Chapter 8
2002
It had been a long, hot, boring afternoon at the Saint’s swim club. Traci’s head pounded and her stomach growled. She and Shannon had spent the previous evening at Pour Willy’s, the local hangout in the village, and both the girls were feeling the unhappy effects of Wednesday-night happy hour. She had been watching a group of teenaged girls who’d struck up an improvised game in the shallow end of the pool, batting an inflatable plastic basketball around, shrieking and carrying on and generally annoying the moms with their little kids who’d established their base camp down there.
Traci was about to blow the whistle and order the girls to stop when Hudson, a skinny, little eight-year-old pain-in-the-ass began shouting and waving his arms from where he’d been clinging to the side of the pool in the deep end, not far from the diving board.
Normally, Shannon would have been on the lifeguard stand down there, but she’d just sprinted toward the bathroom with her hand clamped over her mouth, gesturing for Traci to keep watch over her station.
“Gahhh!” Hudson gagged and pointed at the surface of the water near two boys his age who’d been competing in a cannonball contest. One of the kids, a boy named Mike, was usually Hudson’s pool buddy, but it appeared that today he and Hudson were on the outs.
“Gross!” Hudson hollered. “One of these guys pooped in the pool!”
Traci climbed down from the lifeguard stand, shaking her head. “Goddammit,” she muttered. “Not again.” She blew her whistle and picked up a megaphone. “Code brown! Everybody out of the pool. Right now! Code brown!”
The pool emptied in record time, with moms snatching their babies out of the water, and kids running and screaming like they’d just seen a twelve-foot hammerhead shark instead of a two-inch turd.
Just then, Shannon emerged from the bathroom, green around the gills and puzzled by all the commotion.
“Code brown,” Traci yelled, pointing at the surface of the water near the ladder.
Shannon picked up her own megaphone to yell at a couple of girls who acted like they hadn’t heard the code brown alert. “C’mon y’all, out of the pool. Right now!”
She grabbed the long-handled skimmer and headed for the deep end, handing it off to Traci before returning to her own post.
Traci swept the skimmer over the surface of the pool. She was getting ready to toss the offending item into the trash when she got a closer look. A friggin’ Tootsie Roll.
“Hudson!” she yelled, looking around for the little troublemaker. But he seemed to have vanished into the crowd of people ringing the perimeter of the pool.
She reached for her megaphone. “Okay, y’all. Sorry about that. False alarm.” She blew her whistle and started to climb back onto the lifeguard stand. “Open swim.”
“Traci!” one of the moms screamed, and pointed. A small figure was thrashing around in the water beneath the diving board. She recognized the close-shorn strawberry-blond hair. A moment later, she saw his body go still.
“Hudson!” she hollered, stomping around toward him. “You’re not funny. Cut it out. I mean it.” But the child didn’t turn his head and laugh. Now he was floating, face up in the water. Panicked, she dove into the pool, reaching him in seconds. His eyes were rolled back in his head, his body limp. She looped an arm under his narrow shoulders and swam for the side, keeping his head above the surface. Treading water, she lifted the boy out of the water and onto the side of the pool.
Shannon was sprinting toward them, and as soon as Traci clambered breathlessly out of the pool, she saw that Shannon was already crouched alongside the boy, attempting mouth-to-mouth.
“Somebody call nine-one-one,” Traci yelled. She knelt beside the child, placed her hand on his bony, sunburnt chest, touched her fingertips to the base of his neck. Nothing.
“Get a doctor over here,” she heard a woman shout. “Where’s his mom? Someone needs to find his mom.”
“Chest compressions,” Traci whispered, wild-eyed. For the next five minutes they frantically worked on the child, pumping his chest, turning him on his side, trying everything they remembered from their lifesaving class, all while surrounded by a crowd of onlookers who’d gone deathly silent.
Finally, after what seemed like hours and hours, they heard the shrill waaaah of an approaching siren, and over that, the high-pitched keening of a woman. “Hudson? Where’s my baby? Where is he?”
Traci’s eyes met Shannon’s. It was too late. They both knew it was too late.