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Overview
Fifteen-year-old Matt Gratton and his two best friends, Coop and Sean, always set themselves a summertime goal. This year's? To see a real-live naked girl for the first time — quite a challenge, given that none of the guys has the nerve to even ask a girl out on a date. But catching a girl in the buff starts to look easy compared to Matt's other summertime aspiration: to swim the 100-yard butterfly (the hardest stroke known to God or man) as a way to impress Kelly West, the sizzling new star of the swim team. In the spirit of Hollywood’s blockbuster comedies, screenwriter-turned-YA-novelist Don Calame unleashes a true ode to the adolescent male: characters who are side-splittingly funny, sometimes crude, yet always full of heart.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780763641573 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Candlewick Press |
| Publication date: | 04/14/2009 |
| Pages: | 352 |
| Sales rank: | 452,669 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.70(w) x 7.80(h) x 1.20(d) |
| Lexile: | HL620L (what's this?) |
| Age Range: | 14 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER ONE
SWIM TEAM
"Movies don’t count," Cooper says. "The Internet -doesn’t count. Magazines don’t count. A real, live naked girl. That’s the deal. That’s our goal for this summer."
"Been there, done that," Sean says.
"Taking baths with your sister -doesn’t count, either, Sean." Cooper snorts.
"Screw you, meat stain. I haven’t done that since I was, like, two, okay. And that’s not what I was talking about," Sean says.
We’re walking up to the pool. Cooper, Sean, and me. Bare feet tucked into untied sneakers, ragged towels draped around our necks. It’s our first day of swim practice, which means that summer’s really started. We’ve been friends since kindergarten. We’ve been on swim team since third grade. The Rockville Swimming Association. Six years as Lower Rockville Razorbacks.
"He’s talking about Tina Everstone’s left boob," I say as we turn onto Maple Drive and walk along the curb.
"Oh, please. Not that again." Cooper rolls his eyes.
"It’s true. I saw the whole thing when she was taking off her sweatshirt during gym. Her T-shirt came up just enough"
"And she wasn’t wearing a bra and her left one popped out and you saw the entire thing, nipple and all, and even if I didn’t think you were lying to us, it still wouldn’t count," Cooper says. "I’m talking totally naked. Not a quick flash, okay?"
"Whatever." Sean shrugs and looks off at the rundown ranch houses like he doesn’t care what we think.
"How are we supposed to see a live naked girl?" I say. "Maybe we better set a more realistic goal for the summer. Like finding Atlantis."
"Matt, Matt, Matt." Cooper puts his arm around me like he’s my wise uncle. "That kind of attitude will get you nowhere in life. Don’t you get it? You have to follow the natural way of things. It’s like that picture in our bio textbook. First there’s the monkey. Then there’s the caveman. Then there’s the human. It’s the same with sex. First there’s Internet porn, then there’s seeing your first real naked girl, and finally it’s the dirty deed. You do want to have sex someday, don’t you, Matt?"
Every summer there is a goal. It’s tradition. I don’t remember when it started or why. But as long as I can remember, we’ve always come up with something we had to accomplish before the start of the new school year. When we were ten, it was riding our bikes fifteen miles away to Perry Lake and skinny-dipping. When we were twelve, it was going to the Fern Creek Golf Course every day until we collected a thousand golf balls. Over the past few years, the goals have become more centered around girls and sex. Two years ago, each of us had to get our hands on a Playboy and show it to the others. Last year the ante was upped to finding an illegal password for a porn site. And now, Cooper’s challenge for this summer. Which I can’t see ever happening.
Maybe if we were even a little bit cool, or had any chance of getting girlfriends. But that’s just not the case. By the time you’re fifteen, you’ve either had a girlfriend — maybe even had sex — or, like Coop, Sean, and me, you haven’t even mustered the courage to ask a girl out. There’s also a third group, I guess. Guys who say they’ve had girlfriends but who nobody really believes. Which just means they’re liars who fit into the second category.
We make it to Rockville Avenue Pool just in time to hear Ms. Luntz, our swim coach, calling the team over for a meeting. Ms. Luntz is a gourd-shaped woman who wears her blue-and-white Speedo stretched to capacity underneath denim short-pants overalls. Her legs are thick and pockmarked, and purple worm veins bubble up beneath the see-through skin on her thighs. She doesn’t make things much better for herself with her Campbell’s Soup Kid haircut and gigantic pink-tinted glasses. You could almost feel sorry for her, if she wasn’t so nasty to everyone.
"Hurry up, people," Ms. Luntz squawks. "Let’s go, let’s go. Before winter comes. We’ve got important business to discuss."
Cooper, Sean, and me make our way around "the toilet" — a shallow, oval kiddie pool that’s always suspiciously body-temperature warm. My mom says it’s warm because there’s less water in there and the sun can heat it up faster, but nobody’s buying that. Last year, Cooper bet Sean ten bucks he wouldn’t bob for a Life Saver over the painted picture of Elmo, which is where most of the little kids hang out, and Sean did it without blinking an eye. It was pretty sick. Sean kept saying how they put chemicals in the pool for a reason, but there’s no way I could have done that. I feel my stomach lurch now just thinking about it.
We walk along the edge of the adult pool toward the deep end where the diving boards are. I breathe in the sharp chlorine smell and watch the swimmers stringing the swim lane dividers, and it’s like "Yeah, I know this" mixed with "Oh, God, not this again."
We hang back at the edge of the crowd that forms around Ms. Luntz. It’s all the same people from last year. A sea of blue and white Lycra. Guys and girls from seven to seventeen. All of them serious about swim team.
It’s different for Coop, Sean, and me. We do swim team because we’ve always done swim team. Between the three of us, I bet that we have the largest collection of green fifth-place ribbons in the entire league. It’s not like we try to lose. It’s just that we happen to be the three least athletic kids on the team. Maybe even in all of Rockville.
"Okay, so, welcome back and all that crap," Ms. Luntz says, tapping her pen on her clipboard. "It’s another summer, which means another chance to make a run for gold. Our first meet is in three weeks. I want us to set the bar high right away. I want us to take first in this year’s relay challenge."
Coop leans over to me and whispers, "Yeah, and I want to take a whipped-cream bath with...
Interviews
Q. Is there any backstory to your writing of this novel?
A. It started out as a short piece (a page-and-a-half scrawl, really) that I wrote in a workshop around six years ago. It was the true story of how my swim coach asked me to swim the hundred-yard butterfly when I was a fifteen-year-old broomstick in a bathing suit and how I was too scared to say no. What followed was a torturous summer of dread as the swim meet approached and I knew that I was going to lose that race in a bad way-to the biggest, strongest kid on one of the other teams. The story sat in a notebook, and I didn't think much about it until my wife mentioned that she thought it would be a great kicking-off point for a young adult novel. She had just published a young adult novel herself and felt there was a real need for material that would appeal to boys on a humorous level.
Q. So what inspired you to really sit down and turn that short piece into your first novel?
A. As I said, it was really my wife's idea. I've been a professional screenwriter for quite some time and was working on a project when she bullied me into putting that project away and start working on Swim the Fly. (I'm sure my wife will be getting a call from my film agent when she reads this.) When I say bullied, I mean it in the nicest sort of way. Basically, she wouldn't let it go. She had a really strong feeling about me writing this book, and if there's one thing I've learned after being married to her for the last six years, it's to never discount her strong feelings about things. So after the thirty-eighth time my wife brought it up, I finally caved and started writing the book.
Q. Why did this story in particular need to be told?
A. I've read a lot of young adult literature, and it took me a long time to find a few truly honest male voices out there-at least, honest in how I remember things: the way my friends and I used to talk and think and act, the ridiculous (and embarrassing) situations we often found ourselves in. I wanted to get down the truth as I remember it: the awkwardness, the camaraderie, the fun, the humor, the terror of being fifteen.
Q. Do you think that Swim the Fly may have a crossover adult audience and why?
A. I hope so. I know that the adults (both male and female) who have read it really enjoyed it. They've told me it evokes the memory of being that age, and all of them said they were laughing out loud. I have a friend who's a sixty eight-year-old superior court judge; he was over at our house reading the manuscript, and when I saw him sitting on our sofa with tears of laughter rolling down his cheeks, that's when I knew I really had something.
Q. Which character did you most enjoy writing?
A. I had a great time writing and getting to know all of the characters. It was a fun book to write from start to finish. Much of the time, I'd just be sitting there writing and making myself laugh. It sounds odd, but it's true. It's the most fun I've had writing anything. And I got just as much enjoyment writing the female characters as the male ones. A lot of times the girls in the book would surprise me by what they'd say or what they'd do, which was exciting. Readers have their own favorite characters, though. From the feedback I've gotten so far, a lot of people seem to love Coop, who's probably the crudest of the boys and also the one who comes up with most of the schemes and plans. I guess there's this feeling of, "What is Coop going to do or say next?" Ulf (the militaristic lifesaving instructor) seems to be another favorite, mostly because of his mangled idioms.
Q. We know that you swam the butterfly when you were fifteen. Were any other parts of the story based on real-life experiences?
A. This is a loaded question-especially considering the things that go on in this novel. I guess the truth of the matter is that none of the things that happen in the book happened in real life, though I've drawn from my own life experiences to "spice the soup," so to speak.
As I said, I did swim the butterflflfly when I was fifififteen, though it wasn't my own choice and I didn't necessarily do it to impress a girl. Also, none of my swim coaches were anything like Ms. Luntz or Ulf. Other than that, my friends and I did think and talk like this; we did play a whole lot of Ping- Pong; we did make up foul drink concoctions that we dared each other to drink; we did hear about a nude beach that we sought out; and there was a girl in sixth grade who had an affinity for Tootsie Pops. So I guess the answer to your question is no, but also yes.
Q. What do you most want readers to take away from this novel?
A. Mostly I'd like my readers to have a good time with the characters and the story-to laugh a whole lot, to be entertained. If people have half as much fun reading it as I did writing it, then I think I've done my job. Other than that, maybe if readers can see themselves or their friends in these characters-to see their vulnerabilities. If they can say, "Yeah, that's how it really is," then that would make me feel good too.
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