly keen on visiting the rope swing. Purported to be a barrel of laughs, the swing hung from the branch of a stout pine tree on the pond's eastern shore. One grabbed ahold of it while standing on the lip of a clay ledge and then kicked off into space, letting go to drop into the pond. Joey, however, didn't have enough strength in his arms to hang on long enough to reach the deepest part and usually fell before clearing the rocks that lurked beneath the surface. The last time he "played" on the swing, Joey had come away with a gash of his knee that required six stitches.

      Still, he was not about to pass up this invitation. He could beg off using the swing somehow. What mattered was that Sheila Burns wanted his company, even though Tom and Jeff would also be along for the ride.

      Feeling suddenly ashamed of his pale skin and thin, hairless chest, Joey doffed his tee shirt and walked to the end of the pier. He gingerly dunked a toe and knew instantly that the water was at least ten degrees colder than he preferred. Unless he wanted to lose face, though, there was nothing to do but plunge in. Gritting his teeth, he cannonballed off the pier and started swimming toward the raft.

      Although the twins had learned to cut through the water like sleek mammals, Joey's technique more resembled that of a Great White in a feeding frenzy. Arms and legs thrashing wildly, he created great gouts of splashing water while moving ahead at an astonishingly slow rate. With a tendency to list to the left, he also needed to stop every so often to make certain he was still heading for his intended target.

      Now, treading water and checking whether his trajectory still intersected with the raft, Joey saw that Jeff and Tom had already joined Sheila in the boat. Jeff manned the oars, and Tom called to him, "Sheila's got to be back by three. Hurry up, Joey!"

      "I'm hurrying!" He flopped over and began his own semi-coordinated version of the backstroke.

      When he stopped again, panting from exertion, he saw he had passed the raft. The rowboat had moved a good ten yards from its original position.

      "Hey, wait up, will you?"

      At the helm, Jeff dipped an oar into the water and grinned. "We haven't got all day, little brother!"

      Joey dived and swam underwater, where he was able to make better time. When he surfaced, the rowboat had moved even farther away.

      He heard Sheila say, with uncertainty in her voice, "Shouldn't we wait for him?"

      "He'll catch up," Tom said. "The exercise will do him good."

      Those bastards. They wanted Sheila all to themselves. Jeff would keep slowly rowing farther and farther away, until Joey could never catch up. Sheila might protest once more, but she would not dare confront the twins openly.

      Joey was damned if he was going to give up. He splashed furiously through the water, kicking with all his might, pulling himself forward with his scrawny arms. He hoped he was heading in the right direction but did not stop to check.

      When the first cramp hit him, the pain was strong enough to make him cry out. Pond water rushed into his nose and mouth. He gagged and clutched his side.

      He could tell he was only yards from the boat. But Jeff, seeing him stop, pulled lightly at the oars. The boat drifted toward the middle of the pond.

      "Stop!" Joey yelled, trying to tread water. Another cramp struck, and his head disappeared beneath the waters.

      Joey thrashed desperately back to the surface and dragged himself toward the boat, fighting the pain that wanted to drag him down. It hurt to breathe, and he hiccupped fluid from his stomach.

      He bumped into something hard and metallic. The boat! Thank God, he'd made it to the boat.

      Sobbing for air, Joey reached up to grab onto the side. He shook water out of his eyes and started to say something.

      But before the words were out of Joey's mouth, Jeff yanked at the oars. Whether it happened through carelessness or maliciousness, Joey would never know for certain, but the flat of one oar cracked into the back of his skull.

      The world flashed bright for one instant before Joey slipped underwater and into darkness.