Chapter Nine
Lifeguard Dude wiggled the huge cup. The siren’s smirk on the thirty-one-ounce trenta flashed against the sunlight. “You popped out of nowhere when I tried to dunk it.”
He prattled off a bunch of other stuff. How in the fall he’d be a junior, which meant he’d go from playing on Lazarus High’s JV basketball team to varsity. To prep for the big leagues, he’d been honing his dunking skills by taking every shot he could.
“I’m particularly fond of practicing with these.” He raised the cup. “My best friend keeps bringing them for me during lunch breaks, but blech—I’ve had so many I can’t stomach them anymore.”
In this life, his hooded eyelids, chiseled jaw, and tan skin made him ethnically ambiguous. In a past life, though? Lifeguard Dude had 100 percent been a Latine granny. No one else divulged these many details upon meeting, er, “dunking,” a stranger with coffee.
“Gonna try again,” he said, tossing the cup into the trash can. “Yes!” He raised his arms in a victory stance. The gesture would’ve been bro-ey if it didn’t look so cheesy.
Or cute.
He reeled off more stuff. How he liked playing basketball more than watching it. He’d rather spend those two and a half hours of couch time bingeing a show with his mom or a movie with his best bud. I didn’t catch the titles he mentioned. Between the roar of the waves and my stalling brain, everything coming out of his mouth sounded as warbly as Po’s voice right before my phone died.
Phone.
The magic word to break this spell.
“Where’s your phone? I need it to call my sister.”
“It’s back at the lifeguard tower over there.” He pointed to tower eighteen. “I’ll totally let you borrow it, but it’s almost out of juice. We can go plug it in at the aquarium at the end of the pier to charge it, though.”
“No time,” I said. “I have a portable battery.” Being prepared always paid off. “It’s right here—”
Goose bumps prickled my skin when I patted the backpack. I swung it around and… FML.
The iced mocha hadn’t dunked only my back. Or my backpack.
But also the fundraiser’s banner.
The top half of it drooped like a wilted flower stem. Different-colored inks bled through the white cardstock. “Please don’t be ruined,” I whispered, opening the zipper carefully.
The lower half of the banner was drier than the top. “Okay, I can work with this,” I muttered. Relief washed over me when I patted the bottom of the backpack.
Mercifully, my planner had been spared. Along with my blow-dryer I’d brought as backup for the dog wash.
Regretfully, the extra flyers on top of it hadn’t been as fortunate. The iced coffee caused them to swell and stick together, damaging them beyond repair.
Unspool and blow-dry the banner ASAP, or it will suffer a similar fate.
I yanked the towel draped around Lifeguard Dude’s neck, spreading it over the trash cans. There. A tablecloth for a makeshift table. “I need to act fast. Keep watch for more people ‘dunking’ drinks, will you?”
He motioned to his red junior lifeguard patch over his pec—uh, heart. “Lucky for you, keeping watch is my summer job.”
“Really?” I shook my head, gently pulling the banner from the backpack. “Seems you’re more inclined to drown people, and their personal property, than rescue them.”
“It was an accident. One minute you weren’t there, and the next—” He squinted. “Does poof have a synonym?”
“Materialized, popped up, magically appeared.” Why was I helping him prep for the SAT when he should have been helping me fix this mess? I motioned to the binoculars hanging around his neck. “Spot me.”
Amusement danced in his eyes before he scanned the beach for rogue projectiles.
This gave me the perfect opportunity to tug at my bra strap. A handful of half-melted ice cubes plopped onto the sand. When Junior Lifeguard turned back, his megawatt smile put the ice’s gleam to shame.
Something fluttered in my stomach. Nerves over unfurling the banner, obviously.
“All clear.” He stepped closer. “Can I help? It’s the very least I could do.”
With the banner growing more bloated by the second, I curbed my instincts to take charge of the situation solo. As much as I hated to admit it, in this moment the Poverb “Four hands work better than two” rang true.
I moved over a bit. “You unspool to the left; I’ll go to the right.”
His smile grew, showcasing a single dimple. A shiver went through me. An aftereffect of the mocha’s ice, obviously.
We stood shoulder to shoulder. Metaphorically speaking, since his shoulders hovered an entire foot over mine. More flutters.
What was happening? Those worms with wings constantly flittered in Po’s stomach—never mine.
“I’m Javier, by the way. Javier Luna.” So he was Latine! “But my friends call me Javi.” He extended a hand.
Instead of shaking it, I brought my hand onto the corner of the banner. “We’ve got matters to attend to, Javier. Meet and greets aren’t one of them.” To my surprise, he looked more charmed than offended. Still.
On account of needing his help with the unfurling, perhaps scaling back the aloofness wouldn’t be a bad idea. “But if you must know, I’m Castillo. My friends…” I trailed off.
Before Mom I had plenty of friends. After… Grief, it turned out, wasn’t a popular item to bring to sleepovers. Callie stayed my friend. Sort of. Outside of SBA events, or helping me with Angie’s quince, we didn’t really hang out anymore.
Between school, the after-school events I spearheaded, and now this party side hustle… my calendar didn’t have much free time for friends anyway.
As for Po? Sisterhood didn’t automatically translate to friendship, either.
“You can call me Castillo Torres.”
“Castle Towers is a cool name.”
“?Hablas espa?ol?” I tilted my chin at him. His tan skin nearly matched the strips of wet sand by the shore, and his eyelashes stretched almost as long as Paulina’s faux ones. I bit the insides of my cheeks. “Never mind.”
Checking this guy out was not on today’s agenda. Neither was opening the door to non-essential convos. I took my attention back to the task at hand. “We unspool this gently on the count of three, got it?”
He nodded. “To answer your previous question, un poquito.” His smile shrunk a little. “I used to practice it more with my pops. He was Guatemalan.”
My fingers twitched at the banner’s edge. Less at the wetness and more at him speaking Parental Past Tense. At the slight brittleness behind his words, like hairline fractures running through glass slippers. But mostly at how much acceptance brimmed from it, too.
He probably spoke about his dad often. Po and I only began talking about Mom recently. Dad was nowhere ready to.
Would I ever gain conversational fluency in Parental Past Tense?
“My mom was Cuban,” I said, practicing it.
“I’m sorry. Losing a parent sucks. A lot.”
“It does.” Two strangers, a few words. Talking about Mom didn’t fill her absence. But it lifted some of the constant heaviness pressing on my chest. I motioned to the banner. “Ready?”
He nodded, his smile growing full-size. Popping out that dimple on his right cheek.
Once more, my head went floaty. I shook it, resetting to planner mode. “One. Two. Three.” I pulled the top corner without tearing the cardstock. “Gently. Think of separating wet curls without breaking up the spiral.”
“I have no idea what that means, but I think I understand.” Javier’s fingers moved with surprising agility for being so thick. “My mom loves to cook but leaves all the onion and garlic peeling to me.”
Sheesh. Just when I thought he couldn’t get any cuter. Swooning had to wait, though. At least until we finished the unrolling part of this rescue mission.
Beads of sweat trickled down my temples. The more we unspooled, the more damage revealed itself.
Streaky colors bled into each other. The clean outlines of the dog inside a washtub, its cute tongue hanging out, the floating bubbles—splotched and smudged. The ALL DOGS WELCOME above the drawings? Completely illegible.
How were we supposed to take a photography club and SBA event committee group photo under this? Or hang this over the parking lot?
Much less have the dogs run and break through it.
That was the fundraiser’s most important moment. The way we always closed the event. And I’d ruined it.
I scraped my teeth over my bottom lip. Would this go on my event chair’s permanent record? Give Mandy pause about my abilities?
Javier’s voice cut through my thoughts. “It’s going to be fine.” The confidence behind his words buoyed me with hope. If anyone could help me save this drowned mess, surely a junior lifeguard could.
I sipped in some air. “Okay. Let’s keep moving.”
Our finger rolls synched up like a choreographed waltz. Only a few more inches to go.
There. All done.
At least most of MATTEO BEACH HIGH’S 3RD ANNUAL HOT-DOG AND DOG-WASH FUNDRAISER stenciled on the upper half of the banner remained intact. But dear god. The same couldn’t be said for its lower half.
Pieces of the banner’s cardstock had crumbled away, dissolved by the combo of water, chocolate syrup, and espresso.
And that’s when I saw it.
The missing 0 in the 100%.
The g, vanished from ANGUS BEEF.
I figured the derrière deities would’ve spared me from a lifetime of butt phrases ruining banners considering what’d happened at Po’s quince. Then again, I—of all people—should’ve known what’d happen when I assumed.
The only silver lining? There was no possible way this catastrophe could get any worse. Only, of course it did.
“What’s the other ninety percent?” Javier asked, roaring with laughter. He grabbed the sides of his rash guard, bracing himself.
Where was the Big One Californians always yammered about? Because I could have really used a fault line opening up to swallow me whole.
Javier glanced at me, still cracking up. And then he snorted.
A lot.
A guy chiseled like a Disney prince but who grunted like Moana’s potbellied pig? The absurdity of it—and of another banner fiasco—made me chuckle.
It came out slowly at first. Like Space Mountain’s cart chugging up the tracks before picking up momentum. I laughed harder than I had in months, so much that my eyes teared up.
Huh… I’d grown so used to them doing this because of sadness I’d completely forgotten laughter could make them water just as easily.
My giggles and his snorts floated into the salty air, scattering over the rest of the beach. As our laughter tapered, a lightness swept over me, making it easier for backup plans to rush in.
I mashed the banner into a ball. Not the exact size of a basketball, but it didn’t matter.
I whipped the towel/tablecloth off the trash can and tossed it to Javier. I took the makeshift basketball between my hands, stepped back to angle myself before shooting it toward the trash can reserved for recyclables.
It swooshed in, dead center.
“Nice swish, Castle Towers.” Javier’s eyes went wide. Exactly the way Angie’s guests’ had when she’d stepped under the spotlight at her quince.
No spotlight here.
Only the brightness of the sun and the flash of Javi’s single-dimpled grin. I reveled under both, momentarily forgetting about fixing the banner. Clearing my throat to refocus, I said, “You know those beach warning flags? Where do you keep them? And how many can you spare?”