Acting Out (3 page)

Luckily, everyone laughed, including Michelle.

“Do you only wear it at night?” asked Courtney from her bottom bunk, looking at me sympathetically.

“Mostly. My orthodontist calls me ‘Beaver Face.' I'm his favorite patient.”

Again I got laughs, so I figured I'd keep the stupid thing on for a while. I would never have let anyone see me in this back home. I'd been wearing it since February, and I'd missed Elise Rutherford's sleepover because my mom called her mom and told her to make sure I wore it. I pretended I had the flu.

“This is great! You guys are already getting to know each other!” said Michelle, watching us all as she sat cross-legged on her cot against the wall. Over on Side B, Alex's group was hardly talking at all.

Mom had carefully packed my trunk, but she'd put my sheets and towels at the very bottom. I piled a bunch of clothes and stuff on the floor beside me, trying to find the new striped sheets she'd bought for me.

“Oh, are those pictures from home? Can I see?” asked Michelle.

I looked down and saw my photo album peeking out from under my pile of stuff on the floor.

“Um, sure,” I told her. What else could I say, now that she'd seen it? I handed the album to her and hoped she'd look through it and then give it back. The less everyone knew about my family, the better. I unfolded my sheets and climbed up to the top bunk to make my bed.

“Who are these guys? Are they your brothers?” she asked, flipping through the pages. I glanced down and saw that she was looking at Justin's and Adam's football pictures.

“Uh, yeah. They both play football,” I said, deciding to leave it at that. I was wrestling with the sheets, so it was easy to act distracted.

“What positions do they play?”

From the top bunk, I could see the newspaper articles I'd cut out and pasted inside. One had a picture of Justin jumping up to catch a pass, and another had a picture of both of them together. I'd been so proud of them when those pictures were in the paper.

I climbed down and sat on the edge of Michelle's cot.

“That's Adam. He's fifteen, and he's a safety. He'll be on the junior varsity squad next year. And Justin's seventeen. He's a tight end.” I could tell her a little about them. She didn't have to know
everything.

Michelle read the headline. “ ‘Central High Brothers Both Powerhouse Players.' Such cuties!” she said, even though they looked all sweaty and grimy in the picture.

“Do you like football?” I asked.

“Uh, that would be
yes.
I guess I didn't tell you where I go to college.” She jumped up and pulled out an Oklahoma Sooners T-shirt from her trunk.

“Oh wow, great football school. Did you go to any games last year?”

“Every home game. I had season tickets. So I bet these guys will be getting football scholarships, huh?” she said with a big grin.

I shrugged. “Maybe.” I just wanted to get off the subject of my brothers and football. I hadn't planned on telling anyone about that stuff.

“Maybe? Don't be modest.” She nudged me with her elbow. “They're obviously both talented. They may be the next Manning brothers!”

I shook my head. “I wouldn't go that far. Anyway, they're not quarterbacks.”

“Manning brothers?” asked Courtney. Michelle winked at me and grinned.

“You know—Peyton and Eli. They're both NFL quarterbacks.” I wondered if I should tell her what “NFL” stood for. Who hadn't heard of the Manning brothers?

Just a few months ago my family did joke around about how maybe one day the boys would both be playing in the NFL, but nobody said that anymore. Not since what had happened this spring.

A bell rang and Michelle told us that now we all had to go to the lake to take swim tests. Everyone pulled swimsuits out of their trunks and started changing.

I was glad I could finally put my photo album away. I stuck it under a bunch of clothes at the bottom of my trunk. Why'd I even bring it along in the first place? I thought I'd want to look at it if I missed my family. But I could already tell I wasn't going to miss them that much. I had a whole month away from them, and I wanted to make the best of it.

I took off my headgear and found my new red one-piece in my trunk. I never wore bikinis because they made me look like a cow.

I really wanted my JD plan to work. So far, so good. But I had to make a big first impression. By the end of the day, I wanted a lot of people to know me. I still remembered Chloe's first day at my school. Everyone had said, “Have you met the new girl?” Now all I needed to do was to get everyone at this camp talking about the girl named JD.

The tough part was figuring out exactly how to do that.

Michelle took all the Cabin 2 campers down to the lake together. Alex had left early since she was on the swim staff. Besides Katherine (or Miss Sunshine, as I silently thought of her), the other Side B girls were Mei, Isabel, and Meredith.

I looked at Mei's name tag and called her “Mee,” but she said it was pronounced “May,” like the month. She was Asian, but when her parents were helping her carry all her stuff into the cabin, I'd noticed they were both Caucasian, so I figured she was adopted.

Isabel had dark frizzy hair and freckles on practically every inch of her body. At lunch Meredith didn't eat the tacos because she was a vegetarian. She knew Michelle from last year, and she talked to her the whole time about canoeing.

I kept my eye out for Natasha, but I didn't see her anywhere. I looked at all the Cabin 2 girls, and they seemed pretty okay. Except for Katherine, who complained about how she'd done this stupid swim test every year.

“Great! It'll be easy for you,” Michelle said, putting an arm around her shoulders.

Katherine wriggled away. “I hope I drown.”

Of all the girls, Amber seemed most my type, or
Judith's
type—quiet but friendly, and a little . . . well, blah. If we'd met at school last year, we probably would've been best friends. Courtney, on the other hand, reminded me of Chloe Carlson. She was cute and bubbly like Chloe, but so far she didn't seem to have a killer sense of humor like Chloe, which was good. If she and I got to be friends, we couldn't both be cracking jokes all the time. I scooted up so I could walk close to her.

When we got to the lake, Michelle took off to say hi to some old friends, and we all sat down around the edge to wait our turn. Lots of girls were already waiting. A wooden dock jutted out over the lake, and Alex was standing at the end of it in a blue-and-white striped bikini, holding a clipboard and watching some girls in the water.

The test looked supereasy. We just had to jump in, tread water for five minutes, and then swim across the lake. And the lake wasn't very big, so it wouldn't be tough swimming across it. I figured it was maybe forty or fifty yards to the other side.

While the other girls talked, I thought about how Chloe would make some funny remark right now and crack everyone up. But I had one big problem. Chloe was naturally funny. I wasn't. It was like being born color-blind, or having one leg shorter than the other. I had a humor deficiency. Sure, it made things tougher, but that meant I had to try harder.

I stared at the water, trying to think of something funny to say. A group of girls dove off the end of the dock and started treading water. I could see some tiny things swimming around near the edge of the lake. At first I thought they were fish, but they didn't have tails. They were little dark blobs darting around in the water. Oh, they were tadpoles.

I jumped to my feet. “Shark! Shark!” I yelled at the top of my lungs. When everyone looked at me, I shrugged and sat down. “Oops! Sorry. It's just a stick. My bad.”

It seemed like one of those moments on TV when everything freezes. All of a sudden about a hundred eyes were all looking at me. My heart thumped in my chest. I wished I could take it back. I felt so silly. How could funny people stand this kind of attention?

Alex blew her whistle and made the girls in the water swim up to the dock and climb out. Then she spun around and marched over to us. The other swim counselors had turned around to look at us too.

“WHO SAID THAT?” The sun was behind her back, and as she hovered over us, all we could see was this dark shadow.

Nobody said a word. Not one person was going to tell on me.
That
was pretty cool. I'd never done anything to purposely get in trouble before, and I couldn't believe that all these strange girls I'd just met already had my back.

“I asked you all a question. I know the girl who yelled that was sitting over here.” The shadow leaned over us, and now we could see Alex's face, all dark and scary. “If I don't find out who it was, every one of my little Cabin 2 campers will swim an extra lap across the lake.”

I had no idea what would happen next. There was a long silence while Alex waited for someone to say something. Amazing! They still wouldn't tell on me.

So that was when I did it. I crossed my arms and pointed at Lauren on one side of me and Courtney on the other. “I did it,” I said, but I still pointed at the two of them. I heard Courtney let out a puff of air.

“Okay,” said Alex, in a
now we're getting somewhere
tone. “So you're the wise guy. You think water safety is something to laugh at?”

She was being so lecturey, I couldn't stop myself. I held my hand over my eyes to shade them from the sun, and I threw her a salute and said, “Yes, Sergeant, I do think water safety is something to laugh at. I laugh at water safety every single day.”

My heart would not stop pounding. I'd never been a smart mouth before in my whole life. It felt like jumping out of a plane. It was scary and exhilarating, and I didn't know how I was going to land.

Alex stood over me, staring me down. I could hear someone behind me trying not to giggle. “We'll see how funny it is. On your feet. You'll take your test now. And you'll swim two laps across the lake instead of one.”

She led me over to where the other girls were standing on the end of the dock. They were all dripping wet, watching Alex yell at me, and I felt bad for making them stand there, because a couple of them were shivering.

I turned to look at the others sitting by the lake edge. I made a funny face behind Alex's back to show I didn't mind getting in trouble, and Courtney gave me a tiny, two-fingered wave. I was a little scared, but I'd definitely gotten noticed.

“Okay, ladies, this comedian is the one who interrupted your swim test. Apologize to these girls for making them stand here and wait.”

I looked at all the girls dripping there on the end of the dock. “I'm vewy sowy I intewupted yowah swim test. Pwease fowgive me,” I said. A couple of them had to hold back smiles.

What could Alex do to me? She looked at me like she wanted to drown me, but instead she yelled, “In the water!” and blew her whistle right in my ear.

I dove off the end of the dock, mainly to get away from that whistle. The water was icy cold, but when I came up for air, I started treading water right away, to warm myself up. The more I moved, the less cold I felt. Alex timed us with her watch. When five minutes were up, she told us all to swim across the lake. “Two for you,” she said, pointing at me. “And if you cause any more trouble, we'll make it three.”

I put my face down and started doing the crawl stroke. I was glad to be in the water now, out of the center of attention. I wasn't sure I could think up anything else funny to do. So I had to swim an extra lap. So what? There were worse ways to be punished. I figured I'd do them really fast to show her I didn't care.

I kept my head down and breathed on every fourth stroke, the way Justin had taught me. Every now and then I'd look up to see how close I was. Pretty soon I'd made it to the other side, where another counselor with a clipboard was waiting on the edge of the lake. She smiled at me when I came up for air. She probably hadn't heard all the trouble I'd caused on the other side.

“Wow, you are some swimmer,” she said. “Look at the rest of your group!”

I looked back, and the other girls were barely halfway across. I didn't know I'd gone
that
fast.

“Are you on a swim team in your hometown?”

“Nope. I've just always been a pretty good swimmer.” I flipped my hair out of my eyes.

“You should think about taking the Guard Start class. It's for really good swimmers who aren't old enough to start actual lifeguard training. Think you'd be interested?”

“I don't know. Maybe.” I'd never thought about being a lifeguard. I didn't really want to take any swimming classes. What I wanted to do this summer was get good at tennis, but she was being so nice to me, I figured I should at least act interested.

“What's your name and cabin number?” she asked.

“JD Duckworth, Middler 2A.”

She flipped through some pages till she found my name and put a check mark next to it. “Okay, JD. I'm Libby. You passed the test with flying colors. And give the Guard Start class some thought. Classes begin tomorrow.”