It was four days before I got a proper night's sleep again; that terrible nightmare continued to pop into my head. I still wasn't able to figure out why I had suddenly been seeing my old friends again in my dreams, but I figured that I would find out sooner or later. These kinds of things had a habit of working out on their own. Of course it perturbed me that they only showed up in such a disturbingly gruesome nightmare, but I tried to pass that off. After finally going through a night where I didn't wake up drenched in cold sweat and able to hear my heart thumping, I found myself getting ready for work. It was the first day of summer swimming lessons, and although I still had an hour until I had to be at the pool, I decided to head to work anyway. The rest of my family was still fast asleep, so I slipped out making as little noise as I could manage.
Arriving at work, I was surprised to find that at least a third of the other guards who would be teaching were already there. "Oh good, so I'm not the only one who decided to show up early," I said. "How come so many of us are already here?" I exchanged a grin with Brandon, who was resting against the lockers in the corner.
"I dunno why the rest of them are here," he said, "but I've been working since seven."
I shook my head in bemusement. "How and why you agreed to work so early in the summer, I'll never know," I said. He pretended to shoot himself in the head and I knew he was regretting taking such an early shift. I left to go get changed and found my new team leader, Brianna, in the office when I got back.
"Hey Bri," I greeted her, "I hope you gave me good classes."
She smiled as she handed me my lesson sheets. "Did the best I could, given that we're supposed to balance them out among everyone." I chuckled, taking the papers and flipping through them. Overall it seemed like this session would be a good one: I had the first lesson block off, followed by a class of three-year-olds, probably coming to lessons for the first time, and then some older kids before rounding off the morning with a Star class, which basically meant just ensuring that they had good technique for their swim strokes and that they knew the appropriate first aid. Satisfied, I turned to see Brandon looking at his sheets with a mixture of dismay, horror and disgust.
"Are they that bad?" I said, as we exchanged sheets. He simply grimaced before starting to leaf through mine. "You have such a good set of classes!" he said indignantly. "Look at the shit I got, I'm stuck with that for two weeks!" I could see what he meant, I wouldn't have been the happiest myself if I had gotten his classes. He taught three lessons where all the kids were between the ages of three and five, which probably meant a large portion of them were newcomers and liable to sit and cry through the whole lesson.
"At least we're teaching that Star class together in the last lesson block," I said, trying to find a silver lining in what did admittedly seem like a very dull set of classes. He grunted as he took his sheets back. "Come on, cheer up!" I grinned. "At least for those first three classes all you have to get the kids to do is bob and float. Plus you get to splash them."
Brandon's face suddenly lit up with an evil grin. "They. Will. Pay." he said. "They'll have to feel my pain." We both started laughing while Brianna looked on in a slightly disapproving manner.
"Don't hurt the kids, remember we're here to teach them how to swim," she said, although even she couldn't stop herself from smiling as we grinned at her.
"They've got plenty of time to learn that," I said, waving my hand in dismissal. "This is the time where we get to have fun." As a thought occurred to me, I turned back to Brandon. "Since I have the first block off and we both teach little kids in the second block, what say we teach those together? Maybe it'll be less painful for you."
He grinned. "Sure, if the team leader's okay with it," he said, as we chuckled at Brianna's facial expression, which was taking on a look of growing concern.
