Love and Pollywogs from Camp Calamity by Mary Hershey

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 Kaylakind 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