Ten (7 page)

“So you'll give Eloise our regards?” I said.

Freddy bowed formally, taking off his cap and holding it at his waist. “Consider it done.”

J
une
was not the prettiest name for a month, I thought. It also wasn't the prettiest name for a girl. Or a woman,
or
a man. I didn't know anyone named June, but I'd heard of people being named that. Me? I would never name my kid that, and the same went for Myrtle, Thelma, Phillipa, and Nunchucks. Hee-hee, I just made that one up. I've never heard of anyone named Nunchucks. It would be an awful name, though.

But the word
June
made happiness bubble up in me even though I didn't love the sound of it. Because in Georgia, school ended the first week of June, and that meant summer vacation! And summer vacation meant hot hot hotness—especially in Atlanta, which some people even called
Hot
lanta—and hotness meant . . . swimming pools! Yay!

Next month I was signed up to go to day camp with Amanda, but this month was all about swimming. Half the time I went with Amanda to her neighborhood pool, which had an awesome snack bar but no slide, and the other half of the time, Amanda came with me to Garden Hills Pool, a public pool in my neighborhood. The snack bar at Garden Hills wasn't anything special, but the pool was huge, with a baby-splashing area for Ty, a curlicue slide, and two—count'em,
two
—diving boards.

Amanda loved going to the pool almost as much as I did, although she did have one very bad habit called Caring Too Much About Her Tan. “Pooey on tans,” I said, frequently and loudly. Swimming pools were for
swimming
. That's why they were called
swimming
pools. You didn't hear anyone calling them tanning pools, did you?

Worrying about your “base tan” was just plain silly. If you spend enough time outside, you turn tan. End of story. Unless you were pale-as-a-codfish Dinah Devine, but she was a different story.

Sandra argued that I was a different story, too—an “olive-toned” story—and that I could only be pooey-ish about tans because I, myself, got tan so easily. To that I said, “Pooey again!” But secretly I was proud of myself for turning such a lovely golden brown color, a color that wasn't “olive-toned” at all.
Please
.

 

One Wednesday morning, Mom took me, Sandra, and Ty to Garden Hills Pool for a pool picnic. For once, it was just us three kids, because Amanda had plans to go shopping with her mom, Chantelle was visiting her cousins—she had oodles of them—and neither Sandra nor Ty had invited a friend.

But it was nice, sometimes, just being with my own family. (Well, minus Dad, since he had to work.) It was summer, we were at the pool, and the sky was crystal blue. I knew it was going to be a great day.

We laid out our towels and got busy having fun. Mom read her book and did not swim, that bad lady, because that was her version of fun. Sandra dog-paddled back and forth in the deep end and pretended not to stare at one particular lifeguard who wasn't even nice, in my opinion. Ty jumped around in the kiddie pool, and when I say “jumped,” I mean that he literally
jumped
, flinging himself into the air and coming down hard on his booty, which was no longer padded with a swim diaper like it had been in previous summers. He made epic waves, which not everybody appreciated.

As for me, I spent the bulk of my time working on handstands and flips in the shallow end. I was excellent at handstands. I was getting better at flips. Currently, I could tuck underwater, curl up in a ball, and do four in a row without taking a breath. I had my sights set on ten. (This was for front flips, not backward ones. With backward flips, I could do three.)

We were happy and splashy and yay-summer-vacation-y . . . and then things got interesting, as they
always
did when pools and kids and sunshine were involved. One moment I was underwater, upside down in a land of legs and feet, and my lungs had the nice feeling of being full of air to the point of almost bursting.

Then I rolled forward out of my handstand and popped out of the water, letting my lungs go ahead and burst in a joyful exhalation. I was flushed and proud as I turned to find someone to admire me: Sandra or Mom or Ty, any of them would do.

My own needs went down the drain when I spotted Ty, though. He was standing slack-armed in the kiddie pool, his little-boy belly poking out from above his shark swimming trunks. An innocent bystander might think he had on his stubborn expression, which involved a deeply frowning face and a jutted-out lower lip.

But because I was his big sister, I could see that he was actually wearing his I'm-not-so-happy-right-now-and-I-might-cry-and-so-I-am-covering-it-up-with-stubborness expression. The telltale signs were the tremble in his jutting-out lip and the slight caterpillar-legs wiggle of his sweet eyebrows.

From what I could tell, the reason for his distress was a girl in a hot pink bikini with exploding ruffles. She was about Ty's age, and she was standing in front of Ty and saying something to him. It appeared to be a bossy sort of thing, because she was waggling her finger at him, too.

No, ma'am, Frilly Missy,
I thought, hopping out of the big kid pool and marching over.
You do NOT get to steal my brother's fun.

“What's going on?” I said, splashing into the kiddie pool and putting my arm around my little brother.

Frilly Missy pointed at Ty. “He's wearing pink. Boys aren't allowed to wear pink.”

Really?
I thought.
You're
really
going to make us go there?

“What's your name?” I said, cocking my head.

“Erica,” she said. She cocked her head right back at me and added a
so there
thrust to her chin. She had been watching
way
too much “big kid” TV. There was no other explanation for such a little girl having such a snotty attitude.

“Well, hello, Erica,” I said, behaving especially polite to drive home the message that I was her elder, and she should be treating me with respect. “I'm Winnie, and this is Ty.”

Ty hugged my bare leg. He didn't say hello.

“Now, first of all, Ty
isn't
wearing pink,” I said, gesturing at Ty's swimming trunks. I didn't want to call her out on not knowing her colors, but the sharks on his suit were blue and gray, and they were baring their teeth against a background of white.

“Is so,” Erica said. “On his toes.”

I looked at Ty's toes through the kiddie pool water.
Oops
. I'd forgotten that I'd given him a beauty treatment last night, and that it involved painting his toenails. It also involved a karate-chop massage on his back—which made him say
oomph
, that's how manly it was—but, yes, his toes did glisten with Dusky Rose nail polish.

I regrouped. “Okay, fine. Second of all, which I was going to say anyway, boys are so allowed to wear pink. There aren't
rules
about colors.”

“Are so.”

“Are not.”

“Are so.”

“Are
not
.”

“Are so.”

“
Are not!
”

I closed my eyes and put my hand out.
T
, I said silently, privately calling a time-out before my voice got any louder.

Already, mothers were glancing over. Not
Mom
mom, because she'd set herself up in a far-away pool chair and was absorbed in her paperback. Also not Erica's mom, I was guessing, because surely she'd come over if she saw her daughter getting involved in a kiddie pool brawl.

But other moms were giving us the we're-watching-you stares that all moms knew how to do. If things turned ugly, I knew who would be blamed.

“Are so,” Erica said despite my traffic-cop hand. I couldn't believe how sure of herself she was even in the presence of someone who was clearly older and wiser.
Are so, are so, are so
, her tone matter-of-fact and almost bored.

I scooped Ty up. “We're done here, Erica. Colors are for everybody, and good-bye. I'm glad we had this little talk.”

I turned and sloshed through the shallow water.

“I'm right and you're wrong,” she said to my back.

It took all my will to keep sloshing.

“Is she?” Ty asked, once we were a safe distance away.

“What?
No
,” I said. “No way.”

We reached my blue-and-white striped beach towel, and I bumped him off my hip so that we could both plonk down.

“Hi, kids,” Mom said, glancing up from her novel. “Having fun?”

“Of course we are, because we always have fun at the pool,” I said. I didn't look at her, but kept my eyes on Ty. He
wasn't
having fun. My job wasn't done if Ty wasn't having fun.

“Oh, good,” Mom said. She returned to her novel.

“Can we have money for a snack?” I asked.

“I thought you didn't like the snacks here.”

“I don't. Can we?”

“Winnie, I packed lunch for us for this very reason.”

“But
Mo-o-o-m
—”

“Oh, fine,” she said, obviously more interested in getting back to her book than in arguing with me. She pulled a vinyl pouch from the pool bag, unzipped it, and gave me two dollars. “Chips or popsicles.
No
caffeine.”

“Come on,” I said, pulling Ty back up to standing. “Thanks, Mom!”

Erica stood in the knee-high water of the kiddie pool, her hands still on her hips. Her head swiveled as she tracked our movements, but we marched past her and paid her no mind. Ty started to, but I squeezed his hand and said, “Eyes straight ahead, buddy. Eyes straight ahead.”

We marched past the shallow end of the big pool. We marched past the snack bar.

“Wait,” Ty said, trotting to keep up. “We didn't get snacks.”

“We might later. That was just so Mom wouldn't ask where we were going.”

“Where
are
we going?”

We reached an empty-ish spot of lawn near the deep end of the pool. From here, we had a good view of the slide, the diving board, and the plain old swimming area.

“This'll work,” I said. I nodded, then sat down and dangled my feet in the water. I patted the cement next to me. “Sit. Observe. Learn.”

He dropped down beside me. He dangled
his
feet in the water. A person flew out of the end of the slide, which was shaped like a tunnel, and the splash made both of us recoil.

“Cool,” Ty said.

“Ehh,”
I said. “I've seen better. I've
done
better.”

I scanned the landscape of bodies, bodies, and more bodies, searching for someone who was unusual in one way or another. I had utter confidence I'd succeed. At the pool, if you opened your eyes and didn't just focus on backflips or whatever, there was
always
someone unusual.

Last week, for example, I went into the ladies' changing room to use the bathroom, and I saw a teenager put on a pair of undies that said
Tuesday
across the bottom, even though it was a Friday. I also saw an old lady—like,
Mom's
age—step into a pair of Ariel the Mermaid panties. I knew from going to New York that the Disney store did sell grown-up sizes of princess underwear. But boy, was it strange seeing an actual lady wearing a pair. Plus she had a nose ring. I could
not
imagine Mom with a nose ring. I couldn't imagine Ariel the Mermaid wearing a nose ring, either.

“Okay, here we go,” I said to Ty. “Diving board. Second girl in line.”

Ty looked over at the diving board. I looked at Ty. His eyebrows went up. “She's got a boy's bathing suit!” He tugged at my arm. “Winnie, that girl has on a boy's bathing suit!”

“They're called
board shorts
,” I explained. “But on top, she's wearing a bikini. See?”

“Why?”

“Why a bikini top, but shorts instead of a bikini bottom?” I shrugged. “Maybe she only likes her top half. Maybe she doesn't want people to see her thighs?”

“No idea.” I pointed at the part of the pool blocked off for swimming laps. “Now look at the dude practicing his backstroke, the one with all the chest hair.”

Ty's head swiveled, his expression open and curious. Then he threw himself against me, hugging my waist.

“I know,” I said.

He risked another peek at Chest Hair Man, who was wearing the type of man's swimsuit that
didn't
look like shorts. I think it was called a Speedo, that type of suit.

Ty whimpered and burrowed back into me.

“I know, I know,” I soothed. “Believe me, I know.”

“I can see his
mmmfffle
,” Ty said into my side.

I giggled—because of the
mmmfffle,
and also because his nose and chin were digging into my ribs. “Can you imagine if Dad wore a bathing suit like that?”

Ty drew back. “He won't, will he? Ever?”

“Not if Mom has anything to do with it,” I said. I spotted a new target and spoke quickly. “Ooo, there's a guy walking past us wearing superlong swim trunks. See him? Do you see his fingernails?”

“They're black,” Ty marveled.

“Uh-huh, because sometimes boys
do
paint their nails.”

“
And
their toenails?”

“If they want to,” I said.

Ty flexed his feet, lifting his chubby toes out of the water and admiring them. “Pink is better than black.”

“Thinks
you
,” I pointed out. “But that guy likes black better, apparently.” The guy was far enough away from us that I could use my normal voice again. “You're right, though. Black is more for zombie-hunting, not for going swimming on a beautiful summer day.”