That’s when I remembered Trinity’s camera! I twisted in my chair to get her attention, then tapped, “Take a pic!” Thanks, Mom, for adding camp phrases to Elvira.

  “Great idea, Melody!” Trinity said. She lifted her camera, snapped a photo of the lake, then took another one of me, grinning with the lake behind me. Yeah, fine, I was smiling. It had only been a couple of hours, and they already had me with a smile on my face. Then she snapped photos of the four of us, blinking in the sunshine. A white bird suddenly flew past us. Its wingspan was ginormous!

  “Wow! A crane!” Lulu cried out as we all looked up. Wait till I tell Mrs. V about that!

  Trinity took a pic of us watching the crane fly off—I hoped it would show up. “You know, we’ll have a zillion photos for you by the time you leave,” she told us. “We’ve hired folks to take photos of everybody and every activity while you’re all here. You’ll get a chunk of a photo album when you go home.”

  That was cool. Mom and Dad and Mrs. V would love that—so I told Elvira to say thank you. That was one less thing for me to worry about!

  I wanted to learn more about the lake, but I was also getting hungry, so I was glad when we turned back toward camp. One of my secret worries when I’m in a new place is always food. Would I be able to eat it? Would they know how to feed me? I’m not fussy, but my mouth needs mushy. I wondered how they planned to do meals—this was gonna be interesting.

  CHAPTER 14

  Okay, so I got myself all worked up over nothing. The first meal at camp was not the ordeal I expected. Folks here have organization down! It turned out that each counselor had a list of all the feeding details for their camper. Trinity already knew I needed my food sorta soft, and that I had to be fed. Truth? I hate that. I’m practically a teenager—less than a year away!—and having applesauce and blended hot dogs shoved in my mouth like I’m a baby is just plain embarrassing. Especially in front of a bunch of people I didn’t even know!

  But as I looked around our table, which was basically just an indoor picnic table, I saw each of my cabinmates had some type of food issue as well. Karyn complained loudly that she was allergic to carrots, so Kim jogged off with her plate.

  After she left, Karyn leaned over and whispered, “I’m not allergic—I just hate carrots! It works every time!”

  I’ve got to remember that trick!

  Jocelyn, apparently, had a thing about condiments. She smelled her hot dog, then pushed her plate away.

  “Mustard feels like sand, sand, sand!” she declared. Lulu didn’t comment, but simply fixed another hot dog for her. Jocelyn looked at it, smelled it, asked for ketchup, then ate it with no trouble.

  As Trinity spooned blended baked beans, hot dogs (smashed up!), and then applesauce into my mouth, Athena scooted close to me. “Applesauce is magic, you know.” She then chomped down on her apple.

  I tapped out, “Explain.”

  “You get the best part of the apple, plus cinnamon, and you don’t have to deal with the peeling!”

  True that. So then I tapped, “Okay, then, what’s so great about squished hot dogs?”

  She tilted her head, thinking, then said slyly, “I can’t tell you—it’s a government secret!” I laughed out loud, already glad she was in my cabin. As she began trying to pull the stem off her non-magical apple, I looked around at the other groups of kids—some girls, some boys. A few were being fed, just like I was. Others ate without help. Yikes—putting together meals for a bunch of kids with various issues had to take some serious planning.

  Just as I was feeling almost stuffed, Cassie, the director, popped her head out of the kitchen. “Anybody want ice cream?” she hollered. “We’ve got chocolate sundaes!”

  Everybody shouted yes! Well, except for me. I’m a strawberry or vanilla girl. Mom keeps telling me she’s gonna make me a chocolate lover one of these days—no thanks!

  They had sherbets and nondairy ices for the kids who couldn’t do milk-based food. So that’s what I had instead of the sundae. Okay, more points for Camp Green Glades.

  After lunch the counselors took us to the latrine. Get this—we each had our own separate stall! And big! With super-supportive toilet seats. Okay, they’ve got me admiring the toilets. Sad, I know, but hey, necessities matter.

  When we got back to our cabin, Sage told us to get out our swimsuits. “Now remember, while we’d love for you to try all the activities, you’re not required to, except maybe dinner. I’d hate for you to starve while you’re here—it tends to upset parents,” she joked. “So swimming will be our first official activity of the week, followed by arts and crafts.”

  At the mention of parents, Karyn mumbled that she would be leaving for home in a few hours.

  But I was thinking, Hmm. Art projects? That might be fun to try. But swimming? Good luck with that! A whole summer wouldn’t be enough to teach me.

  Trinity must have seen the look on my face, because she asked, “You’re not a swimmer, Melody?”

  I tapped, “No. I’m a sinker.”

  Even Karyn giggled.

  Actually, I didn’t know what I was. Last year Mom had signed Penny up for swimming lessons, and she took me a couple of times to watch. I liked sitting by the pool, listening to the echoes of the happy yelps and shrieks of the littles. I wondered how the pool people got the water to be so perfectly blue. When I got home, I looked up enough about chlorine to become a chemist.

  It was fun watching Penny learn to kick and roll and paddle with her little safety baby floats on her arms and around her waist. But me? Swim? Not gonna happen.

  “I tell you what,” Trinity said, her voice all honey. “Let’s just get your suit on and you can sit by the side—watch the others splash a bit, and maybe just let your feet get wet. Okay?”

  I could tell she wasn’t going to give up, so I tapped okay. But she wasn’t gonna win this one.

  So I added, “The lake is dangerous! It could have rip currents! Or a fast-moving tide!”

  “Well, lakes don’t have tides, oceans do…,” Trinity explained. “But regardless, we’re not swimming in the lake. We’re swimming in the pool right by it. It’s eighty-five degrees, warm and shallow, and about as scary as a bathtub!”

  Ooh, a pool, huh? I’d forgotten about the pool! Eighty-five degrees? Okay. Okay, fine. Let’s get this over with. We got my suit on quickly—actually, it had never been worn in the water, ha! It was a bright yellow—I probably looked like a stick of butter. Then we headed down to the pool before I had a chance to change my mind.

  Along the outside of a long, low building by the pool—another awesome blue—hung a variety of swimming aids and hookups, as well as several different kinds of life vests. All of them were Crayola-bright, as if to say, Nobody drowns in our pool! A ramp was perched by the pool edge, apparently to help counselors lower a plastic-wheeled woven water wheelchair into the pool.

  And was there music? Yes, soft classical music, the kind Mrs. V likes, was playing from loudspeakers. Classssssy!

  Karyn was clearly a quick changer, ’cause she and Kim had reached the pool first, so they were just going in. I watched, fascinated, as Kim transferred Karyn into that pool wheelchair. It was the same color as those highway cones that Dad always complained about. Karyn was then slowly, slowly rolled backward down the ramp into the water, Kim beside her, close as could be, every centimeter of the way. As the water touched Karyn’s tush, I heard her growl, “I told you—I wanna go home!” But Kim gently persisted. A few more inches, a few more feet, and… wow, I actually saw Karyn smile!

  “It’s… like a giant bathtub!” she cried out. And when water splashed up onto her face, she only laughed. She let Kim take her out of the chair, and as they bobbed in the water, I could tell she’d at least temporarily forgotten about her plans to pack up and leave.

  Trinity, her suit a pattern of dark blue birds, tapped my shoulder. “Looks pretty fun, eh? Wanna try next?”

  Nope. I refused to be swayed. I crossed my wrists and stared at her defiantly. No way I was doing this. No way. If someone let go of me for one second, down I’d go. So, no thank you.

  Okay, to be fair, when I first saw the lake, I hadn’t even noticed the small swimming pool set off to the side. Now that I thought about it, the idea of putting kids at this camp into a large, potentially deep lake—full of who knows what kind of fish—would have been a pretty terrible idea. So I gotta admit, these Green Glades folks thought of everything. But I still wasn’t going in. Sinker. That’s me.

  Trinity raised an eyebrow. “Look, girlfriend,” she said. “I am the one who will be taking you into the water.” I raised a so what eyebrow. Well, I think I did.

  She paused and seemed to be thinking of what she could say to convince me. “Do you like my hair?” she asked all out of the blue, flipping her long, long braids.

  I nodded.

  “Do you know how much I paid to get these lovely braids?”

  I had no idea—my hair never gets much past my shoulders—but I figured it was probably a lot.

  She pursed her lips, then spun around, her braids extending in a glorious circle. “Check this out, Melody my friend!” She gave me a saucy look. “There is NO WAY I’m getting my hair wet today, or any day!”

  I couldn’t help it; I cracked up.

  She pulled her braids up into a giant pile on top of her head and secured it with the biggest rubber band I’d ever seen. “So you are plenty safe, okay? If you go down, I go down, and there goes my hair. No way, no how, no, ma’am!”

  I honestly could not think of one counterargument. So I started to laugh again. “YOU WIN,” I finally tapped out.

  But as we approached the edge of the pool, a volcano of nope, nope, nope took over. Not gonna do this. Not gonna happen.

  Trinity must have been used to kids freaking the first time going into a pool, because she added, “I. Will. Not. Let. You. Go.” She paused, then repeated it. “Trust me?”

  I did. I think. So I nodded yes. Then, I couldn’t help myself, but I glanced at the brace on her leg. Did it make a difference in the water? Then I remembered she said she’d been doing this for years, so I guess she had that covered.

  She whisked me out of my wheelchair and strapped me into another one of those swim chairs that, now that I saw it up close, looked like it had been constructed out of pool noodles, a cross between a lawn chair and a pool toy. I found myself sitting on the side of the pool like any other swimmer, well, almost. Trinity sat next to me, swinging her feet in the water.

  At this point Kim was literally trying to coax Karyn out of the pool. “We do this every day,” I could hear Kim promising her. An attendant brought over fluffy towels for them as Karyn was wheeled and transferred back to her own chair. As she passed by me, wrapped in the towel, she leaned over to say, “Maybe I’ll stay until after swimming tomorrow. But then I’m gone!”

  Huh! But before I could respond, Trinity was wheeling me to the ramp. “You ready, kid?” she asked.

  I couldn’t even give her a grunt of response. Because—what was going on with me?—I was too busy wondering if somebody’s heart can explode from terror. Even if I could talk, I wouldn’t have been able to speak. I felt like one of those characters in a scary movie just before the monster pounces.

  Trinity could tell I was not, in fact, ready, because she said, “We’re going to roll down the ramp in this fancy water chair, just like Karyn did. And the pool’s only a couple of feet deep. You good?”

  I heard laughter, splashes, cries of joy, shrieks, giggles of other kids in the pool. Maybe the Gazelles or the Panthers? I really didn’t care at this point, because all I knew was that in just a few seconds, death was gonna swoop in and take me. Yep, this was it.

  “You good?” she asked again. Wow—she was as persistent as Penny. Penny! How was I going to go home and tell Penny I was too scared to swim? In what was essentially a giant bathtub! I couldn’t do that. So, oh so slowly, I nodded my head to tell Trinity to do it. She didn’t wait for me to change my mind. “Here we go.”

  And then we were rolling backward into the water. Backward? What? I mean I saw Karyn go in this way, but it didn’t register then! I couldn’t even see how deep we were getting! And this ramp? It looked like plastic! Thin plastic! Argh! Yet slowly, smoothly, we kept rolling, despite the fact that this skinny little thing was gonna break into a million pieces, and I would plunge to my death in seconds. I wanted to scream so bad, but I forced myself to hold it in.

  And I braced myself for the coldness to seep through my bathing suit. My butt actually hit the water first, and I gasped. But wait—it wasn’t cold at all! It was warm—really warm. And even felt soft, like when Mom lets me have a bubble bath.

  I was so glad I didn’t howl a second ago—that would have been totally embarrassing.

  Now the water was at my waist, then mid-chest, and I felt myself relax. Gee, what the heck had I been so worried about? This was easy-peasy.

  Well, it was easy until Trinity decided it would somehow be fun to take me out of the swim chair. As soon as she undid the strap, I grabbed the water in a panic, but there was nothing to hold on to. Nothing! My fingers clutched and clawed, at nothingness.

  One part of my brain was wondering how water could be something and feel like nothing at the same time. The other part was yelping, Nope. Nope. Nope. I changed my mind. Forget the embarrassment—I gotta get out of here! I started to struggle. I arched my back. I had to get out of the water! I let out something that sounded like a cross between a yowl and a yelp. No, this was a jumbo-sized, earth-shattering, gut-exploding HOWL!

  I’m sure Martians on the next planet heard me.

  Trinity didn’t seem even remotely bothered by the fact that I was going to die right that second. She held me tightly and just kept whispering, “I got you, Melody. I got you. Just relax. I promise on my life that I will not let you go. Just breathe. Let it in. Let it out. There you go. Just breathe.” She rocked me back and forth, slowly, gently.

  “Look at you,” she purred. “Just look at you swimming. You’re doin’ it, girlfriend. You are doing it!”

  My arms had stopped flailing, even though I still knew I was gonna die any minute now.

  “Feeling better?”

  I think I nodded.

  “Feel the warm, Melody,” Trinity was saying now. “What color is warm? Orange? Turquoise? I’m feeling a little lavender here—how about you?”

  That caught my attention—did Trinity feel colors too? And then I was thinking that the thought of the feel of a color made sense. The water felt soft, silky, and I dunno—it felt pink. Yeah, I know water looks blue in a pool, but this water felt pink, maybe pale rose.

  “Looking good, Melody!” I heard Athena call out.

  Trinity rocked us to the other end of the pool as Sage and Athena were getting in. As they rolled down the ramp, I wondered why they were using the special loading system like I had. Then I figured it was camp safety rules. Made sense.

  Athena was the exact opposite of me when she hit the water. “Whoopie-woo!” she shouted, and immediately wanted to get out of the chair.

  “Like my suit?” she asked me, waving, splashing water everywhere. But she sounded so happy I didn’t even care. I nodded yes. Her suit, of course, was pink. It had cute embroidered starfish all over it—so very Athena.

  “I like yours, too,” Athena said. “You look like my mom’s canary!” I almost choke-laughed at that.

  “Okay, girlfriend, let’s try bouncing a little,” Trinity said to me, getting my focus back on swimming. Or, more accurately, not drowning right that second. She bounced up and down, just once. The water splashed on my shoulders. I only flailed a little bit this time. Hey, not so bad!

  “You’re doing great, Melody! Let’s try a few more bounces, okay?”

  I nodded and tensed, but the movement was so slow and gentle, I barely felt it. And I got what she was doing, sneaky Trinity! Getting me deeper into the water. And it wasn’t so bad at all. Then she stretched me out on my back and, with her arms tucked safely under mine, began to swirl me back and forth.

  My body felt ripply-loose. It was actually sort of amazing. It was like, I was me, but I didn’t feel like me. I couldn’t believe I’d been so scared. Jeez.

  Finally Trinity said, “Let’s try some kicks.”

  Kicks?

  “Just let your legs do their usual thing. They move all the time, even when you don’t want them to, am I right?”

  Yeah, they do sometimes move anytime they want, without any input from me. Seriously. I can be sitting in class, everyone is quiet and concentrating on the lesson, and boom, my legs will simply decide to kick and jam. No music necessary.

  So I let my legs do their thing—and they kicked. Ahh—that felt great! I kicked again! The water even splashed a little. Like… a swimmer! It sure wasn’t going to get me into the Olympics, but I was kicking and moving in a swimming pool. I wished Penny could see me. I felt like I’d just won a gold medal in the advanced freestyle butterfly category—whatever that is.

  When Trinity said it was time to get out, I couldn’t tell her, but I pretty much wanted to spend the rest of camp right here in the water. Stick some floaties on me, come by and feed me once in a while, and I’d be good.

  CHAPTER 15

  Once we were all dry—ah—warmed towels—ooh la la—and dressed in our shorts and T-shirts, we headed back the way we’d come on the board path. But instead of going back to our cabin, Lulu announced we were taking a detour, which led us back to the mess hall—for pie! We had a choice of key lime pie or apple. Key lime was one of Mrs. V’s favorite desserts. As Trinity spooned it in, I closed my eyes so I could feel the flavors. Nope! Not even close to Mrs. V’s recipe! But this was camp—I was just glad it was tasty.

  Jocelyn asked for seconds of her apple pie—three times, so I guess that’s called thirds! Karyn was cool with the key lime. And Athena seemed to love both, but she did ask if we could have strawberry ice cream one day. I had Elvira shout a big “Yeah!” at that.