The Lifeguard (13 page)

I don’t know this person. It isn’t him. I discover he has teeth. I learn that he can smile. I think he’s in love.

And I feel deathly ill.

Body blow.

Did I do something to deserve this?

If I had one wish right now, I’d wish that Marissa was here with me instead of being off at that stupid, God- forsaken baby camp at the other end of the earth, so she could hold me together so I don’t totally self-destruct. She’s the one person in the world who would understand this. She’d listen hard, then scrunch up her face and come up with a plan. Marissa doesn’t wallow in self-pity. She takes action and thinks on her feet like a field commander.

“Life is short,” she always says. Translation: Get up and get moving.

Only I can’t make her parachute out of the sky right now and land next to me for hand-holding and strategizing, so I do the next best thing: I pretend real hard she is here, my crazy imaginary friend, and dream that while I stare out at the water and contemplate drowning, she’d be turning around and reporting back to me on what she’s doing and what he’s doing, sizing up how bad the whole mess looks. She wouldn’t let me march off and go home, she’d grab me by the arm, make me sit down and lecture me.

“Sirena Shane,” she’d say, “you’re not going to roll over and play dead. Go walk past him and say hello and act totally cool. Stake your claim, even hang out with him and talk.”

She’d tell me to ignore the blonde and act like I belong there.

“Just go pretend that everything is just the way it should be,” she’d say.

The way it isn’t.

Before I hit the ground running, I take out my mirrored compact and like a bad spy, I try to see behind me to get a fix on what’s happening, which is humiliating and infantile and doesn’t work anyway because the mirror is the size of an Oreo, and what I need is roughly the Hubble telescope. Only I can’t help peeping. After a few seconds, the mirror catches the sunlight and the heat is about to burn a hole into my skin. It occurs to me to leave it there so I go up in flames, which is one way to deal.

Then I snap to, and do what Marissa would tell me to do:

Play the game.

I reach for ammo—the sparkly pink lip gloss in my bag that tastes like cherry, then some grapefruit cologne down the front of the suit. I push my sunglasses back on my head and tug the top of the suit down so it shows more. I stand tall, defiant.

This is totally no big deal. You can do this, my head insists.

My heart thumps erratically.

Code Blue.

If I were in the ICU now, they’d call for the crash cart and the priest.

Stop being a jerk
, a little voice in my head says.

I walk in his direction because if this turns out to be the very last time all summer that I appear on the beach, I’m making dead sure he sees me in this bikini because I’ve blown my entire savings on it and it looks good, it does, it does, it does, it does. My head keeps replaying the voice of the salesgirl to buck up my crumbling ego:

You look hot, you look hot, you look…

I don’t think I’ve ever looked better, at least that’s what I tell myself now, or at least I thought it back in the store when I still had a functioning brain and a clear, working mind. I walk toward him and then slow down. It’s a new day, everything’s in a clearer—or maybe a blinding—new light. Have I been making this all up when it’s crazy wrong? There’s only one way to find out and the answer is about thirty, now twenty, now fifteen, now ten yards in front of me and looking more astonishing than I’ve ever seen him, his hair longer, wilder, more disheveled, all the better to set off the perfect planes of his angular face and his sleepy, deep-set, emerald eyes.

I get closer and closer, and as if he senses the vibrations of my footsteps in the sand, or picks up my scent on some primeval frequency, he turns slowly and stares hard in my direction. The easy smile grows fainter and fainter. His face turns more serious.

He’s never looked this beautiful.

It almost hurts to look at him.

I’m interrupting though, I can tell. Getting in the way of whatever put the smile there before.

He not at ease anymore. Or happy.

What have I done?

He shifts from one foot to the other. I stop in front of him. For the first time I make out the slightest stubble of blond hair on his chin. His face first thing in the morning. He forgot to shave. Or didn’t want to. Was he late for work? Why? My insides twist at the implications.

The air feels thinner. There’s not enough of it, otherwise my lungs are failing. His eyes hold mine and I’m powerless. I feel arm-wrestled, pinned down, helpless. One hand goes up to the back of his neck, flexing his bicep to best advantage. There’s a fine muscle pulsing in his jaw. I want to turn and run suddenly, but where? The girl at his feet on the blanket seems comatose. His cap shields her face from the sun.

“Hey,” I breathe, so softly I’m not sure I said it or thought it.

And I wait.

“Sirena,” he says, finally, nodding his head so slightly it’s barely an acknowledgement. He licks his lips. He’s uncomfortable, no hiding it. He doesn’t want me around. I wait for a “How are you?” Even some pathetic attempt at a joke about whether I learned my lesson about swimming out too far.

But nothing.

Dead silence.

He looks away finally and reaches for his binoculars, behind him on the step of his chair. He steps back, at least I think he does, hiding his eyes from me and staring out at the expanse of beach, taking in everyone and everything.

Except me.

I DO NOT EXIST.

I’ve been snubbed.

Tasered.

Only I don’t drop down which is unfortunate, because if I did, maybe then I’d get some shred of attention. Mouth to mouth resuscitation to get me breathing. He’d try to save me because it’s his job, nothing more.

Or maybe he wouldn’t bother. Been there, done that. Ignore her, she didn’t learn her lesson.

Seconds go by, each one long, painful, agonizing. I can’t let my face show what I feel. I can’t. I can’t, I can’t. I try to look blank, emotionless. Cool. Does he see through it?

The sun, meanwhile, is so intensely hot that I’m about to faint, my mouth dry, my legs about to buckle under me. I have to get away from him, I have to.

I wait just an extra second.

After he’s scoured the beach and made sure that no one is drowning will he finally turn back to me and say
something—anything
to acknowledge that I exist? Even a pathetic “How are you?” Unlike the blonde, I can’t come up with clever, teasing remarks to make him laugh out loud, let alone smile. I can’t come up with anything at all. I’m struck dumb.

But time out.

That’s not an issue because he doesn’t bother to even look back at me. He stares out, cold, self-involved, totally not interested. The wall is up, his message received. I turn away and make my way down to the water, throwing my sunglasses on the ground and running into the waves, swimming out deeper and deeper and deeper.

Over my head. Beyond saving.

I
watch a ballet of sea turtles paddle by; hammerhead sharks cruising in slow, deliberate circles surrounded by an entourage of platinum fish like silver rain. The stony coral reefs are so close I run my hands over their scratchy surface, as hard and skeletal as jagged bone. I swim over forests of orange and yellow sea anemones as bright as summer fruits, their drunken feathery heads and spidery legs doing a quivery hula dance in the water.

Tufts of seaweed lightly stroke my face like grassy fingers. I stare up to the surface where the sunlight harpoons yellow shafts of light through the water. Only the brightness doesn’t reach the bottom of the ocean floor. Down there, it’s dark like the inky black of midnight: a cold, uninviting, distant world where predators hide in waiting.

He’s in the water somewhere, swimming silently, stealthily getting closer and closer. Only there’s no hint where, not a ripple on the surface. I see manta rays as wide and thick as fleshy carpets and wolf eels, soft and graying as evil-looking old men.

I want to call out to him, to reach him, only he isn’t anywhere. I look all around and then I see him, or at least I think I do. He’s way up above the surface, staring down at me. I try to call him, but I can’t speak. I reach up to where he is to wave, only an army of weeds and clown fish hold me back like a helpless fish wound up in a net. I slither out of their hold and rise to the surface searching for him, but I’m too late. He’s gone.

The scorching white light of the sun steals my sight and all I can make out is an endless world of steel-blue water where I swim and swim and swim and never stop.

I wake up in a hot, sweat-soaked T-shirt, burning red eyes, and a throat with a razor blade inside it. I sit up and the earth shifts.

“Oh God.”

Aunt Ellie brings me a thermometer. She puts her cool hand on my forehead. “You’re burning up.”

102 and a half.

She snaps into action. “Take these,” she says, handing me aspirins and then water. Then she reaches for the phone. “I’ll call the doctor.”

“He’s coming to the house?” No doctor I saw ever did that. But this isn’t a big city and Dr. Jenner is a friend. She calls him Craig.

“Some sort of virus,” he says, shrugging slightly. My glands are swollen, but other than that, he says, “There’s nothing remarkable.” Translation: Virus means they can’t pin it down. The good news is no gagworthy medicine.

“Sleep and drink lots of fluids,” he tells me. “Call me in a few days if you don’t feel better.”

I’m not going to the beach for the rest of the century, so that’s fine.

“Don’t tell my parents.” I plead with Aunt Ellie in a scratchy unrecognizable witch voice. “They’ll only worry, and what can they do anyway?”

“Let’s see how you do.”

She knows I’m right, I can tell. When they call, I’ll say I was out with some girls I met. They’ll be happy to hear I’m making friends.

I don’t want to watch TV and I can’t concentrate, so books are out. I lie back in bed and stare at the lacy salt patterns on the windows and watch the gray sky darken. I drift into a sweaty, uneasy sleep, my wet shirt against my skin under the steamy blanket tent.

I wake up and stare at the alarm clock. Nine. Day or night? Where am I? Then I remember. Something woke me, but what? My forehead’s still hot and I reach for the water bottle next to my bed. It hurts to swallow, but I finish it and want more, but there’s an entire flight of stairs to go down.

I lay back on the pillow and gaze out the window at hazy clouds over the moon. Somewhere in the heavens it sounds like metal curtains are shaking. Seconds pass and the sky ignites with Fourth of July fireworks. It happens again and again.

From somewhere behind me, the awful moans of the dead begin.

I don’t have the strength to run down to Aunt Ellie so I pull the covers up to my face and lie there with my eyes squeezed shut. I cringe in fear as something cold, almost rubbery sweeps across my head—like icy fingers that make my scalp vibrate. Goose bumps spread all over my arms.

“Stop it!” I cry out trying to punching away in the dark. “HELP.”

I cover my head with the blanket and it gets so hot I can hardly breathe. I lie still, but the feeling starts to creep up my spine again. It’s like being on a dark street and knowing something’s there and it’s reaching out and touching you, only you can’t see anyone or anything, you just feel the touching and you’re powerless to stop.

“Stop it,” I cry out. “Stop it.”

Then I sit up and there it is.

A quivering mask of a face floats in the air and stares back at me. There are burnt-out holes where the eyes should be. A head, but no body, floating in the air, floating. It swoops near me and then drifts back and then that awful moaning builds up again that I can feel in my bones.

“What do you want? Why are you here?” My throat is so sore I can barely get the words out.

It makes that awful, inhuman squeal again like it’s sick or in agony. The sound rakes through me and I shiver and then break out in a cold sweat.

Behind me, the staircase begins to squeak.

“Who’s there?” I scream without a voice.

“Sirena?”

“Aunt Ellie, God, you scared me to death.”

She sits at the side of my bed.

“The ghosts…” I whisper.

“Poor you,” she says, leaning over and hugging me. Then she puts the back of her hand against my forehead. “A double whammy.”

She hands me a thermometer and I put it in my mouth. It beeps and I look down. Now it’s 101 degrees.

“Progress,” she says, handing me more aspirins. “Do you want something to eat? I made you chicken soup.”

I shake my head.

“Just a little? It will help your throat.”

“Later.”

“What about company?” The futon opens to a bed. She’s willing to stay, maybe to help me ward off the ghosts.

“It’s okay, I’m fine now.”

She raises her eyebrows. “Really?”

Still she sits with me and we watch nothing on TV, channel surfing, only we can’t find anything remotely interesting except local news and then an old black-and- white movie that’s supposed to be funny. Eventually Aunt Ellie clicks off the TV. The stairs groan as she goes down.