The Pink Girl

I'm right on the edge. It's not that high up, but the way the board wobbles under my clenched toes makes me afraid. Side-to-side, like turbulence. I didn't expect that. I also didn't expect the board to feel so rough, like lumpy sandpaper. I though it'd be smooth and slippy. But it's not.

Around the pool, about eight million kids are staring at me. They've all completely stopped whatever they were doing, I swear to God, leaving their beach balls hanging in mid-air. My brother stomps on the board, sending me skittering.

"Go, you turkey!" My brother has decided to put on a show, now that we have everyone's attention. He throws his shoulders back and rolls his eyes for the pink girl.

"I'm gonna go. Just don't shake the diving board, okay?" I glance once more around. My mother isn't watching - she's lying on a lawn chair reading an old Cosmo. Dad's back at the camper doing something with a wrench. So it's just me and about eight million kids and my brother and the pink girl.

My brother's staring at her. He's doing this incredibly nerdy thing that always makes me feel really sorry for him, scrunching his face up, like this, to get his glasses back up his nose. The pink girl is holding her shoulders, looking right me. Her lips are a little blue. Her expression seems hopeful. When she twitches her finger, I dive.

My back smacks on the surface of the water and somehow my legs flip over my head. Then I'm rushed under water, where it's all light blue - everything. Up, down, left and right. Still, I'm certain my brother will dive bomb in about one second and land on my head. I push out of the way, giving a strong froggy kick with both legs. Instantly, something slams into my nose, pushing my teeth through my tongue and making me gasp a lungful of water. The side of the pool.

I kick up and break the surface. Blood pours from my nose and mouth. Behind me, my brother's dive bomb smacks the water and sends a wave that almost sucks me back from the edge. It returns a surge of hatred that propels me out of the pool, water blurred, bloody and shocked. I can't see my mother. So I just stand there, shivering, until her hand takes my elbow.

"Come with me, honey, for God's sake. You're bleeding all over the deck." My mother hands me a tiny crumpled Kleenex. She's got them tucked down her bathing suit all day. She escorts me from the pool area. The Kleenex lasts eight seconds.

My mother gives me ice cubes to suck on and puts a cold cloth on my face. I should probably have stitches. Instead, we go to the Thompsons’ for dinner. Later, I lie on my bunk in the camper, feeling the gash in my tongue with my lip. The hole goes all the way through. All I remember about dinner at the Thompsons’ is, they have a gigantic fridge with an icemaker in the door.

The next day I stay in and read Betty and Veronica comics all morning, until someone knocks on the camper door. It's the pink girl. I hold the door open and nod hello, because my mouth is full of ice and I'm not about to spit it out in front of the pink girl. She says hi, and then asks, "Is your brother here?" I shake my head no, and make a "swimming" gesture with my hands.

"Oh," says the pink girl, "Do you wanna go for a bike ride?"

I point to my mouth and shrug my shoulders.

The pink girl peers around me into the camper. "Did you get stitches?"

I shake for no. Then I decide, to hell with it, and spit out the ice cube. "I bit right through my tongue,” I tell her.

"Ew, " she says. "Let's go for a walk, then."

"Okay,” I say. I put on my new Earth shoes.

The pink girl and I start walking. "What's your name?" she asks me, looking around.

"Allison, " I tell her, looking the other way around.

"Mine's Felicia Nightingale."

As soon as she tells me, I know she's lying. Nobody in the world's name is Felicia Nightingale, even in 1976. So I say, "Everybody calls me Allie, like Ali McGraw." which is mostly true.

"Where are you from?" she asks me.

"Canada. We're visiting my grandparents. Where are you from?"

She gives a little wave of her hand. "Oh, here and there," she says . "We travel around a lot, you know. New York, Miami, Chicago ... those kind of places." She says it like Chicargo.

"Is that so?" I say. Because now I know for sure she's lying like crazy. And I think, she probably thinks I don't know anything, because I can't dive off a diving board. She probably thinks I'm some kind of stupid know-nothing. But I have already read all the books my parents stashed in the camper, including a fat paperback about a war in the Middle East and there's a scene of this woman having sex with a black man and she pours Coke on his penis.

So I tell her, "As a matter of fact, I'm actually from Switzerland. I was born there."

"Really," she says. "What's it like?"

"Oh, a lot of mountains. The part where we lived."

"Do you speak Swiss?"

"Of course, " I tell her. "We speak it all the time at home."

"Wow. So how do you say, my name is Felicia, in Swiss?"

I do not hesitate. "Nard beet Felicia dee," I say.

She tries it out: "Nard beet Felicia dee." She points at me:"Nard beet..?"

"Nard beet Allie dee."

We stroll through the campground, Felicia pointing at things and me going "Nard beet smurgle dee" and then Felicia repeating. She puts her arm through mine and begins to canter like a pony. It kind of hurts my tongue, but I canter too.

The next day, Felicia and I meet really early at the pool. We swim and splash and laugh our heads off. My brother shows up after a while and you can tell he's not too happy about me making friends with the pink girl. He jumps in the pool and right away starts plowing water into my face.

"Cut it out, jerkoff," I tell him.

Felicia catches my eye. "Noots simp dabble inks," she hisses.

So I do. Ducking right to the bottom, I swim toward my brother. Felicia slinks in from the other side. Each of us grabs a leg. We catapult him from the water, and he smacks face first back in, without time to plug his nose or anything. He sputters and kicks at us. "I'm gonna kill you!" he yells.

"Snackle!" says Felicia. She grabs my hand and we kick toward the edge of the pool, escaping up the ladder just before my brother reaches us. But he doesn't. The lifeguard has already thrown him out for running.

Safe in our lawn chairs, I say to Felicia "Snag bert wappo dunk." She smiles and nods and closes her eyes. So do I. When my brother leaves, our eyes pop open. I think of something excellent to say in Swiss, while Felicia does a perfect handstand right on the lip of the deep end. I would do one too, except for my tongue.