“Oh, you can do that later,” Kelly said, waving a hand dismissively. “Come on. The kids will start arriving any second.”
“But I—Fine.” Courtney slammed her clipboard down on the bench beside her with a huff and stomped down to the ground. When she reached the side of the pool I was on, she made sure to “accidentally” bump her shoulder into mine as she walked by. I stumbled back a step out of surprise, but didn’t let it get to me. As it was, I was looking forward to seeing this happen. As Courtney bent down to grab the lane rope, I made eye contact with Charlie across the pool and he winked at me. I smiled widely back, understanding perfectly what was about to happen—he may not have wanted to pull me into the pool, but he was definitely looking for an excuse to pull Courtney in.
“Ready?” Charlie called.
“Ready!” Courtney called back. They both stood and leaned back a little while holding the lane rope, causing it to become taut. They then both started walking slowly across the pool to where it needed to be attached. “See, Madison? It’s not that hard.”
I crossed my arms over my chest and shook my head, desperately trying to hold back my smile.
“Yeah,” I said. “You’re right. I have no idea what I was thinking.”
Courtney huffed. “You’re just lazy.”
“Courtney!” Kelly snapped. “That’s no way to talk to your employee.”
“Oh, Courtney doesn’t view me as her employee, Kelly,” I said. “She and I go way back, right Courtney?”
Way back to when we were in elementary school, and she hated me from the jump for some reason. While I knew most of her hostility came from being my boss and being on a power trip, I was also very aware that wasn’t the only situation. She’d hated me for a long time and was now just in a position to make me miserable in a whole new way—or so she thought.
“I’ll attach my side first,” Charlie said. He crouched down to hook the metal piece on his side. But as he did so, he conveniently tugged the rope forward. Since Courtney was holding on to it so tight and wasn’t stable on her feet, she immediately went flying forward.
“Charlie!” she screamed as she fell straight into the water. Luckily, she fell to the side of the lane rope, so she didn’t cut herself or anything, but since she was dressed in clothes, they weighed her down a little and she ended up floundering about in the water for a while before finally making her way to the side of the pool with her head above water.
All her hair had fallen in her face, and she used one hand to push it all away while spitting out a stream of water that hadgotten in her mouth when she fell. On top of her hair being completely ruined, her makeup was all smudged and running down her face. I put a hand over my mouth to stop myself from laughing. I knew it was wrong to take delight in somebody else’s misfortune, but when that person epically sucked, there had to be a bit of a grey zone there, right? It didn’t make me a good person, but how bad could I be for doing it, really?
“My bad,” Charlie said. He had an equally big grin on his face. “Guess we should have listened to Madison, huh?”
Courtney was seething as she pushed herself out of the water. She sat on the wall with her feet still in the water and leaned over to ring out her hair. So much water came out that it was like a little waterfall. She then stood up and took off her shirt and shorts individually to ring them out, exposing the bathing suit she’d had on underneath the whole.
“Maybe you should have taken your clothes off earlier,” I said. “You know, I would have thought you’d have thought about that after my little fall in at the beginning of the summer when you told me it was my fault. Funny how those things work out, huh?”
Courtney shot me a death glare that might have been scarier than any expression I’d seen on her before. I couldn’t help but recoil in surprise a little.
“That’s enough,” Kelly said. She walked forward with a dark purple towel with the Bayshore crest emblazoned on it. She must have grabbed it from the office without me noticing in all the kerfuffle. “Courtney, are you alright? Are you hurt at all?”
“I think I twisted my ankle,” Courtney said. I rolled my eyes. Of course she was saying she was hurt—it was the only way she would gain any sort of sympathy points from anyone here. She had to save face somehow, right?
“Can you walk?” Kelly asked as she wrapped the towel around Courtney’s shoulder. Courtney took a step, limping exaggeratedly as she did so.
“I guess so,” she said pitifully. “But I think I should probably sit for the rest of the day just to make sure I don’t hurt it worse, you know?”
“Of course,” Kelly said. “Why don’t you go sit in the office? I’ll keep an eye on things out here.”
Courtney nodded and began limping pitifully slowly towards the office. I wasn’t sure why she was playing it up so much. Everyone in that room had first aid training and could easily see that she wasn’t hurt at all. Kelly watched her walk off before she turned to the rest of us.
“All right, Thomas and Charlie, finish putting the lane ropes in. Madison, you take over putting the supplies out. I’ll keep an eye out for any kids showing up.”
“On it,” I said. I quickly walked to the opposite side of the pool. I didn’t risk high-fiving Charlie or making it obvious that we were interacting with each other at all, in case Courtney used it against us to Kelly and insisted that Charlie had done it on purpose. Of course, we all knew he had, but as of right now, there was no way for her to prove it and it was better to keep it that way. But as Charlie and I passed each other, we brushed pinkies quickly, which was our own little way of saying, “I know what you did. Good job.” For the time being, it would just have to be good enough. We could celebrate later.
sixteen
“I can’t believeyou actually pulled her in,” I said the second we got into Charlie’s car after work.
“You knew I was going to,” Charlie said. He laughed. “Honestly, I can’t believe I went through with it either. It was just so easy, you know? She was right there and I had plausible deniability because of the rope.”
“She deserved it.”
“Agreed.”
