Caitlin (3 page)

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 sunglasses. 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 on 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.

I closed my phone and dropped it back into my tote bag. Looking over at Whitney, I couldn’t imagine not having a mom to call. I didn’t know how to tell her that or even if I should. We never really talked personal stuff, which was probably why I knew so little about her.

Then my thoughts drifted to that afternoon. I didn’t know why I was interested, but I wanted to ask her what she’d been talking to Romeo about during lunch. I shouldn’t be interested in him, especially after the disastrous pool-evacuation episode. But I was. Even after I’d come back from my break with Robyn, I’d been unable not to notice Romeo.

He’d spent most of the remaining afternoon in the pool alone. At one point, two younger boys who I thought were twins and
looked a lot like Romeo hung out with him for a while. I wondered if maybe they were his brothers. I remembered all the times when Sean had to come to the water park with Robyn and me to watch us when we were younger. So maybe Romeo hadn’t come with a girl. Maybe he had just met her, like he’d said. Which meant he worked fast, and when she wasn’t around, he was looking for someone else to fill the void.

If it was Robyn walking beside me, I wouldn’t have had to ask. She’d just tell me. But Whitney and I were new friends — - which meant she didn’t know what I was thinking. Sometimes I wasn’t even sure she knew what
she
was thinking.

“So that Romeo guy,” I said as though I was bored, just trying to fill in the silence between us, “you sure talked to him for a long time.”

“Yeah, he was pretty interesting.”

She just left it at that. I wasn’t going to ask what made him interesting. I wasn’t going to pry information out of her. Besides,
if I asked too many questions, she might think I liked Romeo and I didn’t. Not at all. With any luck, I’d never see him again.

“I heard about the pool fiasco,” Whitney said.

I groaned. “Did you have to mention it?”

“I think it took a lot of guts.”

Her comment surprised me. “What did?”

“To blow your whistle, evacuate the pool, create chaos.”

“Thanks,” I said sarcastically. “That really makes me feel better.”

“No, seriously. A lot of people wouldn’t have done it because they’d have been afraid of looking stupid.”

“Yeah, well, I really wish I hadn’t done it.”

“Still, it was the right thing to do.”

Her words made me feel better. I’d never really expected comfort from Whitney. Maybe we
were
becoming real friends.

We came around a corner. I saw Robyn and Sean leaning against a wall, holding hands. Reluctantly, I gave my brother credit
for playing it cool with Robyn when they were at work.

“She’s in,” Whitney said.

“I knew she would be,” Robyn said, smiling.

Sean fell into step beside me and bumped his shoulder against mine — even though he had to bend down slightly to do it.

“So what was with the emergency evacuation —”

“It was a mistake,” I said before he could finish. “I was an idiot, okay?”

“I didn’t mean that. It’s just not like you to panic.”

“I thought someone had drowned,” I said curtly.

“Then you did the right thing.” He put his arm around me, gave me a quick hug.

“Someone taped stupid souvenir whistles on my locker,” I muttered.

“People like to tease. Don’t let it get to you.”

Easy enough for him to say. He wasn’t the one people were teasing. Still, I did
appreciate his support. We didn’t usually have touchy-feely moments.

The white limo was waiting near the entrance. Robyn had ridden with Whitney several times, but I never had. I tried not to look impressed as I settled into the leather seat.

Whitney handed everyone drinks from a little refrigerator. I really didn’t understand why she was working at Paradise Falls. I didn’t think it was because she needed the money.

The concert was at a soccer field in a nearby town. A beverage company had built and named it after themselves. It was a new field, really nice with lots of seating. They actually used it more for concerts than soccer games. They’d covered the field with a wooden platform and set up seats so some people could be closer to the stage instead of in the stadium seating area. The concert had already begun by the time we got there. Still, we stopped at the concession stand and bought drinks and hot
dogs. Then we made our way down to our seats — in the first row. Sean and Robyn went down the row ahead of us, then Whitney, then me.

The band was loud. I wasn’t familiar with them, couldn’t understand the lyrics, but I liked the beat of the music, moved in rhythm with it. Most of the crowd were on their feet, shouting, yelling, adding to the mayhem. There was too much noise to talk.

Whitney punched my arm and when I looked at her, she laughed and covered her ears. I guessed she was trying to tell me that it wasn’t her kind of music. It wasn’t mine either, but I was still glad that I’d come. It was something different. Since I was working this summer, it just seemed as though I didn’t have much time to get out and really have fun.

It wasn’t until near the end of the concert that the light show began. It was awesome. The lights flashed, shot up into the sky, seemed to dance in rhythm to the music. Green, yellow, orange, bright colors
that sometimes shimmered, sometimes wavered.

I was totally amazed.

When the band finished playing their last song, the noise level dropped. The light show ended just as abruptly. All that sensory overload almost made me dizzy, but I loved it.

Everyone applauded, and I didn’t know if they were clapping for the band or the laser light show. I was definitely clapping for the lights that had lit up the stadium.

Whitney leaned in and yelled in my ear, “Was that wicked or what?”

I gave her a thumbs-up. She was grinning from ear to ear as though she’d created the light show herself.

People stopped clapping and began leaving. I could hear them murmuring and things got even quieter.

“Can you imagine something like that — - only more spectacular and in only red, white, and blue?” Whitney asked.

“More spectacular?” I asked. “I don’t know how it could be.”

“I bet it could be. So wouldn’t this be better than fireworks?”

“It’d be great,” Robyn said.

“Definitely different,” Sean added.

“So do we want it?” Whitney asked.

“I think we should at least suggest it,” Sean said.

“Are y’all going to be on my light show committee?” Whitney asked. “If I make this happen?”

“You bet.” Sean.

“Absolutely.” Robyn.

“Of course.” Me.

“So what do we do now?” I asked.

“We wait,” Whitney said.

People were moving around on the stage, packing things up. It seemed a little like a letdown to watch them after the show. It took away part of the magic.

“So were you impressed?” a voice — a voice I thought I recognized — asked from behind me.

I spun around. Just as I’d feared: It was Romeo. What in the world was he doing
here? Why did he care if I was impressed? And impressed with what exactly? I was doing that whole multiple-question-thing that I hated.

Romeo was wearing jeans and a T-shirt with the words
LIGHTS FANTASTIC
superimposed over glittering spotlights. He also had a baseball cap on, so he didn’t have to flick his hair out of his eyes.

“We were totally impressed,” Whitney said. “So who do I talk to? Your dad?”

While she’d been talking, Romeo had been looking at me as though he expected me to answer. Or maybe he was waiting to see if I’d blow my whistle at him. But I’d left it in my locker. It hadn’t occurred to me until now that maybe the unfortunate incident — as I was coming to think of it — - had embarrassed him as much as it had embarrassed me. At least my name wasn’t shouted over the park. Should I have apologized to him for trying to save his life when it didn’t need saving?

He finally shifted his attention to Whitney. “Yeah. Here’s his card.”

He held out a business card, and she snatched it from his grasp as though she was afraid it was going to disappear.