Caitlin Read online

  I shook my head. I knew she was trying to lift my spirits, but it wasn’t working. “You don’t understand because you’ve only ever liked Sean and he hasn’t hurt you yet. Of course, if he does, I’ll make his life miserable.” I was digressing. “Anyway, I just don’t want to get hurt again. And Romeo has broken hearts tattooed all over him.”

  “Really?” She snapped her head around to get a better look at him.

  “Well, not literally,” I said. “You know what I mean. You can just look at him and tell he breaks hearts.”

  And I wasn’t going to do anything that might get my heart broken … ever again.

  Whitney was still talking to Romeo when my lunch break came to an end. I didn’t want to admit how much it bothered me that they had apparently bonded. Or that I was irritated that she hadn’t come back to tell Robyn and me everything she’d learned about him.

  I didn’t want to be interested in Romeo. I was swearing off guys.

  Still, as I sat in my lifeguard chair, I kept looking back toward the sand-covered deck. Eventually I noticed that Whitney had left. The next time I looked over, I saw Romeo wading into the water. He really was in shape. His strides were long.

  The waves hadn’t started up yet, but I wasn’t supposed to be watching cuties wading into the water. For one thing, that end of the pool wasn’t my zone. For another, looking at him made my heart do this crazy dance. Distracting, very distracting.

  I turned my attention back to my zone. Some people brought inner tubes into the pool and floated. Some swam. Some dove beneath the surface — those were the ones I watched most closely, waiting for them to bob back up. I even made a little game of it, trying to guess where they’d come up. Most kids couldn’t hold their breath very long. But I memorized faces, did head counts, and worked really hard to make sure that everyone was accounted for.

  “Your friend is nice!” Romeo called up to me.

  What was it with this guy? Did he really not understand how serious my job was? That I couldn’t be distracted? And why would he think that I’d care what he thought about Whitney?

  I shifted my gaze back to the other people in the pool. It was always the most crowded this time of the afternoon. Not everyone got to the park right when it opened, but people who planned to come for the day were usually here by now — otherwise they really didn’t get their money’s worth. So the pool was packed with water-lovers.

  I glanced down at Romeo. He was still there, patiently waiting for me to crack.

  I did. I pointed back to the large sign.

  “What if I can’t read?” he called out.

  “You can read.”

  I shifted my gaze back to my area of the pool. How could I make him go away?

  The alarm sounded. People shrieked and yelled. Most of them were here because they got a thrill from the waves. We had pools without waves. Granted they weren’t as large or deep, and the deck area wasn’t as imaginative, but if guests didn’t like waves, they did have somewhere else to go.

  I found myself glancing down again. Even though I was wearing sunglasses, Romeo seemed to be able to tell when he had my attention. His grin grew. The waves were getting higher, stronger, and he was having a tough time keeping his balance.

  I went back to counting the heads in my area. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him dive into a large wave and disappear. I figured he’d surface even farther out, in another lifeguard’s zone. I did a quick look around my area. Then looked to the next zone over. I didn’t see Romeo surface. But that was the direction in which he’d dived.

  I did a quick visual sweep of the entire pool. I didn’t see him.

  I stood up for a better view. The wave pool was awesome, but also dangerous. The waves went out, then came back in, just like the ocean. If a person wasn’t careful, he could get caught, sucked into an undertow. With so many people floating on the surface, sometimes it was difficult to break through to the surface for air, especially if a person was at the deep end where he couldn’t touch bottom.

  We’d never had anyone drown in this pool, but during orientation they’d told us about people drowning at several other water parks. I told myself not to worry. Romeo was a strong swimmer. So where was he?

  He couldn’t hold his breath this long. I did another careful visual sweep of the pool. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw a guy with thick, black hair — but then he turned and he wasn’t Romeo.

  My heart pounded. I put my whistle to my mouth, hesitated, took another look around, couldn’t see him. I knew people could get tired. If they were in the deep end of the pool, they were a disaster waiting to happen.

  I blew three short blasts, which was the signal for clearing the pool.

  I saw the lifeguards on the towers on either side of me come to their feet and start looking around. I did three more short blasts.

  They started yelling for people to get out of the pool. The lifeguards at the shallow end started ushering people out of the water. It was a little like the scene from Jaws when someone saw a shark. Everyone hurried to get out as though they all realized that there was danger.

  “What’s up, Morgan?” Trent, my supervisor, yelled at me. Trent had buzzed his brown hair. I had no idea what color his eyes were because he always wore sunglasses: outside, inside, in the dark. Always. And he called each of us by our last name as though that made us all more grown-up or something.

  “I saw someone go under. He hasn’t come back up.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Was I? It was too late to have doubts. I nodded. “Absolutely.”

  “Okay.” Using his radio, he called in for the waves to be manually shut off. When the waves are going, we can’t see into the pool very well. Since the summer had started, we’d never had to shut off the waves. It was a big deal, but I just didn’t see that we had a choice.

  My mouth had gone dry. I didn’t know if I could blow my whistle again if I had to.

  There was a loud thunk as the wave machine was cut off before it was timed to shut down. Trent was going around to each lifeguard telling him or her to look for a drowning victim.

  All the guests were out of the pool now. The waves were calming. But the pool was just so big that it was hard to get a good look. It didn’t help that the sun was reflecting off the water.

  “Anybody see anything?” Trent yelled.

  All the lifeguards were shaking their heads.

  Trent walked back over to my station. “Where’d you see him go under?”

  I pointed to my zone. I climbed down from my platform. “Should we swim across the pool, search the floor? Maybe he got caught on something.”

  “You wouldn’t happen to know his name, would you?”

  He would have to ask.

  “Uh, yeah, actually, I heard someone call him Romeo.”

  The disadvantage of working at a water park is that everyone wears sunglasses so it’s really hard to know what anyone is thinking, but I noticed Trent’s jaw dropped a little as though he thought maybe I was playing a prank on him.

  “Romeo?” he asked. “You’re not serious.”

  “Yeah, I’m afraid I am. Maybe it’s a nickname.”

  He lifted his radio. “Suz, could you please announce that” — he shook his head — “that Romeo needs to report to the supervisor at the shallow end of Tsunami?”

  The announcement echoed over the park. “Romeo, report immediately …”

  It really sounded stupid. I heard a few people laugh, but most were like me: worried.

  “Let’s go, Morgan. If you see him, let me know.”

  We walked to the shallow end of the pool and I started scanning faces. “I really think we need to go into the pool,” I told Trent. He walked the area, he never sat on the lifeguard platform, so I felt obligated to point out, “There are blind spots —”

  “You the supervisor?” I suddenly heard.

  Trent and I spun around.

  Romeo stood there looking as perplexed as I felt. He wasn’t wearing his sungl
asses. I could see his eyes clearly. They were a pale gray, almost silver. I didn’t think I’d ever seen anyone with eyes that shade before. The fact that he had intriguing eyes added to my anger.

  “Where were you?” I demanded to know.

  “Uh, the restroom?” He said it as though he wasn’t sure. “Is that against the rules?”

  “I didn’t see you leave the pool.”

  He shrugged. “Didn’t know I needed your permission.”

  “You don’t. Sorry for the trouble,” Trent said. He looked at me. “We’ll talk later. Get back to your station.” Blowing his whistle, he started walking through the crowd. “It’s okay, folks. False alarm.”

  “Should I be flattered that you were worried about me or insulted that you thought I’d drown?” Romeo asked.

  “Even strong swimmers drown,” I grumbled before I turned on my heel and headed back to my station.

  “Wow, that was some serious whistle-blowing you did,” Tanner said when I walked by him.

  I glared at him, but he probably couldn’t tell, because I was wearing my sunglasses.

  How could I have been so stupid?

  * * *

  “I was mortified,” I told Robyn later.

  When it was time for my break, I’d headed over to Mini Falls. We were sitting on the short wall that surrounded Lost Lagoon, which was a really shallow pool with a wrecked pirate ship in the middle that kids could play on. Robyn and I were dangling our feet in the water, so they were cool while the sun beat down on our backs and shoulders.

  “It’s better to be safe than sorry,” Robyn said.

  “The other lifeguards are calling me ‘whistle-blower.’” They’d called me that as I walked by on my way back to my platform. It had hurt my feelings. I was usually tougher, but between Tanner and the Romeo incident, I was losing confidence in my judgment.

  “They’re just jealous.”

  “Of what? My getting the award for most panicked lifeguard of the summer?” I was the youngest lifeguard at Tsunami. I felt that I had to prove something, that I was capable of handling the job. I worked so hard to remain cool, so no one would know I had doubts.

  “Caitlin, chill. If you hadn’t cleared the pool and he had drowned, it would have been a thousand times worse.”

  She had a point. Still it didn’t make me feel any better.

  “Trent was so mad.” Once he’d calmed all the guests down, he’d come over to talk to me. His voice had been low and chilling. He thought my actions reflected badly on him. He’d told me that he was going to start keeping a closer eye on me. I’d been working for a month without anyone watching me. Now, because of one instance of bad judgment, everything was suspect? It made no sense. I was starting to think the guy was psycho.

  “He’d have been madder if someone had drowned,” Robyn said.

  I knew she was right. My job was to make sure that everyone was safe. Still, I shouldn’t have even been looking at Romeo. Maybe that was what really had me upset. That I’d noticed him to begin with. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have been looking for him, wouldn’t have been aware that he’d gone underwater. He’d messed up my perfect employee record by being so cute that I’d wanted to look at him.

  “He said Whitney was nice.”

  “Who said?” Robyn asked.

  “Romeo.”

  “When did you talk to him?”

  “He keeps coming over to my area and yelling stuff up at me. If Trent saw, he would not be happy.” Maybe Trent had seen him talking to me. Maybe that was the reason he’d gone postal over one little mistake.

  “So maybe this Romeo guy likes you,” Robyn said.

  “I doubt it.”

  “Do you want him to?” Robyn asked.

  “No.” Although I guessed there was nothing wrong with a guy liking me as long as I didn’t like him back. “Tanner’s probably glad he dumped me.”

  “He didn’t really dump you. You dumped him.”

  “His dumping me was coming. Why else would he kiss another girl?”

  “Because he’s an idiot.”

  “Maybe I’m the idiot. Maybe I should transfer to this area of the park.”

  “Why?”

  I sighed. “Because no one around here knows me.”

  Robyn gave me a sympathetic smile. “You’re taking this too hard. So you made a mistake. We all do. And around here, we have to watch all the little kids really carefully.”

  Watching carefully was what I did. I just hadn’t proved it like Robyn had. Not that I wanted a reason to be a hero, because that meant bad news for someone.

  I stood up. “Guess I’d better get back to work. Thanks for listening.”

  “That’s what friends do.”

  “Well, you’re the absolute best at it.” I took a step away, turned back. “It seems like we never do anything together anymore.”

  “I know.” She shrugged. “Between work and … well, you know.”

  Yeah, I did. Between work and my brother.

  “Later,” I told her.

  For the first time since I started working here, I wasn’t looking forward to returning to my station at Tsunami. And it was all Romeo’s fault.

  “Look what I’ve got!” Whitney waved four oblong ticket-looking things in front of my face so fast that they blurred and I couldn’t read them.

  I was sitting on a metal bench in the locker room. It was the end of the day. Or at least the end of the park’s day. Everything shut down at eight. Thank goodness. I was so ready to go home. I wasn’t even sure that I’d come back tomorrow. The souvenir shop sold cheap little plastic whistles. Someone had bought a dozen and taped them all over my locker. Ha-ha! So very funny.

  I’d pulled them off and tossed them in the trash. So I wasn’t in the best of moods when Whitney came in all bubbly.

  I’d changed out of my bathing suit and put on shorts and a cute purple top that had princess written across it in little fake silver gemstones. I was stuffing my bathing suit into my tote bag when Whitney’s frantic waving began.

  I grabbed her wrist to stop the almost-hurricane-force winds from slapping my face. “Hold on so I can read —”

  She pulled free. “They’re tickets to a concert for tonight. Front row. Want to go?”

  Not particularly, but I didn’t want to go home and mope around either. Plus Mom would ask how my day had been and I was afraid I’d start to cry. I wasn’t normally one who cried over things, but it had been a crummy day. “Who’s playing?” I asked.

  “It’s a local band that you’ve probably never heard of. Doesn’t matter. We’re going for the light show.”

  I laughed. “The light show? Why would I care about a light show?”

  “Exactly. The fact that you don’t care is the reason that we need to go.”

  I held up my hands to stop the madness. “Okay, start over because I’m totally lost.”

  She dropped onto the bench beside me. “The park is going to have a Fourth of July extravaganza, stay open late — you know that, right?”

  “Sure. Sean’s been talking about the different ideas they’ve been tossing around in marketing to promote the thing.”

  “Since I’m in parties and entertainment, I’m helping to plan it. Charlotte is in charge, totally, because she’s the full-time permanent entertainment manager — but between you and me, she has absolutely zero imagination. Fourth of July? Fireworks. That’s her amazing idea. But everyone does fireworks. I mean everyone. So I’m thinking laser light show. And the company that I’m thinking we might want to hire is doing a light show as part of this concert, so I want to check them out.”

  A couple of weeks ago, I would have told Whitney she was crazy to think that management was going to take any of her suggestions seriously. But she and Robyn had come up with the float-in movie idea, management had bought into it, and now every Thursday night, the park stayed open late and showed a movie on the white wall behind Tsunami — while guests floated in inner tubes in the pool. Like a drive-in movie, except o
n water.

  So if Whitney wanted a laser light show instead of fireworks, I figured we’d have a laser light show.

  “Going to this concert sounds like a last-minute thing,” I said. “And you got front row tickets?”

  “It’s all about who you know. I called my dad. He knows people who know people. He had his assistant bring them over.”

  She definitely didn’t live in my world. Robyn and I had gone to a concert last year and we’d only been able to afford tickets in the nosebleed section.

  “So do you want to come with me?” Whitney asked.

  I didn’t quite trust her — which is an awful thing to say, but it was the truth. Four tickets, two girls. Was she thinking of playing Cupid? Maybe setting me up with a blind date? I liked to be in charge, Robyn liked to follow, but Whitney liked to make things happen.

  “Who are the other two tickets for?” I asked.

  “Robyn and Sean, of course.”

  Of course. I didn’t particularly want to hang out with Robyn and her new boyfriend but what else did I have to do? Before this summer, I’d done everything with Robyn. I’d been happy with that — a clique of two. It had been her idea to start including Whitney in our little group, which in the end, was working out for me since Robyn now spent all her time hanging out with Sean.

  “Yeah, I’m in,” I said.

  “Great! I’ll let David know.”

  “Who’s David?”

  “The driver.”

  “We’re going in your limo?”

  Whitney’s mom had died, and she had no brothers or sisters. Her dad provided a limo and driver to take her places since he worked all the time and she wasn’t old enough to have a driver’s license.

  “Well, yeah. My dad doesn’t trust anyone to drive me around except a professional driver.”

  “So who are you, really? A princess or something?”

  She laughed — a little too loudly — like people do when they think you’re too close to discovering the truth and don’t want you to know it. “According to my dad.” She pointed at my T-shirt. “But then, so are you. Meet us at the gate when you’re ready.”

  “I’m ready now.”

  We walked out of the employee locker room. I took out my cell phone and gave my mom a quick call to let her know what was happening. She was cool with it, especially since Sean was going to be there. She trusted him to look out for me.