My Extra Best Friend (4 page)

I pick up the suit. Blue top in one hand. Blue bottoms in the other. “It’s the one I showed Mom
at the mall,” I whisper to George. “The one the mannequin was wearing. She bought it after all!”

I hug the suit, thinking this might be my best day ever. Even better than that time me, Jenna, and Stacey found six dollars on the sidewalk and split it three ways.

I close my suitcase and turn around. “I got a new suit!” I cry, waving it for everyone to see.

Stacey looks over. “Nice!”

“Let
me
see.” Brooke peeks out from behind the beach towel curtain and studies my new suit like a math test. “Not bad,” she finally says.

“Ooo…let me get a picture!” Meeka says, reaching for her camera.

I hold up the suit and do my best pose.

Click!

“Now one with Jolene…” Meeka says, shooing me next to her.

Click!

“And one with Jenna…”

Click! Click!

Randi comes out of the bathroom wearing a black one-piece and cutoffs. She dives in for the next shot.

Jenna’s watch starts beeping again. “Two minute warning!” she tells us. Then she pulls off her shorts and top because she’s already wearing her swimsuit underneath. Jenna likes to be prepared.

I hurry to the bathroom.

Close the door.

Take off my clothes.

Pull on the new suit.

Then I turn and study myself in the long mirror that’s hanging behind the door.

Arms.

Legs.

Back.

Belly button.

I smile at my reflection. “You look killer cute,” I say.

Someone pounds on the door. “Hurry, Ida!” Stacey calls out. “Jenna says it’s time to go!”

I open the door, ditch my clothes, grab my beach towel, and head out with Stacey. We fly down the path like chickadees.

Giggling, like girls.

Hand in hand, like best friends.

The beach is buzzing with campers and counselors when we get there a few minutes later. I don’t know how many, exactly, but it looks like enough to fill a lunchroom. Some are goofing around in the sand, but most are clumped along a low stone wall that separates the grassy lawn from the beach.

Rusty, Joey, Quinn, and Tom are there, with an older boy. His hair is so red, it’s orange. It flops across his face. Orange stubble glints on his chin like cookie sprinkles. He’s wearing a staff T-shirt like Alex’s.

“
Dah
-dum…!
Dah
-dum…!
Dah
-dum…!” Rusty chants as he and the other three race toward us, raising their fists like champions. “We’re real sharks now!” Green bands dangle from their wrists.
They must have already passed their swim test.

“Was it hard?” I ask. “The swim test?”

“Nope,” Quinn replies. “Easy cheesy. You’ll do great!” He gives me a big smile.

Normally, I would give him a big smile back. Then I would give Stacey or Jenna a secret glance, because they both know I like him.

But that was before I found out he drew a heart around my name on his burping basketball. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do when a boy likes me back. They never teach you that kind of stuff at school.

I glance away and pretend to be very interested in Joey Carpenter. He’s crooking his arm like a shark fin and gnashing his teeth at Brooke.

Brooke swats him away. “Juvenile,” she snips.

Tom does a sly grin. “That’s
pup
to you.”

Brooke squints at Tom.
“Pup?”

Tom nods. “Young sharks. They’re called
pups
.” He tucks his hands under his chin and pants like a dog. The other boys join in, panting and howling at the bright blue sky.

Brooke gives them a snooty smirk. “I know a better name for
young sharks
.”

“What?” Stacey asks.

Brooke sizes up the boys.
“Dumb dorks.”
Then she turns away and scans the beach. “I’m only interested in
hawks
anyway. Do you see them? The girls, I mean. From Hawk cabin?”

“The place is crawling with girls,” Joey says, dropping his paws. “Connor told us they outnumber guys two to one this week.”

“Who’s Connor?” Randi asks.

“Our counselor.” Quinn points at the boy with the floppy orange hair. “He’s awesome.”

Rusty bobs his head. “We don’t have to shower all week if we don’t want to.”

“
And
he’s not gonna mommy us about changing our underwear either,” Joey adds.

I wrinkle my nose.

All the girls do.

“That’s totally unsanitary,” Jenna says.

Rusty shrugs. “Keeps the girls away.” Then he scratches his armpit and gives it a sniff.

“Not to mention the Meadowlark Monster,” Tom adds. He does that sly grin again.

Meeka’s eyes go wide. “Monster?”

Tom nods. “He lives in the woods.”

“Eats campers for dessert,” Joey adds. “The sweeter, the better. Connor told us.”

Joey eyes up Brooke’s bare shoulder.

Then he
licks
it.

Brooke howls and wipes away the lick germs. Then she practically shoves Joey off his feet.

“No worries, Brooke,” Joey says. “You’re not nearly sweet enough for
any
monster.”

Jenna crosses her arms. “If there were a monster here, I would know about it.”

Quinn shrugs. “Maybe he just moved to town.”

“That makes sense,” Tom chimes in. “
People
move all the time. Why not monsters?”

“Because monsters aren’t
real,
” Jenna says.

“Oh yeah?” Rusty replies. He turns toward their counselor. “Hey, Connor!” he shouts.

Connor looks up from talking with some other campers.

“The monster story’s true, right?”

Connor grins. Gives Rusty a thumbs-up.

“See?” Rusty says, turning back to us. “Counselors don’t lie. If Connor says the Meadowlark Monster is real, it must be true.”

A lifeguard on the dock blows his whistle.
Campers trudge out of the water. Others tiptoe in.

Brooke suddenly gasps and points at some soggy girls. “That’s
them
!” she squeals. “The Hawks!”

Brooke hops off the stone wall and hurries across the beach.

“C’mon,” Jenna says to the rest of us. “If we don’t take the test, they’ll stick us with the
tadpoles.
”

I nudge in next to Stacey as we leave the boys behind. “Do you think there’s really a monster here?” I whisper to her.

Stacey thinks this through. “Maybe. Maybe not. Sometimes older kids—even grown-ups—make stuff up.”

I nod, thinking of the stories my dad has told me. Once, he convinced me and Elizabeth that there were fairies living under my porch. We’d leave them shiny beads and pretty pebbles. They’d leave us notes written in curly cursive. So tiny we had to use a magnifying glass to read them. Then, one day, we found one of the tiny notes on my dad’s desk.

We didn’t stop believing in fairies. We just stopped believing they lived under my porch.

“Maybe we should skip showering too, just to be safe.” I give my armpit a little sniff.

“It wouldn’t help,” Stacey replies, doing a big, sparkly smile. “We’d still be too sweet!”

I nod. “Inside and out.”

Brooke is talking with two of the Hawk girls when we catch up to her. One is short and curvy, with dark hair that curls like ribbon on a birthday present. The other girl is tall and stick-straight, from her long blond hair to her tan toes.

“It’s totally easy,” the short one says to Brooke as she dries off and pulls on a hoodie. “You’d have to be an idiot to fail.” Something chirps in her pocket. She reaches in quickly and turns off a cell phone.

“You better silence that thing,” the tall girl says, combing her wet hair with her skinny fingers. “I’m not sharing mine if they take yours away.”

The short girl pushes a button on her phone and hides it again. She looks at us. “Pretend you didn’t see that, kay-o?” She smiles like we’re her new best friends. “I’m Nat, by the way.”

“And
I
am Emillie,” the tall girl announces. “Two
l
’s, no
y
.”

Brooke’s face goes all impressed. “I’m
Brooke,
”
she says. “Two
o
’s, no
c
. We should definitely hang out.”

Emillie snickers. Then she gives the rest of us the once-over. “Which cabin are you
girls
in?” She says
girls
like it’s spelled
b-a-b-i-e-s
.

“We’re Chickadees!” Stacey replies.

Emillie does the snicker again. She and Nat exchange glances. “Thought so,” they singsong together.

Nat slips a stretchy band off her wrist and pulls her damp curls into a stubby ponytail. “They always put the little kids in Chickadee.”

Emillie nods in agreement. “How old are you
chicks
anyway?”

“Ten,” Randi says.

Brooke gives Randi the elbow. “Almost
eleven,
” she adds.

Emillie laughs lightly and reaches for a cover-up. “Practically out of training pants,” I hear her mumble.

Nat wraps a towel around her waist and slips her sandy feet into a pair of flip-flops. “Catch you
chicks
later…kay-o?”

“Kay-o!” Brooke replies, waving excitedly as
Nat and Emillie walk away. She does a bright sigh. “Weren’t they nice? So mature.”

“Uh-huh,” I say, watching as Nat and Emillie glance back, whispering and giggling. “
Real
nice.
Very
mature.”

“I remember those two from last year,” Jenna grumbles. “Don’t get mixed up with them, Brooke. They’re trouble.”

“Don’t be such a worrywart, Jenna,” Brooke says, running her fingers through her ponytail.

Alex hurries up to us. “Good news, girls!” she says. “Liz is here! Her parents are getting her registered, then I’ll take her to the cabin.”

Jenna steps up. “But if she doesn’t come right now, she’ll miss the swim test.”

“She doesn’t want to take it,” Alex replies. “Liz has already decided to stay in the shallow end.”

“
Decided
to?” Jolene says. “You mean she
can
swim, but won’t?”

Alex shrugs. “I guess.”

“Huh,” Randi says. “What kind of kid wants to be a tadpole when she could be a shark?”

“The kind with feathers,” Brooke says, still running her fingers through her ponytail. “As
in chick
en,
not chick
adee
.” She snickers just like Emillie did. Then strains to catch another glimpse of her and Nat.

“What about Cee Cee?” I ask. “Is she here too?”

Alex shakes her head. “Liz’s parents told me she can’t come. She broke her arm last week and may need surgery to fix it.”

“Ouch,” Meeka says.

“Bummer,” Randi adds.

“Darn,” Brooke chimes in. “Just when I was looking forward to meeting alphabet girl.”

I frown. “So that means Liz came to camp without a friend?”

Alex gives me a nod. “She knew you’d be here, so she decided to give it a try.”

I blink, surprised. “But she doesn’t know me.”

Alex shrugs again. “It seems like she does.”

A whistle blows. “Your turn!” the lifeguard on the dock shouts to us.

Beach towels and cover-ups fall to the sand. Everyone takes off for the water. Alex heads back to the cabin. But I hesitate, thinking.
She must have me confused with someone else
.
I don’t know any girl named Liz.

The lifeguard blows his whistle again. He points at me. “Are you taking the test?”

Everyone turns, looking.

I drop my towel, kick off my flip-flops, and hurry across the sand. But it’s deep, so I stumble. The next thing I know, I’m on all fours like a baboon with my blue bikini butt sticking up in the air.

“I see London!” Rusty shouts.

“I see France!” Joey chimes in.

“I see Ida’s underpants!” they sing together.

The beach explodes with laughter.

Quickly, I take off for the lake again. The other girls are inching in, but I plow past them, not caring that it feels fives degrees warmer than ice.

All I care about right now is disappearing.

I plug my nose and dunk.

I stay under until my lungs burn. Until I’m sure all the laughing has stopped.

When I finally pop up, the other girls are at the rope that divides the shallow area from the deeper water. I swim-walk toward them as fast as I can, catching my breath the whole way.

“I want you to swim the length of the rope,”
the lifeguard on the dock tells us. “Do the crawl on the way down. Then back float here, to me.”

Everyone starts in. I’m an okay crawler, but I’m still out of breath from dunking.

The boys are cheering and shouting out names from the shore, like we’re racing. Only no one is shouting my name because I’m in last place. The more I try to catch up, the more I struggle with my stroke. Before long, the other girls are back floating toward me.

“Faster, Ida!” Jenna says as she glides past me. “You’re getting left behind!”

I glance at the lifeguard.

He studies me for a moment. Then he makes a mark on his clipboard.

Calm down,
I tell myself, crawling as fast as I can.
Everyone thinks the test is easy, so stop making it look so hard.

I get to the end and start back floating toward the dock. But the faster I go, the more I bump into the rope, which is covered with slimy weeds. Plus, each time I take a stroke, my swimsuit top creeps a little closer to my chin.
What if it’s around my neck when I get to the dock? What if everyone laughs again?

I stop.

Flick a weed off my hand.

Tug my top down.

Glance at the lifeguard.

He frowns and makes another mark on his clipboard.

“Have a nice
trip
?” Brooke asks, shivering, when I finally finish.

I don’t answer. My teeth are chattering too much. Partly because I’m cold. Partly because I know I’m flunking this test.

“Now I want you to swim out until you can’t touch bottom,” the lifeguard says. “When I say ‘Go,’ tread water for two minutes.”

“You can do this,” Jenna says as we duck under the rope and swim out a few feet. “Tom can tread water for
thirty
minutes. His arms and legs are way shorter and skinnier than yours.”