All the while my panic rises with the water.

We hear the gringo girls screaming for help as the camp is flooding. Through sheets of rain we see SUVs floating by with their headlights on, swirling in deep, swift water.

THE WAY OF WATER BY GABRIEL ZAMORA 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 134

Three more days at this camp before my cousin Nina and I can go home. This whole business of a camp for 12-year-old girls in the hill country of Texas near Austin never appealed to us. We are the right age but we are Hispanic unlike these gringo girls.

I blame our gringo fathers for forcing Nina and me to go to this god-forsaken place with girls who have nothing in common with us except for their age.

Nina runs like the wind and swims like a fish, winning all the running and swimming contests. She leads the soccer team to victory. But her comment about the origins of the game, our Aztec warrior women who decapitated the losers and used the heads of the vanquished as the next soccer ball, does not impress the gringo girls.

But the camp counselors admit my cousin and I are kind, always helpful. Everyone admits we add to the camp a different esprit de corps.

I’m a plant and animal lover and lead several groups in the ways of the plants and trees that surround the camp. I identify the various spirits of the earth who control the water, flora, and fauna at the camp.

I sit by the bank of the river contemplating all this when evening creeps into the day and Nina joins me.

“Gabriel, cheer up. Only a few more days left,” she says as she nudges me for more room on our river rock.

“I know, mija. But hush,” I say. “I’m listening for our abuela. She cries at the bank of this river every night and I can’t figure out why.”