by Jamie McEwan
WHITEWATER
SCRUBS
BY
JAMIE MCEWAN
ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOHN MARGESON
MINNEAPOLIS
To Thomas Edmund McEwan
Text copyright © 2005 by Jamie McEwan
Illustrations by John Margeson © 2005 by Lerner Publishing Group, Inc.
All rights reserved. International copyright secured. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc., except for the inclusion of brief quotations in an acknowledged review.
Darby Creek
A division of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc. 241 First Avenue North Minneapolis, MN 55401 U.S.A.
Website address: www.lernerbooks.com
Cataloging-in-Publication
McEwan, James.
Whitewater scrubs / by Jamie McEwan.
p. ; cm.
ISBN-13: 978-1-58196-038-9
ISBN-10: 1-58196-038-7
Summary: Spring is in the air, and Clara has joined the “Scrubs” as they take up whitewater kayaking. Usually she’s one of the star athletes, but the whitewater has her scared!
1. Middle school students—Juvenile fiction. 2. Athletes—Juvenile fiction. 3. Kayaking—Juvenile fiction. 4. Self-perception—Juvenile fiction. [1. Middle school students—Fiction. 2. Athletes—Fiction. 3. Kayaks and kayaking—Fiction. 4. Self-perception—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.M478463 Wh 2005
[Fic] dc22
OCLC: 57625141
Manufactured in the United States of America
7/1/11
eISBN: 978-0-7613-8594-3 (pdf)
eISBN: 978-1-4677-6778-1 (ePub)
eISBN: 978-1-4677-3144-7 (mobi)
CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1: TOO COOL FOR COMFORT
CHAPTER 2: WIDEST EYES
CHAPTER 3: SPLASH!
CHAPTER 4: WHITEWATER WIMP
CHAPTER 5: NOTHING TO PROVE
CHAPTER 6: COLD AND STUFF
CHAPTER 7: YARD SALE
CHAPTER 8: KICK!
CHAPTER 9: BEING A SCRUB
CHAPTER 10: RACE DAY
CHAPTER 11: WET AND WILD
CHAPTER 1
TOO COOL FOR COMFORT
Clara sat in her kayak, blowing on her hands to warm them and wondering how she had let herself get talked into doing this stupid sport.
She was okay where she was, sitting in the calm water near the riverbank. But only ten yards away, the river was rushing by with a growling sound.
Out there in the current, the water was kicking up into waves. Ms. Parker, the instructor, was surfing the waves, going back and forth.
Fun for Ms. Parker, maybe.
But soon Clara would have to go out there.
She didn’t want to.
It was early spring. The trees were still bare of leaves. The air was still chilly. The water was still freezing. It was too cold to be kayaking.
Clara looked at the others. Willy and Dan and Rufus were all bobbing in the eddy beside her.
It’s all Willy’s fault, thought Clara.
He’s the one who said it would be cool to go kayaking every day instead of going out for a school sport.
“I didn’t know we had to do rapids,” said Clara softly.
“That’s what it’s all about!” said Willy. “The Scrubs take on the wild river!”
“Yeah! Isn’t this cool?” said Dan.
“No, it’s not cool,” said Rufus. “It makes me nervous. Doesn’t it make you nervous?”
“Yeah,” said Willy.
“Nah,” said Dan. Dan was the smallest kid in the class, even smaller than Willy. But Dan wasn’t afraid of anything.
Clara didn’t say another word. She was afraid that if she talked, they might be able to tell how she felt.
Because Clara wasn’t just nervous. She was really, really scared.
CHAPTER 2
WIDEST EYES
Until today, they had only paddled their kayaks on a pond. They had learned how to paddle in a straight line, how to turn, and how to lean their kayaks on their sides. Clara had done fine on the pond. But this was different.
“I should have gone out for lacrosse,” said Clara. Willy gave her a funny look, so she didn’t say anything more. But she couldn’t help thinking how nice and dry and not scary playing lacrosse would be.
“Okay, Willy, it’s your turn,” said Ms. Parker as she came into the eddy alongside them. “Paddle out there into the current, go straight down the little drop, and then turn into the eddy on the right. Got it?”
Taking a deep breath, Willy nodded and started paddling.
“Remember to lean downstream!” called Ms. Parker. “Lean hard! Paddle! Keep paddling! Yeah! Way to go!”
Willy’s kayak plunged over the drop and pitched up and down in the waves. Then he turned it into the calm water near shore. Willy looked back up at Clara, Dan, and Rufus and raised his paddle in the air.
“Yee-ha! Come on down, guys! It’s great!” called Willy.
Dan’s turn was next. He paddled hard. He was so light that he seemed to float over the waves. Dan made it look easy.
Then Rufus started paddling.
Rufus was big and strong, but he wasn’t a tough guy. He was more like a really big teddy bear. And right now he looked too big for his kayak.
And he looked nervous.
Just as Rufus got to the current, he stopped paddling. The current caught him, and he slowly fell over.
Bloop! Rufus disappeared.
For a couple of seconds, there was no Rufus to be seen—just the bottom of his boat floating along in the current. Then his head popped up out of the water. He had come out of his boat. Rufus was coughing and had the widest eyes Clara had ever seen.
Right away, Ms. Parker was beside him. “Hold on!” she shouted. “Grab my boat!”
Ms. Parker paddled Rufus and his kayak to shore.
Clara was the only one left in the eddy.
She started breathing hard.
She couldn’t believe she was really going to do this.
CHAPTER 3
SPLASH!
“All right, Clara!” called Ms. Parker from below. “Come on down!”
Clara bit her lip.
“Come on, Clara!” shouted Willy.
Soon they were all shouting encouragement—even Rufus, who was dripping wet and standing on the bank.
“You can do it! Yay, Clara!”
“I can’t,” said Clara softly. She knew that no one could hear her over the sound of the water. “I just can’t.”
“Go for it!” shouted Willy.
Clara had always been a good athlete— better than Willy, better than any of the others. Willy, Rufus, and Dan had all been third-string on the football team. Scrubs, people called them. Clara had been first-string in both soccer and basketball. She had won the last basketball game of the season by sinking a basket with only three seconds left on the clock.
Clara was sure that anything Willy could do, she could do better. Right? Right.
Maybe.
Now her friends were chanting. “Let’s go, Clara, let’s go! Let’s go, Clara, let’s go!”
Clara put her paddle into the water and pulled, first on one side of the kayak, then on the other.
She paddled into the current and turned downstream. The water just ahead was smooth and green, but then it fell over a little hump and turned bubbly and white. Waves slammed into each other like rowdy kids in the crowded hallways at school.
As Clara paddled over the drop, she felt her kayak tilt forward. Here came the first wave. It splashed her right in the
face. She blinked and lost her balance. She caught one glimpse of Willy’s face looking right at her, and then . . .
SPLASH!
She was upside-down. All around her was dark water, and Clara couldn’t see anything. She couldn’t breathe. And the water was cold!
Clara struggled, she kicked, but for one terrifying moment she couldn’t get out of her kayak. Then she remembered that she had to pull off the spray skirt to get out. She found the handle, pulled it, pushed herself out, and swam to the surface. She took a big, full breath of air.
“Grab on!” said Ms. Parker.
Clara grabbed on to Ms. Parker’s loop pole and was pulled to shore.
CHAPTER 4
WHITEWATER WIMP
Clara went home mad. Her feet were cold, her hair was wet, and she was mad.
She didn’t really know what she was mad at. She was just mad.
Mad at herself, maybe.
“So how was paddling today?” asked Clara’s mother at dinner.
Clara hesitated. She wanted to tell someone about it, but she also didn’t want to sound like a wimp. Not even to her mother. And especially not to her little brother, Derek.
“It was fine,” said Clara finally.
“Are you sure?” her mom asked. “You sound a little . . . something.”
“Yeah, it was fine.”
“Your hair is wet,” said Derek.
“Well, okay, I tipped over, and I got wet. But that was cool.”
“I bet it was cold,” said Derek.
“Yeah,” said Clara. “That, too. But no problem.”
“It’s no problem to tip over?” her mother asked.
“Not really. Lots of people tip over. Ms. Parker says it’s part of the learning process.”
That was easy for Ms. Parker to say. Ms. Parker knew how to roll her kayak. She could tip over upside-down, and then, with a stroke of her paddle, she could bring the boat right-side-up again. Ms. Parker said she was going to teach them all how to roll when the water got warmer.
That didn’t help Clara today.
All the next day Clara had a weird feeling in the pit of her stomach, as if she had swallowed a baseball. And every time she thought of kayaking that afternoon, the ball got heavier.
It was like a ball of lead by the time she was riding in the van to the river. It made it hard for her to breathe.
The three boys didn’t seem scared. They were talking and joking like always. Clara stared out the window and watched the trees go by. All too soon she saw the river.
She wanted to quit, right then and there. But what would she do? Sit in the van? What would the guys say? She sighed and put on her helmet and lifejacket.
But when she got out and looked out at the rapid, Clara almost choked from fear.
“Ms. Parker?” Clara said. “I don’t want to go in the water today. I have a sore throat, and my mom said maybe I shouldn’t get wet.”
“I’m sorry you’re not feeling well,” said Ms. Parker. “Why don’t you and Rufus just paddle on the flatwater? That way you won’t get wet. And Rufus can use the practice.”
Immediately Clara felt better. The weight in her belly was gone. It was only the rapids that made her feel so afraid.
But when Clara went home, she felt bad that she had lied to Ms. Parker. She wanted to tell her mom about it. But she just couldn’t tell anyone that she’d been afraid and that she had lied. So she didn’t say anything.
She didn’t want to admit she had been a wimp.
Which, Clara realized, made her even more of a wimp.
CHAPTER 5
NOTHING TO PROVE
The next morning Clara had that funny feeling in her stomach again.
She decided she had to tell somebody. So at recess she caught Julie, just as Julie was coming out of the school doors.
“Can I talk to you, Julie?”
“Sure, what’s up?”
Julie wore jeans like Clara, was tall like Clara, and played all kinds of sports like Clara. She was the perfect person for Clara to talk to. They had been friends since they were little kids. Last fall they had been on the soccer team together. And Julie was the kind of person who never seemed worried about anything.
“It’s about this kayaking stuff,” began Clara. Then Clara told Julie how she had tipped over and how scared she’d been and how she had lied about having a sore throat. “And now I’m scared all over again,” Clara finished.
“So why don’t you just quit?” asked Julie.
“Well, you know,” said Clara. But Julie just looked puzzled, so Clara had to go on. “It would be chicken to quit.”
“Nobody’d know that, though,” said Julie. “Besides, nobody cares about kayaking. It’s a dumb sport. The only guys doing it are the Scrubs. Nobody cares what they think.”
“I care what they think,” said Clara. “Besides, I would know!”
“So what?”
Clara was surprised. She had expected Julie to tell her to keep going, tough it out, hang in there, you can do it. Or maybe Clara had wanted her to say that.
“You really think I should just quit?” asked Clara.
“Absolutely,” said Julie. “You’ve been first-string on two teams already. Time to take it easy. You’ve got nothing to prove.”
Clara frowned.
“You don’t want to hang around with those losers anyway,” said Julie.
“Hey, they’re not losers!” said Clara.
“Yeah they are,” said Julie. “Look at them.”
Clara looked over. Rufus had just made some joke, and Dan and Willy were bent over with laughter.
“They’re so immature,” said Julie.
Clara thought about it all afternoon, all through classes. Julie’s advice made sense. Why not quit?
But Clara didn’t feel any more comfortable about quitting than she did about being underwater. Clara remembered reading an interview with a star soccer player who’d said, “I never quit. I just never quit.” Clara thought that was an awfully cool thing to say. She wanted to be like that, too. Why was it so hard to make up her mind?
Clara decided to use the sore throat excuse one more time.
So she paddled flatwater with Rufus again.
Rufus was still having a hard time paddling in a straight line. Clara cruised around with him. They talked about basketball and wrestling and the Mets versus the Yankees. Rufus knew his sports.
It was actually kind of fun.
But Clara knew she was going to have to go back into the rapids sometime.
Or quit.
CHAPTER 6
COLD AND STUFF
That Sunday Clara sat in her bedroom and made a list. Her mom always did that when she had to decide something. There were lists all over the house.
When Clara finished, her list looked like this:
Quit Don’t Quit
Dry! Warm! Prove that I can take it.
Won’t have to be bad. Might get better.
Be friends with cool people. Stay friends with the Scrubs.
There was another problem that didn’t seem to fit under either column. It really bugged her that she was worse at kayaking than Willy and Dan. It seemed unfair. Clara had always been good at everything. Quitting wouldn’t make her any better, but if she quit, she wouldn’t have to be reminded all the time that they were better.
Making the lists didn’t help her. Both sides balanced out. So what should she do?
She went to bed that night sure she should keep kayaking.
She woke up in the morning sure she should quit.
“Hey, Mom,” Clara asked at breakfast, “is it okay for me to quit kayaking if I want to?”
“Why would you want to?” her mom asked.
“I don’t know. It’s just cold. And it takes a lot of time. And stuff.”
“And stuff?” asked Derek.
“Yeah, stuff.”
“You can quit if you really want to,” said her mother. “If you’re sure.”
Clara thought she was sure.
CHAPTER 7
YARD SALE
She stayed sure until school was over and she walked to the parking lot. That’s when she should have told Ms. Parker she wasn’t going. Instead she got in the van. It was just easier.
“There’s always room for Jell-O!” shouted Rufus as he piled in last. Rufus said that almost every afternoon. Dan punched Rufus in the arm, and Rufus gave Dan a noogie, and they all laughed. Clara laughed with them.
When they got to the river, they put all their gear on. Wearing helmets and life-jackets and spray skirts and carrying their paddles, they looked ridiculous, like some alien life forms. How, Clara wondered, did she ever get involved in this freaky sport?
It was a bright, sunny day, but that didn’t make it much warmer. They drove to a new place on the river to run some different rapids.
“Clara,” said Ms. Parker, “you and Rufus aren’t quite ready for this first rapid. I’ll put you in the pool at the bottom. We’ll paddle down to you, and then we’ll all paddle down the easier rapids together.”
So Clara and Rufus sat in the pool at the bottom of the rapid to watch the others.
Willy came down first. For a while Willy was doing fine, but as he got near the end of the rapid, he headed straight for a rock.
“Willy! Look out! Look out!” shouted Clara.
It was too late. Willy tried to turn, but he bumped the rock anyway. It tipped him right over.
And then Dan, who had been following Willy, ran into Willy’s boat. Dan tipped over, too.
In an instant paddles and boats and kids were everywhere.
“Yard sale!” said Rufus. That’s what they called it when equipment got scattered all over. “Yard sale!”
Clara wasn’t laughing.
The Whitewater Scrubs were in big trouble!
CHAPTER 8
KICK!
“Clara! Rufus!” Ms. Parker shouted as she paddled toward them. “You get Willy! I’ll get Dan! Go!”
Rufus was closer. He tried to paddle out into the current, but he got swept downstream, back into the pool. Clara did better. She paddled up beside Willy’s boat, but Willy was on the other side of his boat, away from her.
