Camp Polliwog by Kelly Chastain
By the end of summer camp, the only matter that distinguished the boys from one another was who had licked the frog and who hadn’t. It seemed a simple enough demarcation line, even though the frog was just some slimy, green pond dweller. A Northern Green Frog to be exact. Nothing exotic or yellow or named with words like Dart or Harlequin, the kind that could take a chap out.
But it had, in fact, quite a reverberating effect on the boys throughout the summer. The lickers, although they would never be called that, at least not to their faces, had taken to each other. At first, they all laughed and squirmed and agreed that the frog tasted exactly how the pond water smelled. Herby and musty, maybe a little like the latrine in the morning. Nothing too terrible. It was almost nice even. One went so far as to say that it tasted just like the water itself, how you sometimes get a mouthful when you’re swimming in the murk and go under.
But none of the boys had actually swam in a pond so it didn’t quite translate in the way he intended. It didn’t matter because they had all licked the frog. They’d all been brave and heroic in the face of such a dare. Even that was a point of argument because no one, not even the weenie non-lickers, could recall how the whole thing had started. Just that the weird dark-haired kid with the freckles produced the poor frog one night and set it loose in the middle of the cabin. They pounced on the frightened thing, cupped it in their hands, and laughed when it jumped against their palms to escape.
But they couldn’t remember who went first, or why, just that the boys parted like the sea - the lickers on one side of the cabin, the non-lickers retreating to their bunks. It was a primal thing to put another animal in your mouth, to feel its racing heart beating against the soft tip of your tongue. As the summer wore on the details grew fuzzier and fuzzier, even when they tramped along the pond’s edge and saw ten frogs identical to the one they had tasted.
But even then it was as if it hadn’t really happened. The memory caught in the murkiness of the pond itself. Weeks went by and the non-lickers laughed and carried on and hiked and paddled and braided thin strands of leather into god knows what. Each morning, they ran out of the cabin with clear bright eyes, jabbing the lickers. Prodding them as the slow creep of lethargy overtook their bodies. Teased them as their backs started to hunch, their eyes strangely wider on their faces from the night before. And not long after they appeared bulbous.
But no one really said anything until one morning the boys woke to find a deep green pallor had imbued the lickers’ skin. And strangely, all of them were crouched on their bellies in their bunk beds, burrowed beneath the thin blankets instead of stretching out into the cool morning air. The non-lickers, pink and fresh and wide-eyed, whispered to one another until the tall blonde kid with the rich parents and the new sneakers, dashed off to the infirmary to get the nurse.
But when she arrived, she didn’t come alone. She pulled up to the cabin in the camp jeep with two men in brown fatigues. Massive nets hung from the back, along with a 55 gallon drum of water with a sprayer attached on a curling extension hose. The non-lickers fell silent. Some stared at their shoes. The nurse entered their barracks and surveyed the bunks with a knowing eye. Then she spoke. “Licked the frog, did you?”
But there was no reply. Just soft croaking from deep within their throats.
Kelly Chastain is an MFA candidate at the University of Pittsburgh, focusing on fiction writing. Her work has appeared in The Burrow Press Review, The Citron Review, Cactus Heart Press, Silk Road Review, among others. Her work has also been anthologized in Traveler’s Tales Best Travel Writing Volume 10, and included as a notable essay in Best American Essays 2015. She’s been supported by fellowships and residencies in the Czech Republic and France. Currently, she is working on a historical novel. You can find her at kellychastain.com.