Love and Pollywogs from Camp Calamity (9 page)

He shrugged. “Not so bad, I guess.”

“Well, are the boys being mean to you? If they are, you need to tell Frank. He’ll make them stop.”

“I don’t mind the lads,” he said. “They’re all right. They like to kid around. Messed with my covers so I could hardly find me sheets last night!”

“Oh! You got short-sheeted! That’s not too bad, I guess. Least they didn’t try to freeze your underpants.”

“The worst is that Matt is giving me the devil for wanting to talk to you girls. I’ll be paying pretty later for sitting here with all of ya. Jeb will put the squeals on me for sure.”

“Should we move?”

“I can take it,” he said, shrugging.

Nit came rushing back into the room, with a real smile on her face. She gave Donal a squeeze around the shoulders, then pulled out a big spiral notebook and opened it to a fresh page.

“Take your seats, girls and boys!” Ms. Hawkins said. “Gypsy won’t come out until you do.”

That was the magic word. Twenty-three kids dropped like bricks into their seats and folded their hands. Ms. Hawkins stepped into a little room behind the classroom, and we could hear her talking to the bird.

When she came back out, the falcon was sitting on her shoulder, looking around at us with bright, fierce eyes. “Gypsy came to us through a peregrine falcon recovery team in the Rockies. She’s not a native Texan,” Ms. Hawkins said with a smile.

“Ahhh, it’s a
girl?
Are you sure?” Bryce asked. Some of the boys groaned.

“Girls
rule!”
the Issys shouted.

Ms. Hawkins nodded. “Does anyone know which grows bigger—the males or the females?”

Nit looked around to see if anyone had their hand
raised. No one did, so she raised hers about a quarter of the way. She hates to be the class know-it-all.

“Yes!” Ms. Hawkins said, giving her a nice smile. “And your name is?”

“I’m Trinity Finch. And the female peregrines get bigger.”

“Exactly right! Trinity, why don’t you come up here?”

Nit was up like a flash.

“Put your arm out next to mine, and stand real still. Gypsy might come to you.” Ms. Hawkins laid a towel over Nit’s arm.

We all held our breath. I hoped she would! If that bird would take a shine to anyone in the room, it would be Nit.

Gypsy cocked her head a minute, studying Nit, then stuck her long talons out and stepped over onto Nit’s arm.

Ms. Hawkins turned Nit around slowly so she was facing us. She looked like she’d just died, gone to heaven, and found out it was Free Cupcake Day.

“Do you let her outside to fly?” Jeb asked.

“Gypsy has a large aviary of her own out back. She’ll need to live in captivity. She’s got a bad wing and would never be able to feed or protect herself. Can anyone tell me what peregrine falcons eat?”

“Falcon Chow?” Drew suggested with a giggle. All the Kayla squad cracked up at that.

“No—other guesses?” Ms. Hawkins asked.

“Armadillos?”

“Steak?”

“Rabbits?”

“Are they vegetarian?” Becca asked.

“No, no, no, and definitely not,” Ms. Hawkins answered with a laugh.

“They eat mostly medium-sized birds,” Nit said, in the softest voice. “But sometimes fish and small mammals. It depends on where they live.”

“Yes!” Ms. Hawkins said, giving Nit a pleased look. “And sometimes they even eat reptiles and insects.”

Gypsy started climbing up Nit’s arm until she was on her shoulder. I bit my lip, nervous. Then Gypsy took a final leap and perched on Nit’s head. Which thankfully was covered by her Notre Dame baseball cap.

We all gasped.

“Watch out, Nit!” Donal warned. “You being bones and not much more, Gypsy could fly you right out the window there!”

“She’s fine, don’t worry.” Ms. Hawkins stepped back and looked at the two of them. “My goodness, Trinity. I’ve never seen her do that with a camper before! She likes you for her perch. Would you like to help me feed her lunch later?”

Nit’s smile just didn’t get any bigger than that.

•   •   •

Sometimes it seems like all the problems that my dad caused by going off to prison will never end. Like the one about me not knowing how to swim. At
all
. Because:

Which all added up to me being nearly eleven years old and not knowing how to swim. I could dog-paddle and do handstands, but that was all. So far it was just frustrating. But now that feeling was getting ready to graduate to Super Embarrassing.

Mr. Carey Bucko, the swim teacher, came to Ms. Hawkins’s class as we were getting near the end. I crossed all my fingers under the table hard as I could that he was coming to tell us that the lake had completely dried up overnight and there’d be no swimming all week. Or maybe that he’d decided he was going to teach us archery all week instead.

No such luck.

“Hey, kids!” he said. “Sorry to interrupt you before you’re done, but I need to know what equipment to take down to the lake.” He gave Ms. Hawkins a big smile, like he wasn’t really sorry about interrupting her class at all. I’d
noticed he’d taken the huff-into-your-hand breath test before he came in. He might be in love with her, but now was not the time to be thinking about that!

“So,” he said, clapping his hands. “There are twenty-five of you, and I’m taking the girls first—”

“There are thirteen of us!” Kayla said, standing up. After Gypsy and Ms. Hawkins had fallen in love with Nit, Kayla wanted her spotlight back.

“Great, thanks!” Mr. Bucko said.

“We have a pool at home,” she butted in, “and I’ve been swimming since I was a baby. Almost everyone here has been to my house for a pool party before,” she said, looking around.

Yeah, everyone but me, I know!

“Excellent! Okay, girls, any new swimmers?” he asked, looking around.

My face burned and I thought it might start shooting sparks. Speak up, Effie! This is your free lesson calling!

“Do we have anyone who doesn’t know
how
to swim?” he asked.

N-O-B-O-D-Y raised their hand.

And the way he said “doesn’t know
how”
made it impossible for me to admit it. Made me feel like a freak, and different from all the other kids. Which I knew I was, and which I hated a lot. And then Mr. Bucko moved on so fast that I didn’t have enough time to think it through.

“Well, terrific, then!” he said. “I’ve got a whole class full of pros. We’re going to have a great week together.
We’ll play some water polo, run some relays, and work on our diving out at the platform. That is, if I can ever pull you away from Ms. Hawkins,” he said with a laugh. “Girls, when you’re done, go suit up and I’ll see you at the dock! Boys, I’ll see you after that.”

All my big, rosy, sunshiny dreams of what camp would be like—

Camp Dying for It to Arrive

Camp Get Away from Bosszilla

Camp Be Like Everyone Else

Camp Me and My 2BFF

—had now just officially turned into CAMP CALAMITY!

S
ince I was now officially living a thousand feet above sea level instead of at my regular ground level, my thinking was getting cloudy. Because by the time I got my bathing suit and flip-flops on, I’d begun to convince myself that maybe I could fake it. I’m good at faking things. I can fake a fever and fake a smile, and I once even faked my grandpa’s ashes, but that is another story. Maybe nobody in the “pro” swimming class would notice that I couldn’t actually swim. Maybe in water polo I could be the kid on the team who stands in the shallow end and throws the ball. How hard could that be?

And maybe I could find out what day was going to be Diving off the Scary Platform Day and think of the most excellent reason ever that I had to skip it. But something that wouldn’t make me look like a big Kayla
kind of wuss. Like maybe one of Ms. Hawkins’s armadillos would accidentally get loose and I could catch it. I know they don’t run very fast, because they get hit by cars a lot.

I took a long time putting on a lot of sunscreen before we left the cabin. Nit was taking a long time too. She’s very pale, like me. Cricket took some of the girls ahead and Sister stayed back with me, Nit, Kimber, and Georgia, who were finishing postcards for their parents before the mail went out. Sister had put on shorts and a tank top but said she wasn’t going swimming. She was going as a backup adult, in case Mr. Bucko needed a hand. I noticed right off that she had very muscley legs. I wondered if she has one of those kickboxing DVDs like Mrs. Triboni has for building your thighs.

As we all walked the path to the lake, I gave myself the biggest pep talk of my life. I’d been through a lot tougher things than this. I was a Maloney dame, like Mom said. I could do this. What if I already knew how to swim and I just didn’t know it?

Lake Cachumo looked just like I’d imagined it would. Only about ten times
bigger!
When Maxey went to camp, she sent me a postcard of it. The water in the picture was the prettiest greeny blue color, and it had big tall trees all around it. It looked that way now. Except in person, it looked way, way
deeper
. I started to sweat, but since I had so much sunscreen on, it got all plugged up under my skin. By the time we got down to the water, I was a big soggy sponge that needed a good wringing out.

Mr. Bucko blew his whistle and told us all to sit down on the dock so he could talk to us first about water safety.

“Great idea!” I shouted, my nerves like a herd of mean red ants under my skin. “I have a lot of questions.”

Next to me, Kayla made a quiet kissing noise to let me know she thought I was trying to be teacher’s pet. Missy and Sissy giggled. Aurora missed the whole thing because she was still dancing around on one foot trying to get her basketball tennies off without unlacing them.

I smoothed down my brand-new blue polka-dot bathing suit, which I liked very much. It had come with free matching goggles. It was my first new one. Usually I get Maxey’s hand-me-downs. I hoped it was a good floaty one.

Mr. Bucko looked up from his clipboard. “And you’re—? I want to make sure I learn all your names by the end of our first session today.”

“Effie Maloney,” I said. Uh-oh. So much for my plan of going unnoticed.

“Any relationship to Maxey Maloney?” he asked, marking something down on his clipboard. Probably
Effie Maloney: Pro Swimmer
.

“She’s my sister,” I said.

“Great! Nice girl. I ran into her at Mess the other night and she reminded me that she was a camp alumna. But she didn’t mention that her little sister was here! Now, when Maxey came to us, she couldn’t swim a lick.
I remember it took me a while to get her to even put her face in the water. But by the end of the week, she’d nearly grown gills. Was she the one who taught you to swim, Effie, or did you take lessons?”

I licked my lips. “Um, wull—she taught me how to do a handstand underwater.”

“So she taught you how to swim?” he said.

“No,” I said.

“Ah, you took lessons, then—great! Well, when I’m done talking about basic safety, if you have any more questions, you just fire away, okay?”

“Thank you, sir.” I was pretty sure I hadn’t lied about anything, but Mr. Bucko had ended up thinking something that wasn’t true. Just then would have been a very excellent time to clear that up.

Except I didn’t. Because nothing about this whole mess would get me any closer to becoming Outstanding Camper of the Week. And with Kayla sitting less than six inches away from me, no way was I going to admit that I couldn’t swim. I would never hear the end of it.

Mr. Bucko’s safety talk only lasted seven minutes, according to my watch, which I kept staring at, praying that 11:45 would come record fast and we’d get called for chow. I doubted I could keep him answering questions for fifty-three more minutes.

My arm shot up anyway. “Mr. Bucko! According to our camp handbook, there are sixty-three different kinds of snake species here. Can any of them swim? I mean, is
there any chance there might be some snakes that might want to get in the lake with us?”

“Can’t say that I’ve ever seen a snake in the water,” he said. “But great question for Ms. Hawkins’s class tomorrow.” He got to his feet. “Okay, then! Ready for a swim?”

My hand shot up again. “Mr. Bucko! Mr. Bucko!”

Kayla let out a big gusty sigh and gave me a dirty look. Aurora shot her an even dirtier warning one back.

“Yes, Effie?”

“Have you ever noticed that kids are less floaty swimming in a lake that is a thousand feet above sea level—like here? Has that ever been a problem for any of your campers?”

He laughed. “Can’t say that I’ve ever noticed that. Interesting question! Okay, listen up, girls! I want to do a couple of things today. First off, I’m going to teach you a fun kick that might be new to a number of you. Secondly, while the group is practicing that over here, I’m going to take each of you one at a time over on this side of the dock so I can test your swimming. I probably won’t be able to get to you all today, but we can finish up tomorrow. I know a lot of you are going to want to swim out to the platform this week, and no one goes past the buoys until I’ve cleared them. Everyone got that?”