Chapter One

Chapter 1

Lifeguard candidates are taught that their first concern is the safety of others. —American Red Cross Lifeguarding, p. 3



Coach stopped us in the middle of swim practice and told us to go sit on the bleachers. At first I thought he was planning to chew us out, which would've been out of character-a set of eight hundreds fly-free was more his style of communicating.

Swim practice was never stopped for any reason, other than lightning, and even then it had to be close enough for Coach to feel the current on the pier. Our team swam outdoors when the water was sixty-three degrees, in the first few weeks of May before the official summer opening of Lakeside, when rumor said they filled the quarry with river water from the Ohio. We swam when it was raining, when it was strangely blustery for August, and on red-alert pollution days, too, when the air was so thick, you could practically carry it in your hands. Today, plaques of ruffled clouds had turned the sky a light ash color but no thunder bowled by, no rain fell, there was no real sign of a summer storm at all.

The twelve lifeguards stood in their chairs and blew their whistles in unison to clear the quarry of all recreational swimmers. Everyone was looking toward the back part of the lake, except me. Without my glasses I couldn't see ten feet in front of my face. Water dripping from my head and bathing suit, I shuffled to the bleachers, wrapped the towel around my body to hide it, then slipped on my wire-rim glasses. At thirteen, I didn't like being round and curvy, hated that my breasts were getting so big, that I was chunk