1
OFF WITH THE OLD AND ON WITH THE NEW
Mom threw her hands in the air and slapped them back on the steering wheel. “S’mores!” she cried. “I can’t believe it’s been twenty years since I had a s’more!”
We’d been driving for three and a half hours, and Mom could not stop talking about The Showboat, the family resort in Eagle Waters where she had the Best Summer of Her Life—six years in a row. She chattered on about the time her water-ski team pranked the new kid by putting his swimsuit in the freezer, and the campfire tale that was so scary it made her True Blue Friend, Mary Pepper, pee her pants.
“Did I tell you about the time we found a skunk in the bathtub?” she asked. “A real live skunk. I screamed so loud someone called the fire department!”
“I’ve never had a s’more!” I said, and flipped a page in my issue of Wolverine and the X-Men. I hadn’t stopped grinning since Mom had shown up in the parking lot of Milwaukee West Elementary, stuck her head out the window of the Beemobile, and yelled, “Off with the OLD, on with the NEW!” loud enough for half the school to hear.
I was so glad to be done with fifth grade, I almost didn’t notice the country music blasting from the car radio. But I definitely noticed the back seat of the Beemobile—packed to the ceiling with all our stuff. I hugged my backpack and gaped at Mom.
“We’re moving?” I asked. “Today? Right now?”
Mom gave me a happy poke in the arm as she put her foot on the gas and pulled out of the parking lot. “Surprise!” she said.
I shrugged. Wherever we were headed, it couldn’t be lonelier than Milwaukee. I’d been there since March, and hardly anyone knew who I was. Even Mr. Smith still looked around at the boys when he called “Anthoni Gillis” for roll. I tried to remember the next spot on our list.
“Minneapolis?” I asked. I hoped we could get an apartment with a shower that didn’t leak. Or a landlord who didn’t stop by every few days to argue about electricity and rent.
“Nope.”
“Duluth?”
Mom tried to make her face look deadpan, but the corners of her mouth kept sneaking up.
“How about … The Showboat Resort?” She said it like it was any boring old town. Akron, Ohio, or Grand Rapids, Michigan. “It should take about four hours to get there.”
My jaw hung open and Mom’s laughter burst out like it had been killing her to hold it in so long.
“You did it?” I asked. “You got promoted to Queen Bee? How?”
I’m not a Negative Nelly, but as far as I knew, we weren’t anywhere near reaching our goal. Sales had been down, and we hadn’t signed up a new Worker Bee in months. Lately, Mom had been so desperate she’d been crashing conferences at hotels, trying to recruit Worker Bees in between breakout sessions. My lips spread into a grin.
“Was it the air-conditioning conference?”
Mom took a breath and smiled. Her eyes were tired and puffy even though I knew she’d gone through two jars of B&B’s Royal Radiance Eye Cream (made with Royal Jelly!) in the last month.
“I told you that was a good idea,” she said. “Air-conditioning manufacturers care as much about looking nice as anyone else does.”
I had a thousand questions: How many Worker Bees had she signed up? Fifty? We needed forty-five to reach Queen Bee. What did the CEO of Beauty & the Bee say? Were they going to fly us to St. Louis for another awards ceremony so they could pin Mom with a diamond bee?
Before I could ask any of them, relief hit me, and suddenly I couldn’t stop laughing. It was like a comic book. For months, we’d been stuck at that moment when Wolverine’s a goner, backed into a corner by a guy whose skin is impervious to metal, and you can’t help but wonder if this really is the end. But I should have known. That dark, all-is-lost moment is exactly when Storm shows up with a tornado to save her friend and blast the enemy off the page.
The air-conditioning conference was our tornado.
“We can get take-out pizza again!” I said, and laughed some more because I hadn’t even known until that minute that I cared about take-out pizza. “I can taste the pepperoni!”
Mom fiddled with her earring and gave me a funny look.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Of course! I just … It’s overwhelming, you know?”
“I know,” I said. “You worked really hard.”
Mom reached over and squeezed my knee. “WE worked really hard.”
“True.” I did a robot dance in my seat to make her laugh. “I am the best promotional products packer on the planet.”
“Ha!” Mom turned the radio to earsplitting volume. Just the way we like it.
“When the going gets tough, the tough get going!” she shouted. “And we’re going to The Showboat to have the Best Summer of Our Lives!”
2
NEXT HIVE DESTINATION: EAGLE WATERS
The website for The Showboat Resort hadn’t changed one bit since I was seven. It only had two things on it—the photo from the postcard, and four lines of text that Mom and I knew by heart. The minute we drove past the Welcome to Eagle Waters sign, we put on our best radio-announcer voices and traded lines.
“THE SPECTACULAR SHOWBOAT RESORT: Where True Blue Friends Meet!”
“EXPERIENCE the pine air—a TREAT for your lungs!”
“The resort of your DREAMS—AWAY from the modern world!”
A glimpse of blue water glistened between the trees on the left side of the highway.
“That’s Thunder Lake!” Mom said. Her eyes sparkled like Christmas Eve.
We shouted the last line with gusto as we drove past a yellow church, a gas station, and a small blue house with a sign that read Anna Lee’s Little Store.
“Don’t DELAY! Call TODAY: 555-SHO-BOAT!”
Mom pointed across the street from Anna Lee’s. “There’s the public beach. If they still give free swim lessons, I’ll sign you up.”
“That’s a beach?” It was an empty patch of sand the length of a school bus.
And then the trees closed in again. The branches got thicker and closer together until we couldn’t see Thunder Lake on the side of the road anymore.
“Where’s the rest of town?”
“That’s all,” Mom said. “Quaint, right?”
A pang of disappointment poked at me, but I pushed it away. There’d be so much to do at the resort, we’d never need to go to town.
After another mile, the GPS beeped. On the left side of the road, a wooden arrow with black hand-painted letters announced: THE SHOWBOAT RESORT.
Mom put on her blinker and winked at me.
“I forgot to tell you,” she said. “Remember Maddy Quinn? Mary Pepper’s daughter from Chicago? You two used to…”
Copyright © 2019 by Josephine Cameron
