"Don't forget your face." Shelley watched Amy applying sunscreen while she smeared Maggie's arms with glittery sunblock, one after the other. "You're so pale, you'd turn lobster red. Remember last year? You forgot to spread any around on your back, and the next day it was burnt except for one neon white handprint."

"Yeah, yeah, I remember. You're the one who didn't bring a swimsuit." Amy daubed the back of her neck, then tossed her sunscreen bottle into her father's car. She threw her sunglasses in too and squinted across the lake. The glare from reflected sunlight hurt her eyes, but she knew from experience that she would lose the sunglasses if she took them swimming.

"I needed to buy a new one anyways. My old one is getting too small."

"True. What if there hadn't been a Wal-Mart on the way?"

"Well... it wouldn't be the first time I've gone swimming in shorts and a T-shirt. Hold still, Maggie, I'm almost done." Shelley lifted the little girl's pigtails to smear her shoulders, then turned her around and carefully did her face. "There. You look like you rolled in pixiedust."

Maggie giggled, then saw Amy start towards the beach. "Can I swim out to the island with you guys?" she begged, hopping from one foot to the other in hopeful suspense.

Amy halted. Shelley hesitated and exchanged glances with her friend, who shrugged unenthusiastically. The bother of having a little kid along aside, they knew from previous visits that swimming to the island was harder than it looked.

Then she took another look at Maggie's eyes and felt her resistance evaporate. Maggie was a person too, and she just wanted to be included.

Shelley squatted to bring her eye level down to Maggie's. "All right, you can come, but you need to listen to Amy and me. Okay?"

Maggie nodded earnestly, her pigtails bouncing up and down.

Shelley put Maggie's glittery sunblock and her own glasses away, told three sets of parents where they were going, and set off across the lake beach with the others, walking towards the nearest of the two fingers of land extending towards the island.

Dry lakeweed left by receding waterlines crunched pleasantly under their feet. Nearer the water, they sank up to their ankles in silty mud. Amy shivered as they splashed into the shallows, then sucked in a breath and plunged forward, getting the immersion shock over with all at once. The muddy brown water changed to a clearer translucent green as they paddled further out, increasing in depth and clarity. The island drew nearer with maddening slowness, and more than once Maggie had to rest by clinging to the shoulders of one girl or the other. Shelley made her swim the last few feet to the island herself, though.

"Oh, look! Fool's gold!" Maggie bounded off down the beach, exclaiming over bright flecks of pyrite pooled in the sand. Shelley let her go, since the island was no more than twenty yards wide and she could see all of it by standing up. Amy flopped down on a rocky outcrop, panting. She wasn't as strong a swimmer as Shelley was.

"I don't think I can make it back if I have to tow Maggie again," she wheezed.

"Me, either," Shelley admitted, though she wasn't as winded as Amy was. "Maybe we can go back over the causeway."

Amy looked towards the second point of land, south of the one they had come from. The causeway was really a manmade access road, running from the southern point out to the island. It was submerged for most of the year, but close enough to the surface to wade on during the dry summer months.

"It'd still be too deep for Maggie."

"She can hang on to us."

"Sounds like a plan." Amy shifted to keep the summer sun from baking any one patch of skin too thoroughly. "Uh... what's that she's stepping in?"

Maggie was still tearing up and down the beach, oblivious to the feathers and black lumps scattered across her path.

"It's goose poop."

"That's what I thought."

They stayed on the island long enough to make the swim worthwhile, enjoying the solitude and pleasant temperature; it was cooler here than on the beach. True to her word, Maggie didn't protest when it was time to go. She waited quietly in the shallows with Shelley while Amy swam a few yards out towards the southern point, then zigzagged, searching her shadow in the green water below for any hint of the smokiness that would signal the submerged causeway's presence.

When she could put her feet down, she stood in the shoulder-high water and beckoned to Shelley.

"Okay, Maggie. Swim to Amy." Shelley gave Maggie a push in Amy's direction. Maggie kicked off enthusiastically, sending a wave of lake water into Shelley's face, and covered the distance between the two olders girls easily. While she alternately swam circles around Amy or clung to her shoulders to rest, Shelley swam some distance past both of them and cast about for the causeway. Once she found a place to stand, Amy sent Maggie to her and then swam beyond them again.

So they leapfrogged over the causeway, a few yards at a time. Amy complained that it took forever; Shelley said it was a great way to wash off goose poop. When they reached the shore, Maggie gave them a parting wave and ran off to play in the mud by the adults.

"Why'd you let her come?" Amy asked under her breath. "Not that I really mind, but..."

Shelley sat down on the edge of her parent's car hood, wincing as the hot metal seared bare skin, and balanced with her toes on the bumper. "You know that Mrs. Hogan isn't her real mom, right?"

"No, actually." Amy went to the trunk and found two sodas and a towel. She handed the sodas to Shelley and spread the towel so she could sit next to Shelley without burning herself. "I didn't."

Shelley handed one soda back to Amy. "Maggie visited her real mom a few weeks ago," she continued. "She played with the hose in her mom's back yard and sprayed a big wasp nest. They stung her a dozen times before she could get inside because she was too panicked to get the sliding door open."

Amy's mouth twisted. She was allergic to wasp stings, herself. "Couldn't anyone hear her crying?"

"Her mom was watching soaps with a girlfriend. They had the TV turned up too loud to hear Maggie."

"Ah. How'd you know?"

"Mr. Hogan told me."

The sunlight dappled wildly then. They looked up to see a flock of Canadian geese flying low on their way to the water, their honks almost drowning out Maggie's squeals of delight.

Amy turned her palms up in surrender. "Okay, I'm glad we took her. Let's just bring her a life jacket or something next time."

Shelley looked blank. "I am such an amnesiac!"

She jumped off the hood and plunged through the passenger window to rummage around under the car seats, sifting through dirty towels and squashed paper cups. Finally, she held up a pair of brightly printed inflatable swim bubbles, a little gritty but obviously brand-new.

"I got them at Wal-Mart along with my swimsuit," she confessed. "I wanted to surprise Maggie. Then I forgot all about them. Heh..."

-The End

Island Swim @ Tripleguess 2003. Readers may freely reproduce and archive copies for noncommercial use.