Personally, I found it a little strange to take off the first session because it meant working three sessions in a row with only one week off at the end before school started again, which was a little too intense for me, but to each their own. A lotof them were probably living it up for the Canada Day long weekend.
“How’s everyone doing this morning?” Kelly asked. We all mumbled responses that sounded vaguely like “okay.” To be fair, she probably couldn’t expect a lot of energy from a bunch of teenagers at eight in the morning a week into summer vacation. She seemed to disagree with my assessment, though, as she repeated in a louder voice, “Let’s try that again: how are we doing this morning?”
I forced myself not to roll my eyes as I said in a loud voice with everyone else, “Doing great!”
Kelly smiled at us and folded her hands over the clipboard she was holding in front of her stomach.
“Much better. Now, I’m sure you all recognize Courtney from last summer,” Kelly said. She gestured a hand in Courtney’s direction and Courtney waved at us, looking much too chipper.
Everything about her that morning irritated me: from her dirty blonde hair that was perfectly curled and pulled into a high ponytail to her full face of makeup and her bright green bathing suit that if I wore, she would probably deem unprofessional due to the color. Even her nails were done, which I knew from experience was a bad idea when you were actually going to be in the pool because the paint would chip off within a couple of days.
It was like she was on such a high horse that she was so certain she wouldn’t get wet at all while working at a pool. I could respect not wanting to get your hair wet, but wearing makeup was just absurd. I was suddenly overwhelmed by an intense desire to create a scenario—any scenario—that would cause her to fall in at some point and ruin it all. If it had been anybody else, I might have admired her effort and worked to make sure nothing ruined her appearance because it did look like it took her a lot of time to achieve, but as it was, I was still seeking revenge against her for ruining all my handwrittenreport cards at the end of last year. She insisted I redo them while also critiquing my penmanship and the fact that I never wrote enough for the kids. She didn’t even tell me I needed to redo them until the day they were due, when I barely had any time to go through and rewrite them. I had to spend every break between classes hastily scribbling random information about each kid’s swimming ability while praying that the parents didn’t come asking about the cards before I was done writing them. It was easily my worst day of work for the whole summer. It was difficult for me to get revenge on Courtney since she held all the power at work, but I was nothing if not petty.
“Hi, everyone!” Courtney said in a peppy voice that sounded like it was on the verge of being sarcastic. “It is so nice to see all of you again.”
Once again, everyone mumbled a reply that sounded vaguely like we might have been happy to see her but had clear undertones of not wanting to be there. I wondered how many of the other instructors hated her as much as I did.
“And this is Will,” Kelly said. A chorus of cheers rose from the lifeguards, who were sitting on some of the upper benches. I snuck a glance at them over my shoulder. Charlie was in the middle of the group, hands raised above his head and clapping.
When I turned back to look at Courtney, I found her glaring at him while that stupid, frozen smile was still stuck on her face. I grinned to myself. She must have hated that she had to see him here every day, probably wanting him back but knowing she would never have him again. Of course, I was assuming that Charlie was the one who broke it off instead of her, but it seemed like a pretty safe bet. In what world would she think she could do better than him?
“Thank you for that lovely greeting,” Kelly said, rubbing one hand against her ear. “For those of you who don’t know, Will hasnicely agreed to take over as the lifeguard supervisor after Stan quit.”
Much like Ms. Moscowitz who ran the summer tutoring, Stan was a full-time worker at the school who continued his role during the summer. During the school year, he oversaw gym swimming lessons, the swim team, and everything else that involved the pool. But this year, he suddenly decided that he wanted a summer vacation and quit his lifeguard supervising role. From what I’d heard, he claimed that he suddenly realized he had spent way too much of his life watching over a bunch of ungrateful teenagers and needed two months away on some tropical island before he was willing to come back. I thought that was great for him—I would have loved to have a vacation like that. I also couldn’t blame him for needing a break after everything he had to deal with during the school year. Having to watch the boys’ water polo team twice a week would be enough to make anyone have a breakdown.
“Will, of course, is one of the lifeguards from previous years, so most of you already know him,” Kelly continued. I didn’t personally, but I also knew there were many lifeguards that I’d never spoken to. For some reason, we often spent time in two distinct groups: the lifeguards and the instructors. “I’m sure you’ll all make him feel very welcome. Now, onto more tedious business…”
Kelly started going over the same information we had already learned about in our training, emails, and information packets that hadn’t changed since we worked here last year. I wasn’t sure why all our bosses seemed to think we were incapable of remembering our jobs from last year, but it was becoming annoying to hear it repeated over and over. While she droned on, I snuck another glance behind me. Charlie was leaning back with his head pressed against the wall and his face angled towards the skylight above like he was tanning. A sunbeam was shiningthrough the skylight, falling directly onto him, making him glow like some sort of angelic creature. Of course he looked perfect. He always did.
“Did you hear that, Miss McKinnon?” Kelly asked. I swiveled my head back around so fast that it almost hurt and looked at her.
“Of course, Kelly,” I said with a bright smile. My heart pounded in my chest as I waited for her to ask me what she had just said, which would have been an issue because I had no idea what we were talking about at all. Of course it was something to do with training, but that was a wide topic.
“Why don’t we face forward to show it, hmm?” she suggested. I flushed a little. Hopefully, she thought I was just looking out the window behind us or something, instead of staring at Charlie like I’d actually been doing. I nodded quickly and placed my hands in my lap, looking straight ahead as though I was actually focused on her and listening. “Good. Now, we’re going to split off into groups of lifeguards and swim instructors so you can all get your schedules, then we need to start getting the pool ready for classes in a half hour. Lifeguards head down to the deep end of the pool, instructors stay here. Everyone understand? Good—go.”
The lifeguards all quickly jumped up and moved down. A soft hand landed on my shoulder and pushed down slightly like they were using me as support while they climbed down the seats. I looked to see who it was and nearly jumped out of my skin when I saw Charlie staring at me.
“Hey, Mads,” he said. He smiled, which only served to show off his cute dimple. “How’s it going?”
“Not bad,” I forced out. “You?”
“I’m doing all right. Giving you a ride home after work again, right?” He winked.
I did my best to grin back even though I was suddenly feeling very nauseous. How was I supposed to act after what had happened between us over the weekend? Were we just pretending it didn’t happen? Or was it the opposite—did he want it to happen again? How was I supposed to hide that from Matthew?
Charlie was still staring at me inquisitively, and I realized I’d just been staring at him blankly for who knows how long. I forced a nod. “Uh-huh.”
“Great. I’ll see you then.”
He jumped down to the floor and jogged off down the floor. What was with all these lifeguards and running on the pool deck? Literally half their job was telling kids not to do exactly that. I laughed and shook my head as he struggled to stop at the end and almost slipped, but he just managed to save himself, then looked around like he was worried somebody might have noticed.
Courtney clapped her hands together once. The loud sound echoed through the room and everyone jumped a little at the suddenness of it. When I turned to face forward again, Courtney smiled. But this time, instead of the strange semi-happy smile from earlier, she looked like a monster who was happy about to devour her prey. It freaked me out a lot, and I found myself wishing for the old smile again because at least it didn’t seem inherently threatening.
“Good morning, everyone,” she said. “I hope you all had a good school year and are ready to get back to work! Before I give out all your schedules and everything, I just want to have one more discussion about work expectations because last summer…” She tilted her head side-to-side and stared straight at me. “Well, let’s just say it wasn’t great.”
I straightened my back and stared back at her, trying not to let her see how much she honestly scared me in some ways. If Igave her an inch, she would take a mile, and I couldn’t let that happen. She needed to be convinced that there was nothing she could do that would convince me to quit or feel like she was ruining my summer. That was exactly what she thrived on—and what I needed to avoid.
Courtney clasped her hands behind her back and began pacing back and forth in front of us. It reminded me of when our teachers were upset that the whole class failed a test or something, and they were trying to instill that fear in us before even saying anything. I hated when teachers did it, but I hated it even more when Courtney did it, because it was obvious that she was trying to make us feel like she was so much bigger and more powerful than us, and that we couldn’t oppose her.
