Piper Morgan Makes a Splash

by Stephanie Faris

  For Doug, the best stepdad anyone could ask for

  CHAPTER

  1

  It was hot outside. The perfect day to jump into a gigantic, cold pool.

  Only the pool in front of me was on TV. It was part of a commercial. Before I could start daydreaming about jumping in, the camera went to a man with a big smile.

  “Summer is here! It’s time to buy a pool! We have inground pools, aboveground pools, hot tubs, and tanning beds!”

  I pressed the minus button on the remote control. That much noise wasn’t good for anybody.

  “Piper? What did I tell you about watching too much TV?” Mom asked.

  I thought for a minute. I stared up at the ceiling. I think staring at the ceiling helps me think better.

  “Um . . .”

  I had nothing.

  Mom was staring at the TV. “That’s where we’re going,” she said, a smile slowly replacing the frown on her face. “That’s my new job.”

  I looked at the TV. The news was on, and it was just a guy talking.

  “The commercial before that,” Mom said. “That’s my new job.”

  “The pool place?” I asked, sounding shrieky as I stood up. That was the most exciting news ever. When she had talked about it earlier, it sounded like a place where they sold chairs and stuff. She didn’t mention they had real pools!

  My mom works lots of different jobs, but only for short times. That means I get to go on new adventures, like the circus and a school principal’s office. Each adventure brought new friends!

  But before we could have this next adventure, we had to get food for the week, do laundry, and help to tidy up around Nanna’s house. We started staying with Nanna when Mom got a job at a school forty-five minutes away. That was lots of driving, but now Mom has a job that is only two minutes away from Nanna’s house and it’s at a pool place. That is just magnificent.

  “Magnificent” is a new word I learned. I’m trying it out. Mag-nif-i-cent!

  Mom told me I was dawdling and she wasn’t “going to wait around all day, missy.” Plus, she had a surprise for me. Surprises were good. Surprises maybe meant we were stopping by the clothing store that had all the purses and backpacks and jewelry.

  “Come on, Oreo,” I said to Nanna’s dog, a little black-and-white terrier that Nanna says is a “terror.” I ran down the hall to my room with Oreo on my heels. If I was really good, Mom might let me come to her new job!

  Splash Fact #1

  Grown-ups always say watching too much TV is bad for you. How do you know if you’re watching too much TV, though? Here are some clues:

  #1 You think about your favorite TV show all the time.

  #2 You know more about the people you watch on TV than your own friends.

  #3 You skip fun things because you don’t want to miss your favorite show.

  #4 You ask your mom to bring you things so you don’t have to take your eyes off the screen.

  #5 You compare all your friends to characters on your favorite shows.

  CHAPTER

  2

  A couple of hours later Mom pulled the car into a big shopping plaza with a very familiar sign.

  “We have inground pools, aboveground pools, hot tubs, and tanning beds!” I said, just like the man on TV had said it.

  Mom looked at me funny. She stopped looking because she had to find a parking space. That meant eyes on the road.

  I waited until she was all parked to ask the question I really, really wanted to ask. It was the most important question of all the questions ever asked.

  “Do you get a free pool for working here?”

  Nanna had a backyard. It wasn’t a big backyard, but big enough for a pool, I’ll bet. I could swim all summer and Nanna and Mom could hang out by the pool and drink lemonade. Maybe I could invite some friends to enjoy my nanna’s new pool too. We could all teach Oreo how to swim. (Can dogs swim?)

  All of that would be magnificent.

  “No,” Mom said. “But I do have a couple of surprises for you.”

  I smiled. I liked surprises.

  There was a big truck in the parking lot that had the word PRODUCTION on the side. A guy standing next to it had a black T-shirt that read CREW.

  “What’s that?” I asked as we walked toward the building.

  Mom looked over. “Hmm. They must be shooting a commercial today or something. How exciting for you!”

  I bounced up and down a little as I walked. A real TV commercial. Maybe they’d put me in it, and I could become a TV star! I could yell, “We have inground pools, aboveground pools, hot tubs, and tanning beds!” better than anyone in the whole wide world.

  I didn’t see the cameras at first, but while Mom was talking to the woman behind the counter, I saw them! They weren’t that far away, either. And best of all—they were moving.

  “We also have all the pool liners and supplies you need,” another man said to the camera. I knew the voice. That was the guy from the TV commercial.

  Now was my chance to be super famous. I just had to show them what I had. They’d move the camera to me and everyone would see me for just that second.

  “We have inground pools, aboveground pools, hot tubs, and tanning beds!”

  I said the words as loudly as I could. I was also walking toward the camera as I said it, putting me right behind the man who had been talking. He was now looking at me. And so was the camera.

  “Hi!” I said cheerily, waving and smiling my biggest smile. “I’m Piper Morgan.”

  Someone behind me gasped. It was my mom. She was standing there staring at me, and I knew that look on her face.

  She was not happy.

  Splash Fact #2

  Most people think all dogs can swim. That’s what “doggy paddle” means, after all. Throw a dog in a pool and he’ll start moving his legs, right?

  Wrong.

  Some dogs can swim without even being taught. They just know. Some dogs might not know what to do when they first are in water, but they can learn. And some dogs would just sink to the bottom if you didn’t hold them up.

  If you aren’t sure which one your dog is, have your mom or dad hold your dog up in the water to see what he does. If he’s a natural swimmer, you’ll know pretty soon.

  CHAPTER

  3

  My mom was mad at me because I didn’t “show responsibility, young lady.” And that’s bad.

  I’m not so good at the “responsibility” thing, even though I try really hard. Just when I show my mom I can be the most responsible seven-year-old girl ever, I mess up.

  “Am I going to work with you?” I asked Mom as I climbed into the backseat. She had told me to wear my bathing suit under my clothes, so I was hoping that meant I would be helping out somehow. It was the next morning after the “fiasco” at the pool store. That’s what my mom called it. See, when I yelled out to the camera, they were live. That meant people who were watching the morning news saw me on TV.

  I was excited about that, but I couldn’t let my mom know.

  “No,” Mom said. “You’re going to a place where you’ll hopefully get rid of some of that energy you have.”

  We pulled up to a building with a sign that read FAMILY CENTER. Mom was going to work, so it couldn’t be for “family,” whatever we were doing. It would just be me.

  “Is it a daycare?” I asked Mom. “Will there be other kids there?”

  “Yes,” Mom said. “Well, sort of. We’re signing you up for the ‘guppies’ program. You’ll get to learn to be a guppy.”

  A guppy was a fish. I knew that because I’d had a book about fish when I was a little kid.

  Wait. Did that mean I would have to get in the water like a fish too? Even tho
ugh I loved the idea of a pool, I didn’t know how to swim yet.

  I wanted to ask more questions, but Mom was in “I mean business” mode. When she’s like that, she doesn’t really hear me. She just says words like “uh-huh” and “I see,” which mean, “You may as well be talking to the wall.”

  “Which way to the guppies sign-up?” Mom asked the smiley girl at the entrance.

  The girl pointed to the left. “Are you excited about being a guppy?” she asked me.

  Mom had my hand, though, and she was tugging on it as she walked away. So I just gave the girl a funny look and ran after my mom. That wasn’t very nice, I thought. I wanted to go back and be nice and ask what a guppy was.

  But in front of us was a small group of kids, all standing in a crowd. There were two boys and three girls.

  Their parents were in a line. I wanted to hang with the kids.

  “Go ahead,” Mom said, before I could even ask.

  I ran straight to the group, slowing down as I got closer. I didn’t want to scare them. “I’m Piper!” I announced. They were all looking at me, so what else could I say?

  “Are you a guppy?” one of the girls asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I think so. What does a guppy do?”

  “Swim,” one of the boys said.

  Oh no. “I can’t,” I said. “I don’t know how.”

  I waited for them to laugh at me. But they didn’t laugh at all.

  “We can’t swim either,” one of the girls said. “That’s what a guppy is. We’re learn-to-swimmers.”

  “Learn-to-swimmers.” I liked that!

  “Mom!” I said, turning to look at her. She was talking to a woman in line. A responsible guppy wouldn’t keep yelling at her when she was busy, busy, busy. So I turned back and talked to my new friends. We would all be guppies together.

  And maybe . . . if I showed Mom that I could be a good, “responsible” swimmer, I could help her out at the pool place after all!

  Splash Fact #3

  Did you know there are different kinds of swimming pools? Some you can have in your own backyard. Some you have to pay to swim in. How many of these pools have you swam in?

  #1 Aboveground pools. These pools aren’t very big, but they’re perfect for families! None of the pool goes below the ground.

  #2 Inground pools. These are the kinds of pools that go in a hole in the ground. Many residences and families have these!

  #3 Olympic-size pools. Most homes don’t have these. They’re really big! A lot of athletes use these to do laps and train for their sport. A lot of public pools are Olympic size too.

  CHAPTER

  4

  There were six people in my swim class. Two of the girls, Erin and Annabelle, were my favorites. Erin was going on vacation and wanted to know how to swim first. And Annabelle’s family just got a new pool.

  “My mom works at the pool place!” I said when I heard that. “They sell inground pools, aboveground pools, hot tubs, and tanning beds!”

  Erin and Annabelle didn’t know about that commercial. But that was okay. I told them my big news.

  “They were on TV and I was there,” I said. “I yelled out, ‘I’m Piper Morgan!’ ”

  “Wow, you’re famous!” Erin exclaimed.

  “That’s great!” Annabelle added.

  “Only my mom wasn’t happy,” I said, frowning. “She says I’m not ‘responsible.’ ”

  “ ’Cause you were on TV?” Annabelle asked. “That’s silly.”

  “I know!” I was so excited that someone else thought it was silly. “She said I shouldn’t have interrupted the commercial.”

  “You weren’t supposed to be in the commercial?” Erin asked.

  “Well . . . no,” I admitted.

  Erin and Annabelle looked at each other. They didn’t look too impressed anymore.

  “I didn’t mean to do it,” I told them. “It just slipped out.”

  That was true. When I saw the cameras, I just blurted out the line from the commercial. Just like I had when I heard Annabelle had a new pool.

  They looked at each other again, but this time they nodded. They were on my side, I could tell. I liked that.

  “I just have to be a really good swimmer,” I said. “Then my mom will let me work at the pool place with her.”

  “And maybe you can be in a commercial,” Annabelle said. “Everyone likes commercials with kids in them.”

  We had to practice going underwater then, so I didn’t get to talk to my friends anymore. But I thought about what Annabelle said. A commercial would be the best thing ever. It would be even better than being on live TV for a second, because it would play over and over and over and over again.

  Mom was really proud of me, she said when she picked me up after swimming class to take me back to Nanna’s.

  “Am I showing responsibility?” I asked, hoping, hoping, hoping she’d say yes.

  “Yes, you are,” Mom said with a laugh.

  “Can I go back to the pool place with you tomorrow?” I asked. “I’ll be really good. I promise.”

  “Maybe,” she said. “We’ll see how you do tonight with taking your bath and getting to bed on time.”

  That was no problem at all. I liked taking my bath, although sometimes I stayed in the tub until my fingertips got all wrinkly. I also liked going to bed, but only if I could read my book first. Tonight I wouldn’t beg to read just one more chapter. When Mom said, “Lights out,” I’d say, “Okay.”

  “Are they going to do a new commercial for your pool place?” I asked Mom as we pulled into Nanna’s driveway.

  Mom gave me a funny look. For a second I thought she might have figured out I wanted to be on TV again. It was a scary second. I was smart, though.

  “Just ’cause I’m tired of seeing the other one,” I said quickly. “I think they should do a new one.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” she said. “They’re doing a new commercial very soon, as a matter of fact. We’ll have to watch TV until we see it come on.”

  I smiled. I had to be the most responsible seven-year-old ever to make sure Mom let me be in the commercial. My plan would work, I was sure of it!

  Splash Fact #4

  Have you ever seen your favorite TV star on a commercial? Those are called “spokespeople.” Companies pay famous people lots of money to shoot a thirty-second commercial saying nice things about their products.

  Sometimes you don’t even see famous people on a commercial. You just hear their voices. And then it bugs you for days and days because you can’t figure out where you’ve heard that voice before.

  Most of the time the people you see on commercials aren’t famous at all. But they get to be on TV. Which kind of makes them famous.

  CHAPTER

  5

  I followed Mom into the pool place, my backpack bouncing against my back as I moved. I was walking behind Mom, but not fast enough. She had to keep stopping and wait for me to catch up.

  Mom was late. It wasn’t my fault. I was ready with lots of minutes left. She’d been on the phone with the recruiter for a long time and she didn’t want to be rude. She almost left me at home with Nanna because “there’s not enough time,” but I’d said “please, please, please, please” until she knew she’d be even later if she kept arguing with me.

  Mom walks really fast when she’s late. She walks fast when she’s not late too, but even faster when she’s late.

  I moved my legs as fast as I could, but I had to run to keep up with her. Finally we got to the front door and she rushed inside, letting me run in behind her. I was hoping she’d forget about me and I could go play, but nope.

  “You’ll be in here until lunch, and then I’ll take you home,” Mom said, leading me into an office near the front of the store. “Just do your summer reading and be really, really quiet, okay?”

  “Then can I tour the store?” I ask. “If I’m quiet, can I help you work?”

  “We’ll see,” she said, closing the d
oor behind her.

  “We’ll see” is something grown-ups say when they don’t want to say no just yet. “We’ll see” always becomes no. Don’t ever believe “we’ll see.”

  Mom left and went off to do her work. I looked around the office. This wasn’t what today was supposed to be. My mom worked at a pool place. I wanted to look at all the awesome pools and hot tubs and stuff. I wanted to help her work.

  I sat in my chair with my backpack still on. I grabbed a book. I opened it. I stared at the words. That lasted about three seconds before I looked up at the door.

  There were pools on the other side of that door. One had water in it. I’d seen it with my very own two eyes. I also had my bathing suit in my backpack. I could change into it and maybe talk Mom into letting me swim. Since there weren’t any customers around, she probably wouldn’t mind, right? I could even demonstrate some of the pools to customers and maybe make them want to buy them. That would make me the best pool store worker ever.

  I changed into my cutest ever bathing suit with the polka dots all over. I couldn’t swim without something to hold me up, though. I walked to the door and looked through the window. There they were—the answers to all my questions. Hanging from the ceiling were inner tubes. I just had to get one of those. There were probably some on the floor somewhere.

  I opened the door, looked both ways, and sneaked out. I didn’t see any other people, but I knew I had to get to where nobody could see me. A little girl running around in her bathing suit would be hard to miss.

  I ran straight for the big, tall shelves and hid between two of them. Then I started looking for inner tubes. Or anything that could help me float. I couldn’t swim on my own yet, but that would be okay. Mom would see me in the pool and know I was all grown up now.

  There were no floaty things anywhere. I didn’t understand why. I sneaked to more shelves the next aisle over. On my third aisle, I found a stack of inner tubes. Only they were all flat.