The swimming pool is shaped like a heart. No, wait -- it's an apple. Of course! The poisonous apple Snow White took a bite of that sent her into a coma. Sort of weird, really, when you think about it. Who'd want to swim in a poisonous pool? No one by the look of it. The pool is empty. All that delicious coolness just lying there, sparkling in the late afternoon sun.... Poison or not, alligators or not, I'm hot and I want into that pool. I head straight for the diving board, take as big a bounce as I can off the end and cannonball into the water. Splash! I drift down into the blue coolness, my eyes wide open. Glug, glug, glug. There is only watery sunlight down here, as if the sun was a big yellow china ball that someone smashed into little shards and sprinkled on the blue tile floor. My goggles aren't on tight enough and water seeps inside, so with a little kick off the bottom I drift to the surface. "Hey, you!" A voice booms above me. I grab the lip of the pool. I also grab a mouthful of water, which makes me cough and cough. There is a large pair of hairy feet planted right beside my hand. I look up, my vision all swimmy through goggles full of water -- way up, past a pair of Superman legs, a pair of yellow bathing trunks with palm trees on them, a chest big enough to pitch a tent on, to a face glaring down at me as if I am a toad and the only thing stopping him from squashing me is that he doesn't have his toad-squashing boots on. Then I see the comic book in his hand. It's sopping wet. Excerpted from War at the Snow White Motel by Tim Wynne-Jones All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.