As for me, riding an ocean liner or a pontoon or tugboat made very little difference—I was about to go on a b.o.a.t.! My legs started crazy kicking.

  Sage opened a closet and pulled out a stack of life jackets.

  Athena reached for one. “So, you think we’re gonna have a flood in here?”

  Karyn giggled.

  Sage shook her head. “We just keep these here in the cabin to save time. Plus, the ones down by the pool are usually wet.”

  “They sure are orange, orange, orange,” Jocelyn commented.

  Karyn gave Jocelyn’s arm a gentle poke. “Safety, safety, safety,” she murmured. Jocelyn glanced away, but with a sly grin.

  Athena insisted on putting hers on by herself, and after a struggle, turned around triumphantly. We had to hold in giggles—she had it on backward! Not that I had any right to comment—I can’t even get one arm in by myself.

  Trinity, however, had the foam-filled jacket around me and clipped in about ten seconds. “All set, kid!”

  Hmm—I sure hoped I didn’t need to use this. Then I got to thinking about logistics—got that from Mom. I tapped, “Wheelchairs on boats?”

  Trinity then opened a closet I hadn’t even noticed before. It was full of… neatly folded wheelchairs! Okay, these people probably had backup plans for their backup plans!

  “No worries,” she told me. “Special treat—we’re all riding in chariots today. It’s a camp requirement for boat safety. The pontoon is specially designed with fasteners to hold our chairs in place.”

  And what if those secure fasteners come loose? I chose not to ask. But I thought it, oh yes I did.

  “And you’ll love the way the boat rocks on the waves.”

  Karyn sat ramrod straight. “Did she say WAVES?”

  “Small waves,” Kim assured her.

  Trinity was dashing around the cabin, cramming suntan lotion and a first-aid kit into her backpack. First-aid kit? What was she expecting? Then she added sweatshirts for both of us, and a couple of pudding cups for me.

  Karyn was back to worrying about sinking. “Uh, what if the boat flips? Or crashes into a rock? Or hits another boat? Or it sinks? I just gotta ask, you know.”

  Kim was so patient. “Okay, fair enough,” she said. “Let me answer you this way. How many of you had a rubber duckie or a toy like that when you were little?”

  I sure did. Most of us smiled as we thought about baby toys.

  “Well, this boat is like a giant, unsinkable toy. It’s been made supersafe, and it’s designed for fun. So let’s go have some!”

  I looked over at Karyn. She still looked doubtful, but she let herself be strapped into her life jacket without further questions.

  What if… I heard the snap-thud sound of the unlocking of my brakes. We were out of here. Other counselors and their campers were already heading down to the dock. All the campers were sitting in wheelchairs too. I guessed that was a good idea.

  Athena plunked right into the wheelchair Sage held out, then waved at me cheerily as she and Sage rolled out the cabin door. “This is gonna be so awesome!” she singsonged, then asked Sage to please push faster.

  Jocelyn sat super straight in her chair, wobbling with every bounce but never leaning back.

  At the dock, we paused as Kim told us about the lake. “So Lake Lilliana’s just a large bucket of water surrounded by all the land you see. It’s pretty deep but not very large, not like, say, Lake Erie, which is HUMONGOUS. We’re super careful to keep it clean and healthy—no trash, no diesel-powered boats. We even have a lake ranger who patrols it, on the lookout for folks who break the rules. That’s how much we love this lake. And you’re gonna love it too.”

  I’d never actually thought about the idea of a healthy lake, but hey, lakes need love too. I liked that idea—folks here looking out for its health, sort of like how Mom makes sure that me and Penny take our vitamins and wash our hands and get our yearly doctor checkups.

  A ramp led from the dock, where at least I felt like I could manage a little, to the boat, which was like a foreign country with a different language. I didn’t speak boat very well. I didn’t speak boat at all!

  “Ah, I see we’ve got the large pontoon today,” Trinity said happily, looking down at the chunky, rectangular-shaped vessel.

  “Look,” said Athena, “it does have floaties! It’ll never sink!”

  Karyn scoffed, “I’ve watched that movie about the Titanic like ninety-nine times. Trust me, ‘unsinkable’ boats can go down.”

  Another Titanic fan, and yeah, she wasn’t wrong.

  Sage adjusted her baseball cap, her ponytail dangling out the back. “Well,” she replied, “I’ve seen that movie a million times as well. But since we have no ocean storms or icebergs in the forecast, just calm, placid lake water, I think we’re safe for this trip.”

  The boat rose up and down with the motion of the water, but it was secured to the dock by really, really thick ropes. I’d actually never seen a rope that huge and so tightly woven. I doubted my dad could even wrap his hands around it.

  And those things called pontoons? They really were like giant metal floaties attached to the bottom and sides of the boat. And I gotta admit, it did look pretty much unsinkable, but what did I know?

  Athena begged to go on first and called out, “Ahoy!” as she and Sage rolled down the wooden ramp and onto the shifting boat.

  I flapped my hand at Trinity—I wanted to go next! As we wheeled down the ramp backward, Karyn waved from the dock. I didn’t have time to wave back, because a second later I was on a boat! Me!

  I couldn’t help looking in every direction at once while Trinity positioned my wheelchair and began snapping and hooking and connecting it to several tie-downs on the floor. She triple-checked each fastener, giving each a big tug, then declared me “hooked solid.” I guess I’d graduated from guppy to trout.

  Karyn and Jocelyn came down next, and our counselors set our chairs so that we could see each other as well as the lake—yay. Another group of girls was already safely secured on the deck—the Green Gazelles. Cool.

  I thought now we’d launch off or take off or go full steam ahead—however you say get going in boat-talk—but then we heard loud, deep laughter coming from one of the paths. Karyn and I looked at each other in surprise as a group of boys in blue and purple shirts, wearing life jackets, burst out of the bushes with shouts of, “Hey, wait up! Don’t leave us!”

  Kim rolled her eyes, but in a joking way. “Those are guys on our team—the Purple Panthers and the Blue Badgers. Last year,” she explained, “they managed to miss the boat—literally!”

  Trinity added, “My bad! I actually forgot they might be joining us! I’m glad they made it ‘just in time’ this year!”

  I opened my mouth and closed it again as the guys were being boarded, one at a time. They were also secured in chairs, just like we were.

  Lulu explained how each wheelchair was hooked to a specific spot, and that spot revolved.

  I looked down at the circle around the bottom of my chair, which had to be what swiveled us around. “You can do a complete three-sixty and see everything!” Lulu exclaimed.

  As I was getting over both surprises, I looked from the boys to the lake behind them. I still couldn’t get over the colors. Azure, indigo, sapphire. I ran out of blue words in my head! I mean, I knew lakes were blue, or maybe green, but not all the ding-dang blues with glints of white at the ripples. I couldn’t stop staring. And it wasn’t at all like a swimming pool.

  Swimming pools are tame, docile, chlorinated, and medicated. Okay, I read that in a book someplace, but it fit. And no joke, this lake never stopped moving. It was like blue power! And here I was, Melody Scared-of-the-Water Brooks, floating on it—well, part of it. I could hardly believe it.

  When everyone else was declared “hooked solid,” Lulu signaled a man who just had to be the captain—he was wearing one of the little navy-blue hats with a brim, right out of a movie.

  He walked over. “Ahoy, mates! Welcome aboard, my friends!” he said. His voice was deep and sandpaper rough. “I’m Captain Frederick Carter. We’re mighty glad to have Camp Green Glades with us again this year. This boat here—her name’s Silver Sarah—is safe and powerful and knows what she’s doing.”

  “Why Silver Sarah, Sarah, Sarah?” Jocelyn asked, eyes cast sideways.

  “Great question!” The captain adjusted the brim of his hat. “Well, most boats are named after females—good luck and all that. So I named this little dream of a ship after my wife—because she bought it! Talk about good luck!” He cackle-laughed, slapping his leg, and we all laughed as well.

  “Now first, a little vocabulary lesson. This part you’re sitting on is called the stern, or the aft.” He pointed to the front of the vessel. “And up there is the bow. So if I say I look toward the stern, you’ll know to look at the back of the boat and won’t miss a rare sea monster sighting!” He went on, clearly enjoying explaining how boats float and propel themselves and stop. The part about stopping, it seemed to me, was pretty important!

  I wish I could have told this guy how much I appreciated that he took the time to talk to us—we certainly weren’t his normal set of passengers, but he acted as if we were like any other group that would board his ship.

  Athena raised her hand.

  “Yes, ma’am,” the captain said.

  “He called me ma’am!” she mouthed to Jocelyn. Then she asked, eyeing the water suspiciously, “You ever seen any sharks?”

  “No, ma’am,” he said seriously. “No sharks. They live in the ocean, and this is a lake. The only thing you might see in this water are small fish—blue gills, sunfish, and maybe some bass. That’s it.”

  A girl from the Gazelles blurted out, “What about mermaids?”

  Captain Carter responded to her just as seriously as he had to Athena. “I’ve yet to have the pleasure of seeing a mermaid out here,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any hiding at the bottom of the lake. I certainly hope so.”

  “Me too,” the girl agreed.

  Then one of the boys I’d seen at the campfire last night, who had really cool, totally white hair, asked, “So, how many of these boats can fit on a cruise ship? Like, uh, the Titanic?”

  Lotta Titanic fans at this camp, I thought.

  “Dozens, I imagine,” Captain Carter replied with a shrug. “Believe it or not, I’ve never had the chance to go out on the ocean on a big ship. My little watery kingdom here on the lake is plenty ’nough for me!”

  There was something I was curious about as well. I tapped out, “What’s the best part about being a boat captain?”

  Captain Carter’s smile went huge, his teeth so white against his ruddy face. He didn’t seem to be the least bit fazed to be asked a question by a machine.

  “I’m so glad you asked! The best part of my job is that I answer only to the wind and the waves. I get to suck up the sun in the morning and spit out the moon at night. For me, that’s a mighty fine life.”

  Just then a horn blared and I totally jumped in my seat. Good thing I was strapped in!

  “Well, me ladies and gents,” the captain said, lowering his brim an inch. “I’ll simply say, ‘Thar she blows and off we go!’ ” He paused, his eyes crinkling as he grinned. “Nobody really talks like that, except in the movies,” he confided. “But it is time for me to get to my wheel. Enjoy the ride!” He gave a little salute, and off he went. Then off we went!

  CHAPTER 21

  As the motor rumbled to life, I could hear splashing as the propellers, way out of our view, began to spin. Thanks, Mrs. V, for showing me YouTube videos of boats and ships and planes as part of our lessons on transportation. And suddenly we were moving, motoring, boating on the deep blue sea! Okay, so maybe just a small blue lake, but still, we were moving! At sea. Oh, did you even say “at sea” when you were on a lake? I didn’t have a clue. Something else to check out later.

  The vessel backed away from the dock and turned to the left. Was that north? South? I had no idea. All I knew was that trees that had looked so large just moments ago began to look smaller and smaller. The land, the shore, drifted away from us. But they didn’t—it was us, floating on liquid blue.

  As we picked up speed, the air pressed against us like we were pushing through a windstorm. Whoa, this boat was really going fast! What was the speed limit on the water anyway? Was that even a thing? Trinity’s braids flew out behind her as we sped past thick stands of trees. I could feel my cheeks flattening in the wind—it almost felt like a wind massage, ahhhhh. So that’s why Butterscotch hangs his head out of our car window.

  And the sound of the boat cutting through the water—a sort of sloshing, sizzling sound—was so soothing. I wanted this on my sound machine back home to help me sleep!

  Trinity pulled her braids together with a scrunchie. “Hey, look behind us!” She swiveled my chair around. Streaming from the back of our boat was a huge trail, not blue, but almost silver, glistening and frothing. It foamed and churned, but at its center was a pathway, maybe to that underwater palace where mermaids were hiding? Why not?

  Oh, and I saw two motors. Well, that was good. If one conked out, we wouldn’t be stranded. And in the distance, our dock, our path, our trees—so far away. And so many trees. I mean, I knew there were a lot—the camp is in a forest—but when you’re in it, the trees seem huge in size, but not in number. But out here, whoa—it’s the opposite. They look like leaf-topped toothpicks, but like a billion of them. Okay, a million. Thousands? A whole lot. And a lot to think about!

  I tore my eyes from the scenery to see if the other campers were as jazzed as I was, and with my chair turned around, I noticed for the first time a kid to my right—not an arm’s length away. He was being turned around in my direction. When he saw me, he waved.

  I blinked. He was the firefly kid from last night. I gave a sort of wave back.

  The boat chugged along as we began to pass other boat ramps, and soon, other boats. I caught the boy’s eye and pointed to a pair of fishermen in a canoe.

  “If they catch a big enough bass, it would pull that canoe right over!” he said.

  I was just thinking the same thing!

  Then we both noticed a shiny black speedboat that left a massive white spume behind it as it roared past us at double our speed, so fast its front—its bow—was in the air! It seemed to disappear from view in seconds. I gaped after it. It must be awesome to have such power!

  The boy was shaking his head almost dreamily. “Speed beats slow any day!”

  I laughed, agreeing with him, and he smiled back, his almond eyes arching into moons—supercute.

  We then passed a kind of ferryboat carrying a load of—I couldn’t tell, maybe housing shingles or building supplies? A water delivery truck—oh, I needed to remember to tell Penny about this one!

  A family group passed us next, fishing from the side of their comfortable-looking cabin cruiser. Not something Dad and Mom would do—they pretty much stay on solid ground. The family waved as we went by. Me and the kid waved back, like we were part of some kind of secret club: the Folks Who Boat on Blue Water!

  And now I felt a rush of determination. I had to get Mom and Dad and Penny on a boat, even though Penny would drive us bonkers with thousands of questions about the water, the waves, and the wind; about fish and sea serpents and dragons living under the water.

  As the pontoon made its way through the wet and the blue, the foam and the froth, the boy pointed up. Birds, their wings spread wide, glided on invisible currents, too high up to identify—maybe hawks or falcons. Not that I would have been able to tell the difference anyway, even if one landed on my hand. I read somewhere that birds sing while they’re perched in a tree, but they call out when they’re flying. I wondered what the ones overhead were calling out right now. Enjoying the view? I sure was.

  The lake ahead of us shimmered in the sun. The lake behind us frothed white from the propellers. The wind in my face held the power of the boat and the lake and the sky, and I inhaled it all—all that energy.

  If only I could transfer this intensity into my body! Ahhhhhh!

  Just then I heard the cookie-crumbly voice of the firefly boy. “I think I’d like to live on a boat,” he said.

  I had to nod my head in agreement.

  The boat suddenly slowed down, the motor fading to a hum. No more froth. No more wind. Even the birds, whatever they were, had ceased their cawing. All that power dimmed. I thought about that. It faded—we couldn’t see it, but wasn’t it still there, just waiting to be used? A flick of the switch, or however the heck you rev up a boat engine—and the power, the energy, would come flooding back. It was all stuck inside, waiting.

  And all of a sudden I felt like crying. Because… well, that was me—so much on the inside that still could not get to the outside. Energy trapped. Not all of it—I’m glad I have my board to let burps of it out. But, yeah, I’m tangled inside myself. And there’s no magical key to unravel the coils. What the heck? I get on a boat, and boom, I got feelings!

  Of course I didn’t cry—not with this boy sitting so close. I wondered, though, if he also felt that way. I bet he’s lived through some stuff too.

  But then I began to understand something else. Just because it was sometimes trapped, I still had power—it was there, waiting. I had power. Like that engine, the wind, the waves. Yeah, power.

  I had a sudden sense that the boy was watching me. I turned my head and blinked. He was! He grinned. I managed to smile back.

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  You know, I’d thought about leaving Elvira in the cabin for the boat ride. I am so glad I didn’t! I touched one tab. “My name is Melody.”

  He tilted his head. “Hey, Melody. That’s a really pretty name. I’m Noah.”

  I’m sure I looked ridiculous—cheesing like Penny did that birthday when she woke up to balloons in her bedroom. Still, I made myself tap out a question. “I’m a first-timer here—how about you?”