Free Love and Pollywogs from Camp Calamity by Mary Hershey Page B

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:
    1. There is no swimming pool in the dinky town where I live, so if you want to swim you have to go to Lacey, which is twenty-four miles away.
    2. Going to Lacey takes a parent with the time to drive you, not a parent who, if they have time, would rather teach you how to play basketball.
    3. That parent also needs extra money for gas, and extra money for swimming lessons, and extra money for a
lot
of sunscreen to cover two very white-skinned Irish girls.
    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’dnoticed 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