Confessions of Your Friendly Neighborhood Lifeguard

Chapter Three

The next day, I woke up at noon. I was tired, despite just sitting around and talking with them for hours. Still, I was pooped. I take that as a testament to what a bum I've been the rest of the summer. Shoot me, it's not a crim. Anyways, I got up and got ready and then dug to the bottom of my pajama drawer, where my numerous guard suits were buried. I pulled out a black one and strapped it on. A put on some of my mesh cheerleader shorts and a t-shirt. I couldn't believe I was about to go and do this, get a job at a freaking pool. I hated lifeguarding. People were evil.

This internal battle went on for a good fifteen minutes. But you don't want to hear my mental instabilities, do you?

“Mom, I'm borrowing the car,” I said.

“What about the mustang?” she asked from her home office.

“Uh, I just want to take the car.” I'd explain that to her later. I ran out of the house as quickly as possible and drove around town. Far away from the beach I found the B-SAC. It was big; had three water slides, and what looked to be a zero-depth entry pool and a lap pool. Not too bad. I also found it to be quite empty. There were probably about twenty people I could see from outside. I walked to the front desk.

“Um, hi I'm-”

“Rae?” the girl asked. I nodded, slowly. The townies here never ceased to creep me out. “You can go back to the guard room. Jen is waiting for you.” It was like a line out of some creepy movie. I walked through the locker room and to the guard room where a twenty something lady was waiting for me.

“Hi, Rae, I'm Jen,” the lady said. I shook her end. “Did you bring any paperwork?” I handed her my lifeguard certification, CPR certification, letters of recommendation from my old pool, and ten dollars for my work permit.

“Perfect!” she smiled. “You're hired. Here's an availability for July. I'll have to have it back soon because I'm making the schedule on Friday. All you need really is to sign these papers, and get your work permit which you can get at the police station. But I don't need that anytime soon.”

“Thanks, so much,” I smiled. I started to get up and walk away.

“Oh, wait, I'm gonna need you to swim and do some skills. Twenty laps, okay? We're not very busy today so, we can set up a lane for you in the lap pool.” Jen went to set up a lane rope and I went to the locker room and shoved my bag in a locker, pulling out my goggles. I walked out to the lap pool and stood at the side waiting for Jen to give me the go ahead. The green lane rope was in place on the side of the pool and she walked to me.

“That's Patrick,” she pointed to the guard in the stands. The mysterious Patrick whom I'd heard about sat sternly on the lifeguard stand. The sun was shining brightly on him so that only feature I could really make out on his face was his aviator sunglasses.

“Patrick will count your laps. Come back to the guard room when you're done.” I walked to the edge of the pool and looked at Patrick who didn't seem to be watching. Fine. I didn't need him to count my laps anyways. I drove in to the pool and started with four laps of freestyle. And then four laps of breaststroke and alternating until I reached twenty. I popped out of the pool and walked back to the guard room. I glanced back at Patrick who just stared down at the four swimming kids.

“Intense,” I muttered.

“Hey Rae!” a blonde surfer guy named Lance said. He another one of the loft people. “Jen, did you hire Rae?”

“Yeah, she's a pretty speedy. She'll start A.S.A.P. Here's a schedule for the next week, until July . You're on there two or three times,” Jen handed me a schedule. “But for now, I'm outta here. See ya.” Jen walked out and I opened up two suits that Jen had given me. One was a fun suit with multicolored stripes and another was another red guard suit.