Chapter 1

The thing about Mrs. Kenly is, she doesn’t deserve to get barfed on, especially not when she’s wearing a fur coat.

Of course it had to be me who barfed on her.

I mean, some parents, well, you wouldn’t feel a hundred percent sorry if you threw up on them. (Like Mrs. Landon. She laughed at me that time I had toilet paper stuck to my shoe.) But whenever I go to my friend Katy’s, Mrs. Kenly gives us these huge chocolate chip cookies she keeps in the freezer. “Here ya go, kidlets,” she’ll say. Then she’ll sit and ask you how school was and everything. Not for hours, so you’d get bored or embarrassed, just long enough. Or sometimes she takes us to the movies. You know she doesn’t really want to see some movie about a princess or a dolphin or whatever. But she’ll take us anyway and act interested.

I mean, Mrs. Kenly SO doesn’t deserve to get barfed on.

What happened was, we were going to Courtney Kling’s birthday party and it was cold. I mean it was about a thousand below zero. If you stepped outside in your party coat like I did, you’d start shivering in one minute. So it was kind of weird and fun that the party was all about going swimming.

Mrs. Kling belongs to a special club that has this indoor pool; even when it’s a thousand below, you can put on last summer’s bathing suit and dive in. Meanwhile, right outside, people are walking around with steam coming out of their noses.

In the summer, we go to a pool near our house and swim like mad, every day. Plus, I take diving lessons from Mr. Jarvis. He is really tan because he’s ALWAYS in the sun showing kids how to dive. Also, he has a REALLY hairy chest (not from the sun, of course). When he puts his arms around you to show you the right position, it’s like you’re getting a lesson from a bear.

I’ve learned four tricks so far: I can do a flip and I can do a handstand on the edge and then dive in. Also, I can do a swan dive or a jackknife.

“There ya go, Ariel!” Mr. Jarvis’ll say after a good dive. He calls me Ariel, like the Little Mermaid from that old movie. “Born to swim, ya were, Ariel, born to dive!” he’ll say, with a pirate accent. When people call me Cleo, my regular name, he looks confused.

Mr. Jarvis thinks I could be an Olympic diver if I want. “There’s gold in your future, Ariel, gold!” he’ll say. But the trouble is, when I try to dive backward, I feel like I’m lost in space. I flop on the water in some awful position, SMAPP! Plus, I can’t help it—I yell. The whole thing is just too embarrassing for words. So I don’t think I’ll be in the Olympics because you have to be able to dive backward without SMAPPing or yelling. I’ll just keep doing my four tricks, over and over. And that’s fine. I’m happy with my four tricks.

Anyway, back to Mrs. Kenly and her fur coat.