Pee Wee Pool Party (5 page)

But as she paddled, she heard a pop! Then another one! It sounded like when her dad pulled a cork out of a bottle of wine!

Molly paddled on. There was only half the width of the pool to go now, and she’d have her badge.

Pop pop pop!
Now Molly’s face was getting wet! But Molly paddled on, faster and faster! She gave one last shove, and made it to the ladder on the other side of the pool! She did it! Plan B had worked!

Everyone cheered when Molly got out of the pool.

“Good for you!” said Mrs. Peters.

“What happened to your bumblebees?” shouted Sonny. “They aren’t fat anymore!”

Molly looked down at the bumblebees. Everyone must have noticed they had been thin, then fat, then thin again. But Sonny was right. They were not fat anymore! And Molly would walk without waddling.

“The balloons are gone,” whispered Molly to Mary Beth.

“They popped,” said Mary Beth, nodding. “You swam across most of the pool without them!”

Molly could not believe her ears. Plan B had turned into Plan A. She had actually won her badge legally!

“Hey, Duff,” asked Roger suspiciously, “what happened to those fat bees?”

Molly pretended she did not know what Roger meant. All was well that ended well, as Tracy’s mom would probably say.

After Mrs. Peters had seen everyone swim, the Pee Wees played water games. Then they sang their Pee Wee song and said their pledge right there at the pool.

When they were ready to leave, Nick toddled out of the water with something in his hand. Something yellow. He held it out to his mother.

“Boon!” he said. “Boon!”

“Why, yes, it is,” said his mother. “It’s a yellow balloon! I wonder how it got into the pool!”

But Nick was picking up more yellow balloons from the water! They were flat. And they had holes in them. Molly turned bright red.

“Should I tell her they’re mine?” Molly asked Mary Beth.

“Why?” said Mary Beth. “My mom says to let sleeping dogs lie. It means let things alone.”

And sure enough, Mrs. Peters just took the balloons from Nick and threw them into the trash can. There was no use looking for trouble, thought Molly. Mary Beth’s mother was probably right.

W
hen Molly got home she decided she should tell her parents about plan B. It didn’t seem honest to keep things from them. She didn’t like to keep secrets from her own family. Besides, she felt as if she would explode if she didn’t confess to someone besides Mary Beth.

Her parents listened while Molly told them about how she had sunk at first, and how the balloons had held her up.

“But when they popped, it didn’t matter. I swam by myself without sinking!” she said.

“Well, I think you learned something, Molly,” her father said. “It would have been much easier if you had come and told us the problem and learned to swim the right way.”

“You worked so hard to pretend,” said her mother. “And in the end you swam alone anyway! You could have done it without all that fuss.”

What her parents said made sense. But Molly never seemed to do things the easy way. She was stuck with a wild imagination. She was stuck doing things the hard way. But she had to admit, maybe she had just imagined that she couldn’t swim!

Anyway, it felt good to confess. Now only the good things were left, like getting the badges and seeing Jody’s new pool. And
soon the phone rang and Mrs. Peters said that they would do both of those together.

“We are going to give out the badges at Jody’s swimming party tomorrow at two o’clock,” she said.

The next day the Pee Wees couldn’t wait. Molly watched the clock and counted off the minutes as they went by. At last, at ten minutes to two, Mary Beth came to her door. Molly picked up her beach bag, and the two friends ran all the way to Jody’s.

When they got there, they saw a sign on the lawn that said
WELCOME TO THE PEE WEE POOL PARTY
!

Behind the sign was Jody’s house. It seemed to Molly to reach to the sky. The yard was full of flowers, and there was a big tent set up with tables full of food inside. Music floated out from the house, and balloons and paper lanterns hung from the trees.

“I don’t want to look at any more balloons,” muttered Molly.

“Wow!” said Mary Beth. “Jody
is
rich!”

The girls had known that Jody had a nice house, but they had not been inside it before.

“Do we go to the front door, or to the tent?” Mary Beth asked Molly.

“I think it’s polite to go to the door,” said Molly.

The girls walked up the smooth winding ramp for Jody’s wheelchair. The doorbell played a song when the girls pushed it.

A woman with a white apron on opened the door and said, “Come right in!” Molly knew it wasn’t Jody’s mother. It must be a maid!

“You can join the others out at the pool,” the woman said. “They’re all waiting for you.”

The girls walked slowly through the big house, sinking into the fat rugs and looking
up at the big crystal lights. At the back of the house was a long porch with comfortable chairs, and when they went out the door, Molly could not believe her eyes.

The big blue pool stretched before them in the sun. There were trees, bushes, and colorful flowers growing around it in all the right places. There were pool chairs and tables, and beach balls and rafts and inner tubes. A man greeted the girls and offered them cold drinks.

When Jody spotted them, he left everyone else and wheeled his chair in their direction.

“It’s our first pool party!” he said with a big smile.

“It’s great,” said Mary Beth.

Molly saw Mrs. Peters stretched out on a lounge chair, with little Nick. Roger was chasing Sonny around and around a little fountain in the garden. Kevin was diving into the pool. And Lisa and Patty and Kenny were in the dining tent putting shrimp with red sauce on flowery paper plates.

When he saw all the food, Roger came running up shouting and whistling.

Sonny’s mother tried to keep Roger from putting too much food on his plate. She was there, thought Molly, because she was the Pee Wees’ assistant leader. In a little while Mr. White came in too. Probably because he’d helped them learn to swim and get their badges, Molly decided.

“This tile around the pool is from Italy,” said Jody, pointing.

If someone else had said that, it would have sounded like bragging, thought Molly. But it never did when Jody said it. You could tell he was proud of his family’s home.

“This is like the movies,” said Mary Beth, holding a drink with pink ice and a tiny umbrella stuck into a piece of orange.

The girls sat down in the pool chairs to drink their drinks. There were wonderful yard smells in the air, of good food, sweet flowers, and chlorine from the pool.

As they sat there, Jody’s mom and dad came around to welcome each Pee Wee. Then Mr. George gave a little talk, telling them how glad he was to have them at the party, and to have a good time and enjoy swimming.

After that Mrs. Peters got up and made a few announcements. Most of the Pee Wees were too excited to listen. She thanked the Georges for having them all there, and then she said, “We’ll all have some wonderful food now, and while we are waiting an hour to go in the water, we’ll hand out the badges.”

As Roger and Sonny dove into the buffet table again, eating and talking at the same time, Ashley said, “Mrs. Peters, I know what our next badge should be. It should be
a badge for good manners.” Ashley glared at the boys.

“Those boys act like cavemen,” said Rachel. “They push and shove at the table and talk with their mouths full.”

Mrs. Peters laughed and said that a manners badge was not a bad idea.

As they were eating, Mrs. Peters called out their names, and each one of the Pee Wees came up and got his or her brand-new badge. It was a badge that Molly would never forget earning. Rat’s knees, it was beautiful!

As soon as the hour was up, the Pee Wees scrambled into Jody’s new pool. They played water games, and Mr. George led them in a water race.

Then Jody and Kevin showed Molly how to do the jellyfish float.

“When you go underwater, you don’t have to worry. You’ll come right to the top,” said Jody.

Molly had her badge. She didn’t have to learn anything else new. But she could see that Jody wanted her to learn. And besides, it was fun being in the pool now that she didn’t
have
to be!

Jody’s pool must have had some magic potion in it, because Molly did come right to the top! Instead of sinking, she popped up like a jack-in-the-box!

“The main thing is not to panic,” said Kevin. “You have to relax.”

Molly knew that, but it had never worked before. This time she trusted her friends. Jody and Kevin would not let her down. They would not trick her the way Roger would.

Now she could swim, and she could float. Without balloons in her suit.

Rat’s knees! It looked as if it was going to be a fun-filled summer in Jody’s new pool, with the Pee Wees!

  (to the tune of  
“Old MacDonald Had a Farm”)