Chapter 13
thirteen
I stood outside the large front doors of the school on Monday morning, feeling a little like I was going to puke. Between having to face Charlie and work with Courtney, I wasn’t exactly excited about my first day of work.
“It’s going to be okay,” Violet said from beside me.
“That’s easy for you to say.” Unlike me—dressed in ripped shorts and a tank top thrown over a “work appropriate” one-piece bathing suit—Violet was dressed up nicely in a pair of black jeans and her school blouse.
She didn’t need to wear her uniform for the job, but when she called me in a panic this morning because she had no idea what to wear, it was the only thing she seemed comfortable in.
She was worried about her tank tops having too small straps, her graphic tees looking too unprofessional, overheating in a thick long-sleeve shirt, and for some reason, all her other seemingly good clothes weren’t clean.
Personally, I thought if any of her other long-sleeve shirts were too warm, then her blouse definitely would be, but she insisted that it would be fine.
She was used to wearing it every day after all, and usually with something else over the top of it too.
I told her just to go for it today and see what everyone else was wearing before she made her decision on what to wear tomorrow, which seemed to calm her down a lot.
“Hey, I haven’t met my supervisor yet,” she said. “We have no idea whether he’ll be better or worse than Courtney.”
“Hey, Paige vouched for him.” Paige was Violet’s older sister, who also happened to be the same age as Violet’s new supervisor, which meant they had gone to school together.
Paige had said she didn’t know him well, but he was nice enough and she’d done group projects with him where he hadn’t been terrible, so it stood to reason that he would probably also be fine as a supervisor.
It wasn’t a guarantee, but we could at least hope.
“Yeah,” Violet said, but she didn’t sound convinced. “We’ll see.”
“Whoever has a better day buys the ice cream after work,” I suggested. I stuck out a hand. “Deal?”
Violet shook it. “Deal.”
I nodded. “Let’s do this.”
We walked inside and hugged one last time before going our separate ways—Violet to the third floor, where the tutoring sessions took place, and me down the long hallway on the first floor that led to the pool.
It was on the complete opposite side of the school, since it was a recent addition that had to be added where there used to be some portable classrooms that were never used.
There were a couple outside doors that led more directly to the pool, but they were inconvenient compared to where the drop-off section of the parking lot was.
Personally, I preferred to take the route inside with air conditioning.
I pushed open the door of the women’s changing room with my shoulder and walked inside. It was already brightly lit, and once I walked fully inside, I quickly noticed that I wasn’t alone.
“Hey, Madison!” Penny said with a wave. She had already changed into her bathing suit and was in the process of tying her long brown hair up into a bun.
Most of us tried to keep our hair as dry as possible throughout the shift to save us the pain of washing it after work every single day.
Not to mention the damage that having chlorine-soaked hair for eight hours straight could inflict on your hair.
Last summer, when my hair was still dyed pink instead of its natural blonde, keeping it dry had been even more important because every time it got wet, it meant that the color faded that much faster.
Granted, I ended up taking the pink out near the beginning of the school year anyway when I hung out with Sabrina and realized she also had part of her hair dyed pink.
I would never admit it, but I thought she pulled it off way better than I ever could—and it suited her aesthetic better anyway—so I’d decided not to keep it anymore.
Maybe once I was done working here for the summer and went off to university, I would dye it some other color, but for the time being, keeping it natural seemed like the easiest option.
“Hey, Penny!” I replied. “How’s it going?”
“Pretty good,” she said with a small nod. “You?”
I shrugged with one shoulder. “Same.”
I hung my bag up on one of the hooks and started taking off my outer layer, so I was left just in my bathing suit, then grabbed my whistle from my bag. It was already attached to an elastic, so all I had to do was put it on my arm.
“How was your school year?” I asked. Penny was one of those friends that I didn’t really talk to outside of when we worked together, so other than the few social media posts I’d seen from her, I had no idea what was going on in her life.
“It was…” She paused. “Eventful.”
I tilted my head. “Eventful? That doesn’t sound great.”
“Some of it was great. Some of it not so much.” She shook her head. “I’ll tell you about it later. The short version is that I have a new boyfriend.”
“Intriguing. I look forward to it.”
Penny laughed, then looked toward the pool door.
“Ready to face the beast?”
“Never,” I said. “But I guess we have to, right?”
“Unfortunately.”
We walked onto the pool deck. The smell of chlorine washed over me, so familiar and comforting as if it was welcoming me back after time away.
Although I went to Bayshore and the pool was in the building, I rarely got the opportunity to go swimming.
I wasn’t on any sports teams that used the pool and I’d stopped taking gym class after the one mandatory semester of it in the ninth grade, so I mostly only came in here when I was teaching during the summer.
A group of other instructors and lifeguards were sitting on the built-in benches along the left-hand wall, so Penny and I immediately walked over to join them.
To do that, we had to pass the glass window of the manager’s office, and I glanced inside quickly.
The head of the swimming program, Kelly Pearce, was in there, along with who I assumed was the lifeguard supervisor and Courtney.
Luckily, none of them noticed me looking in, and I quickly averted my gaze before they had the chance to do so.
No need to make uncomfortable eye contact first thing in the morning—Courtney would find some way to turn that into a fault from me, and I didn’t need to deal with that right now.
“What did you put as your preferred levels?” Penny asked me.
“Uh…” I thought back to the intake form I had to fill out before starting. “Honestly, I don’t remember exactly. I think I said the middle levels? Like four to seven.”
At the beginning of every session, we filled out a form stating what swim levels and ages we preferred to teach.
Obviously, there was no guarantee that we would get what we requested since it depended on everyone’s responses and what kids signed up for, but I appreciated that they at least attempted to place us with the right levels.
Last summer, Courtney sometimes purposely gave me levels I didn’t request just to make me angry.
“Penny! Madison!” One of the instructors we worked with last year, Thomas, jumped up and jogged over to meet us when we were almost at the benches and gave us each a hug. “How’s it going?”
“Not too bad,” Penny said. “You?”
“Doing all right, doing all right,” he said with a nod. “Graduated high school, so no complaints there.”
“Same here,” I said. I held my hand up for a high-five, and he obliged. “What school are you going to?”
“I’m actually going to the States,” he said. “NYU.”
Penny whistled. “Damn.”
Thomas grinned at her. “You ready for your senior year, Penny?”
She grimaced and shook her head. Thomas and I both laughed.
“Don’t worry, it won’t be that bad,” I said.
“You mean other than the insane pressure?” Penny asked sarcastically. “Yeah, I’m sure it will be a breeze.”
Behind us, the door to the manager’s office swung open and Kelly marched out, followed by Courtney and the lifeguard supervisor.
The three of us quickly hurried over to the benches and sat down alongside everyone else.
Kelly was very sweet, but she also ran a tight ship and we knew what was expected of us.
A quick glance at everyone sitting there told me that there were no new hires this year, or at least none of them were working this session.
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 lot of 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.