Chapter 4
four
I paced the length of my room in just a towel and face mask, holding my phone flat on my palm as Violet’s voice crackled through its crappy speaker.
She had been telling me about the movie she and Jaxon had seen yesterday but had gotten distracted halfway through and was now debating what outfit she wanted to wear while we went rollerblading after my work shift today.
My phone dinged loudly with the notification of an email. I frowned and swiped down the notification screen to look at it. This email address was the one I only used for school and work, so it was strange for me to be getting a message now when classes had ended days ago.
“Everything okay?” Violet asked.
“Yeah, just an email,” I said. “Give me a second.”
I couldn’t hold back a groan as I saw the email’s sender: Courtney. I hated her on the best of days, but I especially hated her after seeing her with Charlie. What was so great about her that he wanted?
“Courtney?” Violet guessed when she heard my groan.
“Of course,” I said. I shook my head, ignoring the way my new bangs kept falling in my eyes.
I had stupidly cut them the other day on a whim, and it was an awful idea to say the least. “And she’s being so passive aggressive too.
The whole email is basically just telling us how to do our jobs as if we haven’t all had training and experience working here before.
” I put on a false high voice as I read out a few sentences: “‘You need to show up at least thirty minutes before your first class—if you don’t, you will be penalized. Your bathing suit must be deemed work-appropriate—no two-pieces, please! If you wear something I don’t consider appropriate, I will take over your classes and send you home to change, resulting in loss of hours.
And remember, we all have to work together to clean up!
’ I swear, half of these are targeted at me. ”
Violet’s laughter was muffled like she was covering her mouth with her hand.
“They probably are,” she said. “You did manage to make her really angry last year.”
“Hey, she was angry with me for no reason,” I corrected. “Remember the day that she said my bathing suit wasn’t appropriate? I was wearing the exact same one as Penny, but I was the only one docked for it because she hates me.”
Penny Owen was my best work friend—which was a little ironic considering my feelings for her brother—even though she was a year younger than me.
Last year, we’d gone to Costco together and found a pack of great bathing suits, so we’d agreed to split them between us.
There were various patterns in the pack, but more often than not, we ended up wearing the same ones on the same day.
The kids thought it was hilarious, but Courtney deemed it “unprofessional” and compared us to ten-year-olds trying to “twin” for school—which I thought was a stupid comparison to make given that both Courtney and I had gone to private schools with uniforms for our whole lives.
Every day was “twin day.” She also claimed that the bathing suits were inappropriate on me, even though she thought they looked fine on Penny somehow.
“I didn’t say it wasn’t ridiculous,” Violet said. “Just that you’re probably right about it being targeted. You know how much she hates you.”
I sighed and shook my head. The towel that was wrapped around my hair shifted and started to slide off slowly, causing pressure to build as it practically ripped my hair out of my scalp. I put my phone down on the shelf while I unwrapped it and threw it towards my closet.
“Have you heard from your supervisor at all?” I asked.
“Not from my direct supervisor, but I got an email from Ms. Moscowitz confirming my position and which kids I’d be working with.”
Since Bayshore was a private school, many teachers worked year-round by running summer school classes, but a few years ago Ms. Moscowitz started a summer tutoring program that hired only the school’s students.
A couple of the other teachers helped out with the program, but she did most of the higher-up work while students filled the other roles.
I had no idea who Violet’s supervisor was this year, but I could only hope that they were better than mine.
Luckily for her, the bar was so low it was practically underground.
“What subjects are you tutoring again?”
“Anything in the humanities,” she said. “I wasn’t looking to spend my summer doing math and science.”
“Not even second-grade level stuff?” I teased.
“Somehow, I feel like that would be even worse,” she said. “It’s been so long since I’ve done those sorts of worksheets, I’d probably fail at them, and then the parents would get angry with me.”
I laughed. “I would love to see you attempt a kid’s math homework. Just to see, you know?”
“Stop,” she said, but I could hear the amusement in her tone. “Anyway, I’m going to stop by your house to drop off my rollerblades so I don’t have to carry them all the way home, okay?”
“Yeah, of course.” She was walking home from getting the wheels on her rollerblades fixed, and since I lived closer to the shop, it only made sense for her to leave them here.
After she hung up the phone, I went back to reading the email and continued pacing, now doing so because of anger instead of boredom.
If the email was anything to go by, Courtney was on even more of a power trip this year than she had been last year.
Maybe getting the job a second time had really gone to her head—it wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest. For goodness’ sake, there was an entire section dedicated to how we had to teach the Red Cross swimming levels and how we couldn’t stray from them at all.
There were also another two paragraphs on how much of our lessons could be dedicated to fun games.
I was going to have to find a different way of dealing with her this year, one that was less reliant on just avoiding her—partly because there was a paragraph on not going into the locker room at any point during our shifts, even though our contracts said that if we had a break and no other work on the pool deck to do, we could go wherever we wanted.
I was just finishing reading the email when the doorbell rang.
Violet had made good time if she was already at my house.
I threw my phone on the bed and started to go to open the door for her, but hesitated as I left my room and became very aware of the fact that I was still only in a towel.
Should I throw on some clothes for the time being?
I hesitated in indecision, shifting my weight from one foot to the other as I debated.
But my decision was basically made for me when the doorbell rang a second time.
Getting dressed, even quickly, would take a couple of minutes and leave her standing outside in the summer heat.
Anyway, what did I care? It was just Violet.
I ran downstairs, carefully holding the side of my towel closed just in case, and threw the door open.
But the person on the other side of the door was most definitely not Violet Evers.
“Looking good, Mads!”