Making Waves

by Nicole Leigh Shepherd

  Missy shrugs, obviously unbothered by the whole thing.

  “By the way, did you guys catch the way Lexi was looking at Jason?” Zoe interrupts in a desperate attempt to change the topic. She insists that she’s okay talking about Zach-related drama, but I’m not convinced.

  “Ha ha! I know,” Missy screeches. “I couldn’t tell whether she wanted to jump him or kill him.” Then her eyes widen. “I wonder if she’s going to ask him to the Last Blast Luau.”

  “She can’t,” Zoe says. She looks like she’s about to say more when Kylie suddenly decides that it’s time to leave.

  “Love you and everything, Abby, but it’s beach time!” Kylie calls out. She slides her oversized Dolce & Gabbana sunglasses from the crown of her head to the bridge of her nose.

  “Sorry about Lexi,” Missy says, even though she clearly isn’t. She pushes herself off her stool as daintily as possible. “If she didn’t like you before, she’ll like you even less now that she’s seen you hanging out with us.”

  “Yeah, sorry chica!” Kylie yells out. “Don’t say we didn’t warn you.”

  I wave goodbye to my friends and walk over to Jason, who’s at the bar inputting an order. “Thanks again for your help with that table.”

  “No problem.” Jason’s hands fly across the keys.

  “So, what did you think?” I ask.

  “About what?” Jason finishes at the computer and shifts so that he’s facing me directly.

  “About my friends. They’re amazing, right?”

  “You think?”

  “I know.”

  He runs his hand along the counter. “I heard you girls talking about the Last Blast Luau at the end there.”

  “Yeah, it seems like a pretty big deal.”

  Jason looks up, peeking through a tuft of dark hair. “It is. But that doesn’t matter for you and me.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “We can’t go,” he says, all serious.

  “What do you mean? Of course we can.”

  “No.” Jason pauses. “We can’t. The only way you and I are attending is in an apron with platters on our hands. It’s a members-only event.”

  “What? No …” My voice catches in my throat. “My friends would have told me.”

  “They should have. But you saw how quickly they left. They knew and they decided to leave you hanging.”

  “No …” I say. My refusal doesn’t sound convincing.

  Jason places his hand on top of mine like a brother telling his sister that there’s no tooth fairy. He looks into my eyes. “How amazing are your friends, really?”

  Chapter Ten

  “Faster!” Denise screams. She’s decided that this conditioning practice—our first—will determine who will work the beach and who will be stuck at the pool. “Remember, ten minutes max!”

  I scamper across the shore, my feet bare, refusing to let the uneven sand slow me down. And I thought basketball suicides were tough. After this, I’d take a pair of running shoes and the smooth hardwood any day. My thigh muscles burn, but I’m totally in my element. The air smells of salt and to my right waves spill across the wet sand.

  “And you call yourself lifeguards? Where did you get your certifications from? The Acme?” Denise paces back and forth with an oak clipboard tucked underneath her muscular arm.

  I touch one plastic cone, turn around, and sprint to the other. Beads of sweat build on my brow.

  “I’d be nervous to set foot in the water with out-of-shape guards like you!”

  This is my chance to show Denise that I deserve to be here. And it’s perfect because she has Lexi off running some errand. I need to get noticed right now.

  I touch the other cone and dig my toes into the sand. I push off, propelling myself forward against the wind. A few feet in front of me, a flag flaps, signaling the finish line.

  “Push yourself!” Denise screams, standing with her arms crossed. “We’re already more than seven minutes in!”

  With the rest of the group behind me, I pump my arms and run as fast as I can. Sand sprays from my heels, pecking at my calves.

  I lunge forward, first to cross the finish line. I try not to let Denise see that I can barely catch my breath. I want to her to think that conditioning is easy for me. Even if it’s not.

  “Impressive,” Denise strolls over, eyeing me up and down as I stifle the urge to take a deep breath. There’s no way I’m showing her how winded I actually am. She flips through a few pages on her clipboard. “Abby, right?”

  I nod, getting my breathing under control. “Abby Berkeley.”

  “Abby Berkeley, eight minutes. Nice job.” She pats me on the back. Then, looking at the other lifeguards struggling to finish their sprints, she says, a little loudly, “I think we can be sure that someone here is going to be assigned to the beach.”

  “Thanks.” I beam, doing a little victory dance in my head. First, the beach and then the scholarship!

  Denise, though, is already on to other things. She places the whistle in her mouth.

  Tweet!

  “Let’s go!” she shouts. The whistle dangles around her neck. “You should all be ashamed. A new girl works harder than you!”

  Ouch. The “nice job” would have been more than sufficient.

  I bend over to touch my toes, stretching out my hamstrings. Then I grab a bottle of water from the cooler and tip it into my mouth, allowing the cool liquid to rush over me. A moment later, two guys tumble over the finish line.

  Ohmigod, Brody. I practically spit up my water. Only … it’s not him. It’s some other guy—Greg, I think his name is. He has green eyes and a similar haircut. Weird. Where is Brody? Why isn’t he out here with the rest of us? I haven’t seen him at all today.

  A couple more lifeguards stream past the finish line. Allison and Brooke are among them. Another guard, Tammi, follows close behind.

  “Fifteen, fourteen …” Denise calls out, staring at her stopwatch and counting down the seconds left. She paces, scanning the few of us who’ve finished. “Only six out of twenty-five lifeguards have made it in under ten minutes! This is a disgrace!”

  Six out of twenty-four. Brody isn’t here.

  “Come on, Zoe!” I yell. She pumps her short arms, sweat glistening on her olive skin. “You’re almost there.”

  Zoe lowers her head like a bull, her high ponytail bouncing as she makes her way toward us.

  “Five. Four. Three.” Zoe crosses the line as Denise screams out the seconds remaining.

  “Oh my God.” Zoe falls next to me on the sand. “I think I just died a little bit.”

  I’m tempted to tell her, “Kind of like I did when I discovered that you, my best friend, didn’t tell me that the luau was members only.” But I decide now’s not the time to pick a fight.

  Zoe grabs a water bottle from the red plastic cooler and pours it all over her face and chest. If she notices me moving a few feet away from her in the time she does that, she doesn’t say anything.

  “The rest of you!” Denise yells to the group of stragglers. “Every single one of you”—she points to the exhausted guards still trudging through the suicides—“owe me extra sprints at the end of today’s workout.”

  “Aw …” a few groan.

  I can feel my lips start to spread into a grin. This competition is mine. All mine.

  Lexi naturally chooses that time to come back from her errand—whatever it was. “What’s up next?” she asks, assuming her usual position in front of Brooke and Allison.

  Oh please.

  “Did everyone hear that?” Denise shouts.

  The group looks at Lexi, attempting to figure out what Denise is talking about.

  “While everyone else is catching their breath and acting like a bunch of wusses, Lexi wants to know what’s up next.” Denise lights up, glancing proudly at her errand girl. “And that is why Lexi is the captain this year. It’s all about attitude.”

  Zoe steps next to me. “The only reason Lexi’s ca
ptain is because Brody dropped out.”

  “My thoughts exactly,” I murmur back to Zoe, momentarily forgetting my anger. We both cross our arms and give Lexi our most piercing stares.

  “You people should be ashamed of yourselves,” Denise says, stomping off toward the white lifeguard tower to gather whatever equipment she needs for our next torture session.

  “No. Lexi should be ashamed of herself for being such a butt kisser,” Zoe whispers to me.

  I can’t help it. I giggle.

  Lexi swings her head around like she heard us. But before she can exact vengeance, Denise returns, dragging five long ropes attached to red plastic torpedo buoys. She drops the buoys in front of us.

  “Please split yourselves into groups of two,” Denise says, motioning to where she wants us to stand by the buoys. “We’re going to review ocean rescues today.”

  Zoe nudges me and I shrink back involuntarily. She still feels like a bit of a traitor. Looking around, though, I realize that the only other people I know are Lexi, Brooke, and Allison—and it’s not like I’m going to partner with any of them in this lifetime—so I step forward. Might as well stick with what I know.

  Zoe gives me a weird look, having noticed my hesitation, but she doesn’t make a big deal of it.

  I take a moment to gaze at the buoy directly in front of us. I can’t help it—I’m practically bursting with excitement. I’ve been practicing for this day my whole life—acting out Baywatch episodes with Beach Barbie, dressing up as a lifeguard for Halloween, and even making my youngest brother pretend he’s drowning at the community pool once so I could save him. I was asked not to do that anymore after the “real” lifeguard dove into the pool thinking my brother was in distress, but that’s beside the point.

  I glance from Denise to Zoe to Lexi to the club—wondering if Brody’s lurking there—and finally back to Denise. Then I take a deep breath and let the moment wash over me. I slowly pick up the buoy by the side handle. I run my finger across the red plastic, imagining my first save, and in that moment I know what the point really is.

  It’s not what my dad and Jason said, not Lexi’s shenanigans, not who’s allowed to go to the luau, and not even what Brody’s being back here means to me. None of it.

  It’s that I’m about to be a real lifeguard.

  Chapter Eleven

  About an hour later, Zoe and I are practicing our saves at the end of the beach away from everyone else. Zoe floats on her back, leaning against my chest, her arms wrapped around the buoy. The tips of her pink-painted toenails peek above the water.

  “This is nice,” she says. “There’s nothing like floating along after a tough day of training.”

  I scissor-kick using the current to pull us toward the shore. One or two saves is exhausting, but I lost count at ten. “Yeah, it’s great. What is this, our fiftieth save of the day?”

  “Lexi seems to be handling it okay,” Zoe says, tilting her head to the right, where Lexi and Allison have been working on their saves a few yards away. Lexi is pulling Allison to the shore, seemingly without any effort.

  Seeing how easy it is for Lexi to work in the water gives me the extra adrenaline push I need. I drag Zoe to shore in a pronounced display of fake “save-ry.”

  “Whoa, there,” Zoe says, disentangling herself from the buoy. “What’s gotten into you?”

  “I can’t let Lexi win.”

  “Ah … shouldn’t be surprised that’s your answer,” Zoe says. “It’s always—”

  Suddenly, I can’t contain it in any longer. “Why didn’t you tell me about the luau?” I interject. I’d been waiting for the right moment to say something, but it’s too hard to keep my frustration inside. I just have to know why my best friend let me believe a lie. “You made me think I was allowed to go.”

  “Oh Abs, I’m sorry. Please don’t be upset at me. I’ve been meaning to tell you that the luau is members only, but I just knew how you’d react and …”

  “How I’d react!?” I tread water so that we’re eye-to-eye.

  “Yeah, you’d think that you couldn’t go.”

  “Obviously, that’s what I’d think.”

  “Yeah, because your family is all a bunch of cops. You guys think that rules aren’t meant to be broken.”

  I think back to what Jason said about the soda. “That’s not true ….”

  Zoe continues where she left off. “But they’ll totally make an exception for you.”

  “But not for other people, right?” I feel for the sand with my feet.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about people like Jason, who only work at the bar or whatever. Are they ranked lower than me or something?”

  “What? Did you swallow a sand crab this morning? You seriously need to chill out. You’ll be allowed to do everything.”

  “One, you don’t know if that’s true. And two, you’re missing my point. What about everyone else?”

  “I dunno. Win the competition and change the rules or something.”

  A wave hits me dead on and saltwater runs up my nose and into my mouth.

  “Abby?” Zoe asks. “You okay?”

  The saltwater burns my eyes and I struggle to see clearly. “Do you think it’s that simple?” I ask, rubbing my eyes.

  “Maybe. Beats me.”

  “Huh …” My anger disappears as I wonder if Zoe is on to something. So, “what are you doing after this?” I ask her.

  “The usual—playing educational games on a four-year-old’s iPad. Mrs. Johnson has a yoga class tonight. Want to join us? I could really use the extra hands.”

  “I … uh …” I blink my eyes a couple of times and look out by the cliffs. I think I see something dark floating there. Is it a stingray? “Zoe, did you see that?” I ask.

  “What?” she says, turning to look the same way as me.

  “Is that a body?!” she screams.

  I don’t stay to debate it further. My instincts take over and I swim as fast as I can, leaving Zoe in my wake.

  And then I see the victim.

  It’s a man. Facedown. I pull his arm above his head and then turn him over just like I learned in my lifeguarding course.

  Oh. My. God.

  It’s Brody. His eyes are closed and he somehow seems smaller than I remember him, more vulnerable. But it’s definitely him.

  “Ohmigod, Abby!” Zoe comes up behind me, catching sight of Brody’s immobile form.

  I can’t find the strength to respond. And even if I did, I wouldn’t know what to say.

  I give in completely to my training, shoving the buoy in front of Brody and wrapping my arms around his chest. I pull him toward the shore using every ounce of energy I have left. The waves knock me off balance, but I keep our heads above the water as the current propels us forward.

  Once I reach the shallow surf, my mind races, reviewing everything I learned about CPR—first assess breathing … Five, breath, five … I slowly drag Brody’s body across the flat wet sand, laying him down as gently as I can.

  Zoe reaches us at that moment. “What’s going on?” she asks. Worry fills her voice.

  I don’t respond. I can’t. The water slaps my legs as I adjust my position. I lean my ear to his mouth hoping, praying. I listen for a breath.

  I get chortling laughter instead.

  I jump back, startled. “What are you doing?!” I demand.

  “Wow. Pretty impressive rescue for your first day,” Brody says, opening his eyes. They crinkle as he smiles. He’s been fine this whole time.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I push him away. “I thought something horrible happened to you.”

  Brody laughs hysterically, holding his side to keep from falling over. “We’ll have to talk to Denise about getting you a special award.”

  “All righty then. Pretty messed up if you ask me.” Zoe stands up. “I’ll see you later, Abs.” She slowly walks away.

  “Zoe, wait,” I say, but Zoe’s already jogging toward the tower wh
ere the other guards are drying off. I turn back to the pretend victim, my hands on my hips. “Seriously, Brody, what was that?”

  “I was watching you and it looked like you needed a break,” Brody says, rolling on his side. He balances his head on his bent arm and I can’t help but notice how the incoming ocean water spills over his thick bicep, covering his chest and abs in a healthy sheen.

  “A break?” I inch back, crossing my arms in front of my chest. “You think that me thinking you’re dead is a break?”

  “I dunno. I guess it was a way to snag some more time with you. You didn’t seem that interested in seeing me yesterday.”

  I’m too angry to think about whatever it is that Brody’s trying to say. “Aw … did that upset you? I didn’t peg you for a—”

  “It did as a matter of fact.”

  “And you thought that the way to my heart was through a panic attack?”

  “It was worth a try. And honestly, it didn’t really seem like you were sweating it.” He reaches out to caress my arm, but I quickly scoot away.

  “I wouldn’t have done it if I’d thought you’d be this angry,” Brody grumbles.

  “How could I not be angry? Explain to me again why you thought a fake rescue was a good idea?”

  “I was in the tower drawing up the schedule so that Lexi could practice and I saw you from the window. When I got done early, I thought I’d give you some real rescue experience to prep for the competition.”

  I feel my face heat up and it’s not just because he glossed over the whole helping Lexi bit. “Yeah, that’s great and everything. But it’s not funny to pretend you’re dying.”

  Brody sits up, totally serious all of sudden. “You’re right,” he says sincerely. “Death is never funny. Thinking about how it must have looked to you … I can’t believe I did that. I just wanted to see you, but now that I think about it, it was stupid. I feel terrible and …”

  “It’s okay, Brody,” I cut him off. “You can stop the apology.”

  “So you forgive me?”

  “I didn’t say that. I just said—”

  “How about I make it up to you with dinner tomorrow night?” Brody’s emerald eyes glisten.