Chapter Five
S tacey stood in front of her mirror Sunday morning, attempting to look cute and casual while remaining as covered as possible. Since the swimsuit outlet wasn’t open until Monday, she had no choice but to wear the horrendous Lands End one-piece for her first shift. But all she could think of was Tiffany and Melissa’s perfect bodies in their tiny two pieces. Every time she looked at her own reflection in this suit, she envisioned herself on a platter with an apple in her mouth.
For the past couple of years, Stacey’s wardrobe had been prep-school-girl-grunge. She’d doubled down on plaid skirts with knee socks and platform Mary Janes, or Levi’s with buttoned collared shirts over lacy camisoles. None of that paired well with what was basically was a red leotard, and it was too hot out to hide under a flannel.
She settled on wearing loose overalls with no shirt and Birkenstocks. As Steven Tyler screamed out of her stereo, Stacey acknowledged that her hair was finally long enough to resemble Alicia Silverstone’s. At least my hair covers my back-fat.
Back in the guard shack in time for her shift, Stacey was surprised to find Mark snoring on the couch. He had one arm over his eyes, his other hand holding a half-eaten burrito in his lap.
Bob’s attention was on the sports pages while a baseball play-by-play came from a transistor radio on the desk. He barely glanced up to take the money from arriving swimmers, let alone acknowledge Stacey as she came in.
“Is there a certain locker I should use?” Stacey asked.
“Whichever one is free,” Bob said without looking at her.
The only unclaimed locker had an unidentifiable reddish-black furry residue in the base. Stacey hung her backpack from the hook at the top and made a mental note to find out if the pink powder antibacterial stuff could clean that mess up, too.
Chad was already outside on his tower, in red trunks and aviators, applying sunscreen, and the first couple of swimmers were slithering into the water. She grabbed the doorknob and was about to head out to the pool when Bob stopped her.
“You can’t wear those overalls,” he said.
“Oh…” Stacey’s heart sunk. “Yeah. Right. Of course not.” She went back to her locker and started unhooking her straps.
Stacey peeked over her shoulder. Mark still hadn’t moved. Once she was sure Bob wasn’t looking her way, she wrapped her towel around herself, up high under her arms, letting the overalls drop to the ground. She quickly shoved them into her backpack and hustled out the door.
Scanning the pool deck for anyone she knew, Stacey headed for the far lifeguard tower. She climbed the ladder one-handed while the towel was secured with the other, then slumped into the chair. Chad smiled and waved across the pool and she timidly waved back. She squinted in the white light of the sun reflecting off the water. Forgetting her sunglasses was another rookie mistake she’d never make again.
After all her worry, Stacey didn’t see anyone she knew. At one o’clock on the first Sunday in summer, the last thing anyone going into their senior year would want to do is hang out at the community pool. With only a chain link fence separating the pool from the outside world, she’d felt like every cheerleader and star-pitcher would be laughing at her, a fat dork up there posing as a lifeguard in an old lady leotard. She couldn’t get that fear out of her mind.
In reality, the pool was occupied by a dozen little kids, most around six to eight years old, with their parents and grandparents. They didn’t care who the lifeguards were. It was summer, it was hot, and The Plunge offered cheap entertainment.
Lifeguarding got really boring, really quickly. And hot. Really hot. Hiding inside her towel, Stacey curled under the minimal shade provided by the ancient, dusty umbrella, fanning herself in an unsuccessful attempt to minimize boob and butt sweat marks. What she hadn’t expected, though, was how quickly she would embrace her newfound power.
All afternoon, Stacey blew her whistle, yelling, “No running!”
She knew the concrete was about a thousand degrees and kids were running to avoid second degree burns, but that didn’t matter. Stacey was a lifeguard now, and she loved the authority that gave her.
Within her first ten minutes, a scrawny boy with eyes red from the chlorine stood at the base of her tower shuffling from foot to foot. “Will the water actually change colors if someone pees in the pool?” he asked.
“Do you want to find out?” Stacey replied. “If I see it happen, I have to announce to the whole pool who peed and make everyone get out.”
The kid’s eyes grew wide, and he ran in the direction of the boy’s locker room.
Stacey blew her whistle at him and yelled “Walk!”
Every thirty minutes the guards rotated. After he awoke from his food-coma, Mark took over Stacey’s post in the deep-end tower and Chad went inside.
Mark wore only his red trunks and large-brimmed hat with sunglasses. His belly hung over his waistband, but he didn’t seem self-conscious. Once Chad was inside, Stacey lowered her towel to around her waist.
“Check this out,” Mark said, as Stacey climbed down so he could take over her position. He pointed out a large, fully-clothed family walking over to the bleachers without towels or a bag. They started taking off their shoes. The dad removed his belt, took his wallet out of his pocket and hid it in his shoe, and everyone piled their items in a small heap under the bleachers. Then all six family members climbed into the pool with all their clothes on. They wore pants, T-shirts, even socks. Some had on multiple layers. And they attempted to swim.
While the majority of the family members stuck to the shallowest parts of the pool, two of the fully clothed kids got the wild idea that they were ready for more of a challenge. Holding onto the side, they inched their way around the edge and pulled themselves up the ladder, their heavy clothes weighing them down.
When the older kid—about nine years old—headed for the diving board, Mark hopped down, grabbed the shepherd’s crook from the wall and leaned it against his tower.
Back in February, the Red Cross instructor had shown Stacey’s class what to do with the giant metal hook, but she thought it would only be used as a last resort. She was surprised to see Mark using it her first day on the job.
Standing with his toes hanging off the end of the diving board, the kid held the waist of his pants up with one hand, then flopped down into the water. After resurfacing, he clearly struggled to keep his face up as he doggy-paddled toward the side.
Stacey stood on her platform and let her towel fall, ready to jump in. She was afraid the boy would never make it to the ledge.
Mark blew his whistle. Yawning, he reached the pole down and told the kid to grab on, then swung the pole over to where the kid could grab the ladder. Once the kid climbed out, Mark motioned for the two boys to talk to him. Whatever he said, the boys seemed genuinely afraid to go off the diving board again.
Stacey was amazed. Mark actually seemed pretty good at lifeguarding.
“The city won’t let us make rules about what clothes people swim in,” Mark told her. “If someone’s fully dressed, I usually make them take a swim test. That weeds most of ‘em out. And don’t dive in to help them! I learned that the hard way my first summer rescuing a lady in a parka.”
“A parka?”
“Don’t ask.”
“When do you dive in?” Stacey asked.
“Almost never. Except to cool off. Someone needs to be on the bottom of the pool, not moving, before we get in the water with them. Otherwise, fish ‘em out with the pole.”
Stacey could see why Bob wasn’t lenient about the overalls. Even dealing with her towel wrapped too tightly would have gotten in the way if she’d had to quickly pull someone out of the water.
The rest of the afternoon, Stacey left her towel on the seat, and started demanding swim tests for any kid she suspected would be problematic. It put her mind at ease and also helped pass the time. If she said they weren’t ready to go off the board yet, the kids would mope away, only to return twenty minutes later begging to be retested.
What Stacey struggled most with was parents attempting to toss in their toddlers from the diving board. At seventeen, Stacey knew it wasn’t her place to advise those adults on their parenting strategy, but she was fairly certain they were doing irreversible psychological damage.
When one father walked to the end of the board and dropped his terrified little girl in, she screamed from the time he let go until her head sunk beneath the water, and both floaties popped off her arms. Fortunately, the child’s mother was already in the water and grabbed her quickly. But the toddler came up coughing and gasping for air. There was immense fear in the small child’s huge eyes and the way she gripped her mother’s arms until her fingers were white. Stacey wanted to scream at those parents on the little girl’s behalf: who could she ever trust if her parents would do that to her?
From then on, Stacey began barking out rules over the megaphone against more than one person on the diving board and anyone jumping off with floaties. She whistled and shouted and announced her rules to regulate the chaos across the pool all afternoon.
And each time she did, it gave her a little thrill.
If someone asked her that first day, Stacey would have said the diving board seemed like the most dangerous aspect of the job. Lifeguarding was about preventing accidents. The guards said “no running,” because kids slipped, skinned knees, stubbed toes—even fell on their faces and smacked their heads.
But the worst accidents were the ones no one would have predicted.