I’d known this about her back when we were friends, of course. She had famously been on the outs with Michele Hoffman for years before someone asked them point-blank what they were fighting about and neither one had been able to remember. Lucy had always had a very distinct sense of right and wrong, but for the first time, I was on the “wrong” side of things. She pretty much ignored me, giving me instructions, when she had to, through Elliot.
It also became clear after a few shifts that she had gone a little boy-crazy. She flirted outrageously with every passably cute male customer, and had collected more guys’ numbers than I would have believed possible, had I not been a silent witness to it. Back when we’d been friends, Lucy and I had both been tongue-tied and awkward around boys. And despite the few relationships I’d had, I still sometimes felt that way. But Lucy had clearly gotten over any hint of shyness sometime in the last five years. Her camaraderie with Elliot and her friendliness toward the (particularly male) customers made our silent standoff all the more apparent. When it was just the two of us working, there was total silence, as she didn’t speak to me unless absolutely necessary. She either busied herself with her phone or read magazines, angling them away from me so that I couldn’t read over her shoulder or see what she put down as her answers on the Cosmo quiz.
And I’d just wipe down the already-clean counters and look up at the clock, trying to calculate how much time was left before I could go home. But there was something sad about the silence that was between us whenever we worked together, especially considering that when we were younger, when she’d been my friend, we had never run out of things to say to each other. If my mother would comment on how chatty we were, Lucy would always say the same thing—that we didn’t see each other for most of the year, and that we had nine months’ of stuff to catch up on. And now, in contrast, there was silence. Silence so palpable, it was like you could feel it in the air. When I worked with Lucy, I’d find myself so desperate for conversation that I’d go down to the lifeguard chair on my breaks to try to talk to Leland. And Leland wasn’t exactly the world’s finest conversationalist, as most of his responses—no matter what you said—usually consisted of some variation of “totally,” “no way,” and “I hear that noise.”
There were two other lifeguards, Rachel and Ivy, who rotated shifts with him. But they were both in college, and tended to hang out mostly with each other, stopping by the snack bar only when they wanted a bottle of water or a Diet Coke. Even though they weren’t overly friendly, their presence was reassuring, because I was still not convinced that someone as spacey as Leland ever should have been put in charge of guarding people’s lives.
I placed the woman’s diet soda, still fizzing, on the counter in front of me, and snapped on the plastic lid. I put the cup of ice next to it and slid them both across the counter from her just as Elliot dinged the bell to let me know the fries were ready. I picked up the container, warm, with that hot-fry smell that made my stomach rumble, even though it was only eleven in the morning, salted them generously, and placed them next to the woman’s drink. She was talking on her cell as she picked them up, but she nodded and mouthed Thanks as she headed back to her towel.
I looked out at the mostly empty beach and shifted from foot to foot, trying to get some warmth back into my extremities. It was a cloudy, overcast day, and we’d had only about three customers so far. Lucy was working as well, but had left to make a phone call about half an hour before and hadn’t come back yet. I ran my hands up and down my arms, wishing that I’d worn a sweatshirt over my uniform T-shirt that morning, like Elliot, Lucy, and even Leland had been smart enough to do.
If I’d been biking to work, like Elliot and Lucy did, I undoubtedly would have worn a sweatshirt. But I was still coming to work by car, despite the fact that my mother had told me repeatedly that it was inconvenient to have one car stranded at the beach parking lot all day long. And even though my dad had gotten my mother’s old bike ready for me to ride it, I’d left it so far to sit in the garage. I wasn’t sure if it was possible to forget entirely how to ride a bike, but I was in no hurry to find out.
“Cold?” I looked over and saw Elliot pushing himself up to sit on the counter next to me.
“Just a little,” I said. I took a sip of the hot chocolate I’d made for myself that morning, but found it was no longer warm enough to really help.
“There’s probably something in there,” Elliot said as he pointed under the counter.
“I don’t know,” I said doubtfully as I pulled out the lost and found box. I’d become quite familiar with the box in the week I’d been working there. Even though it was still early in the summer, the cardboard box was already full to the gills. I looked through it, a little amazed at the things that people left behind. I mean, how could you leave the beach and not realize you were no longer in possession of your bathing suit top? Or your left, men’s size eleven, flip-flop? The only warm thing I found in the bin was a hideous white sweatshirt that read, Teachers Do It With Class! across the front in green script.