Blowing my whistle, I pointed at a little towheaded boy currently dunking a towheaded girl I assumed was his sister. “No horseplay!” I called out, and, once I’d decided he looked appropriately abashed, I settled back into my chair.
It made sense, this summer job. While I was supposed to use my powers to protect the Oracle, with him absent and my powers still present, I figured I could at least put them to good use. Plus the Pine Grove Recreation Club was desperate for lifeguards this year, and once I’d passed the test (I’d actually had to fake being tired during the part where I treaded water holding a brick over my head), the job was mine, complete with red bathing suit, shiny whistle, and a tall chair where I could sit all day, scanning the pool for anyone in distress and trying not to think too much about my own problems. Like the fact that while most bad breakups went something like “He sent me a text,” mine was “He literally ran away and nearly blew up the entire town to do it.”
So, yeah, I needed a distraction, hence the lifeguard job. A solid plan, but I’d been working here for over three weeks now, and not once had I needed to dive into the pool to save anyone. Which meant that I’d basically sentenced myself to a summer sweltering to death in a tall chair with only my thoughts for company.
Well, my thoughts and Bee’s.
She’d applied for a lifeguard position here, too, both to keep me company and because, thanks to a tricky spell back in the fall, she had Paladin powers, too. So really, this was the most guarded pool in the entire state of Alabama. Maybe the most guarded pool in the entire country . . . but no one had the decency to drown even a little bit.
Honestly.
Of course, spending all day with Bee had drawbacks. Were it not for Bee and Ryan, my ex-boyfriend and Bee’s current one, David never could have escaped town in the first place. And both seemed more relieved about their lives being off the magical hook than sorry about what they’d done.
I could smell hamburgers grilling at the Snak Shak, coupled with the coconut scent of my sunblock and the sweet syrup from hundreds of melting snow cones. In other words, the scent of every summer since I was a little girl. This was what I’d wanted for months now—some normalcy. So why did I feel all restless and sad?
I jumped as a few cold drops of liquid hit my arm and glanced over to see Bee with the bright pink straw from her Diet Coke still pursed between her lips. “Ew,” I said, brushing off the soda she’d sprayed at me.
“You’re thinking too hard again,” Bee said, setting the sweaty can in the cup holder attached to her chair. “There’s, like, a little black cloud over your head, Eeyore-style.”
I smiled despite myself. “There is not. I’m just, you know, focused on the pool.” I nodded at the water, but Bee just shook her head.
“No, you’ve got your patented Harper Price Brood Face on.” She leaned a little closer then, the rickety chair groaning slightly. “Anything with David?”
Our powers and whole “sacred bond” thing meant that I was supposed to feel when David was in danger. But there’d been nothing over the past weeks, not even the slightest hint that he was anything less than okay. I didn’t even have the sense that he was all that far away. Usually, when we were apart, I felt this ache, almost like a phantom limb or something, and there hadn’t been any of that.
But then there was another part of me that worried that my not sensing anything might mean he was . . .
No, I didn’t want to think about that.
So I turned back to Bee and shrugged. “Nothing.”
She frowned, and I bit back that impulse again, the one that wanted me to remind her that if she and Ryan hadn’t helped David leave town, I’d know exactly what was going on with him.
The rest of the afternoon wore on the way they all did, slowly and with absolutely nothing of note happening (other than some little kid eating both a hot dog and three snow cones, which meant I’d had to call the janitorial people to clean up rainbow-colored vomit, ugh). The pool had fairly informal hours, opening usually around nine, and closing at “sunset.” By this point in the summer, that meant sometime after eight p.m.
This evening, most people had trickled out the gates earlier, probably wanting to get home in time for supper, and for once, I didn’t have to round up any stragglers in the changing rooms. Bee and I threw white terry-cloth cover-ups over our bathing suits and pulled the umbrellas off our chairs, packing them up in the storage room by the Snak Shak.