LITMIR.BIZ

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again, reminding me that she’ll protect me and there’s nothing to worry about.

      My sister and I pull off our shoes and socks and race across the sharp gravel toward the beach. Lauren runs ahead of me, slowing only to toss back the long lacy vines of the weeping willow where our parents first kissed. They came here on their first “official” date.

      Lauren and I fill our pockets with shiny rocks, and stand knee-high in the lake eating barbecue potato chips until Mom yells at us for ruining our appetites.

      Minutes later, I sit on a rock with my feet in the water. Mrs. Wiggins lies in the cold sand nearby, panting hard, the stick beside her. “Please, Jesus,” I whisper to my picture of the guy with a halo sitting on the back of a dinosaur, “watch over Mrs. Wiggins.”

      Creepy Frank Sinatra sings “Strangers in the Night” on the portable radio Mom placed on the tablecloth, and Dad scoops her up, dancing her to the water’s edge. They walk up the beach hand-in-hand, while Lauren makes drippy sand towers for her sandcastle, and I draw.

      Lauren and I eat lunch while they’re gone. There’s no time to waste when you have to wait thirty minutes before going in the water.

      Not that I’m going in.

      Not that I couldn’t if I wanted to.

      Some animals have super-duper hearing. So do I. I try to ignore my parents’ conversation about me. I try to pretend I don’t hear them say that I’ll need “special help” in school if things don’t change. I try not to listen when they say I should see a therapist.

      “Stop talking!” I shout, but no one notices except Lauren who yells, “You’ll get cramps!” when I stomp into the lake.

      I don’t need a therapist, or special help. All I need is to be left alone. In my own room.

      The cold water startles me at first, but I swim out quickly then turn around to face the shore, kicking my feet to keep afloat. The sun is high and hot and dries my shoulders and face instantly. Mom and Dad are back; they sit with Mrs. Wiggins on the sand, looking toward me. Lauren dances with her new pink umbrella.

      The water feels good.

      I count fifty strokes, divide it by half, swim twenty-five more, cut that in half, and break off midstroke. I was the best at long division; good at making decimals out of remainders too, even if I was sent to the office twice in May for “an overactive imagination.” The first time, I pretended everyone in my classroom was dead so I didn’t have to talk to them. And once, after lunch, I spoke to Miss Pendergrass through a milk straw because it was hard to breathe when I was locked inside Houdini’s steamer trunk. She gave me an F instead of an A on our last spelling test, when my answers were in fake hieroglyphics. I gave her a key to them, and I spelled each word correctly after class, but she still called Mom. When Jamie saw all the watery squiggles and fish shapes I used, she called them “hydro-glyphics.” Hydro means water, she told me. She also told me I was smart, probably even smarter than Miss Pendergrass.

      I love to swim.

      Maybe it doesn’t matter if I lied to everyone.

      When I pass Duck Island, the swampy nesting place Lauren and I looked at through the binoculars, I realize I’m farther out than I’ve ever been. Farther than the swim team, maybe more than halfway across the lake, and I’m tired. If Jamie were here she’d say it was okay that my body is heavy. Just float on your back for a minute. Relax. It wouldn’t matter that my feet tingle like they’re asleep, or that my arms are tingling too. The cold is in my ears and behind my eyes; it’s giving me a headache.

      Is the lake punishing me for lying about swimming? Maybe it wants to show me “who’s boss,” like Judy is always threatening to do.

      Somewhere around here are the rotted half-submerged pilings of the Floating Doughnut Shack. I wish I were eight weeks and one inch so I could start over again. I wish I could turn back time like some adventurers do in Jules Verne books.

      Suddenly I’ve forgotten how to swim.

      I roll onto my back but I can’t float forever.

      On shore, Mrs. Wiggins paces back and forth in the shallow water. She wades out a little, looks toward me, comes back in, sits down, watches some more, then paces again.

      Don’t look, I tell myself, and glance away. I don’t look at Mrs. Wiggins, or my family “rusticating” (Mom’s word for “taking a break from the suburbs”), until Lauren suddenly yells, “Misssss-usssss Wiiiiigg-uunnnssss!”

      I roll over and bob in the water. The sick old dog is headed my way, the stick in her mouth.

      “No!” I yell. “Go back! No stick, no!” But she keeps coming. Behind her, on the beach, Mom, Dad, and Lauren wave their arms over their heads. I wave back, and Mom puts her hands on her hips.

      She won’t make it; I’m out too far.

      I hold up my thumb and index finger; Mom’s the size of a circus peanut. I roll on my back again, and kick my feet. At least I think I’m kicking; it’s hard to tell when most of me is numb.

      I wish I weren’t a weirdo and a liar, and hadn’t stomped out into the lake when my parents started talking about me. Peace Lake is big; no wonder it’s where Aunt Jamie trains for the Olympic Trials. No wonder everyone clapped for the girls on my swim team. Dad says Jamie and I have the “swimming chops” in the family, but right now I don’t have any chops, and when the sun slips behind a dark cloud, and the water becomes an even colder black soup, I’m more scared than I was when Lauren slipped into the quarry pit.

      “Mrs. Wiggins?” I say out loud. When I speak the cold water spills in, filling my mouth, running down my throat, making the rest of me even colder. I try whistling but I can’t. I look for Mrs. Wiggins’s bobbing head in the dark water.

      Maybe she went back.

       Down in the meadow in a little bitty pool

       Swam three little fishies and a mama fishie too . . .

      Mom used to sing that song.

      “Mom?” I call.

      My teeth chatter. Swim back! I tell myself. You can do it! Tell them you’re a dummy and a liar and the lake wants you to apologize. Do it!

      Only I stay in place.

      Bobbing in place. I’m not going anywhere.

       Mrs. Wiggins? Where are you?

      On shore Dad wades into the water, waving at me to come in. He points to the sky at the exact moment a bright light flashes. Lightning! Is it close? I listen for thunder, and count out loud like he taught me: “One, one thousand” for every quarter-mile away. “Two, one thousand. Three, one thousand.”

      Nothing.

       “Stop!” said the mama fishie. “Or you’ll get lost!”

      “Lillleeeee!” Mom calls in a scared high-pitched voice. “Hold on! Daddy’s coming!”

      Dad runs to the pier where a rowboat is tied. I watch him jump in, pull the rope off the piling, and start rowing toward me. With one paddle. He pauses to search the bottom of the boat for the other, then looks toward me again. One boat, one oar. It’ll take awhile, but he’s coming.

      I slip under, but the cold startles me and I pop up again.

       So the three little fishies went off on a spree

       And they swam and they swam right out to the sea . . .

      I’m tired and think of my room, rearrange the books beside my bed, pull out the scrapbooks from underneath, and begin going through each page.

       Boop boop dit-tem dat-tem what-tem chu!

       Kick

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