by Jade Parker
I didn’t want to be interested in Romeo. I was swearing off guys.
Still, as I sat in my lifeguard chair, I kept looking back toward the sand-covered deck. Eventually I noticed that Whitney had left. The next time I looked over, I saw Romeo wading into the water. He really was in shape. His strides were long.
The waves hadn’t started up yet, but I wasn’t supposed to be watching cuties wading into the water. For one thing, that end of the pool wasn’t my zone. For another, looking at him made my heart do this crazy dance. Distracting, very distracting.
CONTENTS
COVER
TITLE PAGE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
TEASER
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ALSO BY JADE PARKER
COPYRIGHT
It was disgusting. My brother kissing my best friend. Not that they were kissing right that minute — because Sean was driving. But I knew he had kissed Robyn. I hadn’t wanted details. It was just a little too weird to even think about — my best friend and my brother.
How had that even happened — them getting together? Right under my nose?
How could Robyn not realize he was evil?
Worst of all? Now I had to sit in the backseat every morning as Sean drove us to the Paradise Falls water park. We all worked there, in different positions. Sean had started out the summer as a supervisor. Now he was working as a marketing assistant in the front offices. Robyn was a ride attendant in the kiddie area, officially known as Mini Falls. I was a lifeguard at Tsunami, the most awesome pool at Paradise Falls.
And okay, at the beginning of the summer, Sean had been Robyn’s supervisor and they’d seen a lot of each other while working together, but still. Being around him all the time should have convinced her that she didn’t want to be around him all the time. But that didn’t happen, and I just didn’t understand it. She’d always been dependable, the one with the most common sense. She wanted a geological reading of what was beneath the surface before diving in. Me? I just jumped into the water with complete faith that it was safe. Maybe that was the reason she now had a boyfriend and I had a broken heart.
I didn’t want to think about that, so I concentrated on solving my daily su doku puzzle. Why couldn’t boys be as easy to understand? I guess because they didn’t come with little boxes that had only one solution.
I started to get nauseous. I rolled down the window, felt the breeze riffling through my black hair. At the beginning of the summer, I’d gotten it cut pretty short so all I had to do was run my fingers through it and every strand fell into place.
“Hey,” Sean growled. “I’m running the air conditioning here.”
His hair was as dark as mine, his eyes as blue. That was all we had in common — two things we’d inherited from our dad. Sean was tall, I was short. He was slender and could eat anything he wanted. I ate sweets only on holidays. Thank goodness, the Fourth of July was just around the corner. I even had some obscure holidays marked on my calendar to get me through when well-known holidays weren’t close together — - but I used them only in an emergency.
I wasn’t chubby, but I didn’t shop in the petite section either. I was well-rounded, but then most of the women in my family were: my mom, my grandma, my aunts. “Sturdy stock” is how my dad referred to us, which sort of made us sound like cows with a questionable future. I loved Dad but he didn’t believe in sugarcoating things. I liked things sugarcoated, which could be the reason that I was sturdy.
“I’m feeling carsick,” I told Sean. Not that he would care. When we were little, he was always telling me gross stuff to make me feel sick. I think it was a brother thing.
Robyn twisted around and looked at me, her brown eyes filled with worry. A month ago, I’d been the one contorting around in the front seat so I could talk to her. A month ago, the summer had been filled with promise. Now it was just filled with long, hot days.
“Do you need him to pull over?” Robyn asked, holding her ponytail so the wind didn’t whip her long, golden-brown hair around her face. She had some naturally light strands as though her hair couldn’t decide if it should be blond or brown. But most of it was brown.
“I’m on the expressway,” Sean said as though we didn’t have sense enough to notice where we were.
“But if she’s feeling bad —”
“Do I need to pull over?” he asked. “Let me know now because there’s an exit ramp —”
How did Robyn even do that? How did she make Sean do stuff, pretend to be human? Before she came along he would have just told me to hang my head out the window like a dog.
“No, I’m fine.” I rolled up the window. I just wanted to get to work as quickly as possible and out of the car. I felt as though I was suffocating, that tears were going to be squeezed out of my eyes at any moment. I wasn’t normally so grumpy or so emotional, but getting my heart broken had really messed me up.
Robyn smiled, a smile she was giving me a lot lately. A smile that said, “See, he’s not mean. Not really.”
I just so didn’t get it. Her and him. I wanted her to be happy. I really did. But not with my brother.
Okay, so I wasn’t adjusting well to them getting together. It was simply too weird. It would be like Cristina Yang on Grey’s Anatomy suddenly getting together with McDreamy. Not that Sean was McDreamy, but Robyn was acting as though he was.
Oh, all right. Sean has never really done anything mean. Not really. It’s just that he’s my brother, he’s older, and he thinks he knows everything. It doesn’t help when I’m assigned to a teacher who also had Sean, because then I get to hear about how smart and creative he is. I’m smart, too. I just don’t see a need to prove it by acing exams. I’m perfectly happy with what my dad calls “a respectable B.”
To top it all off, now my best friend thought Sean was totally awesome. I wanted to gag whenever she started talking about how nice he was and how he looked out for people.
I thought Sean would never pull into the water park’s parking lot. It was huge. Large enough to hold a few thousand cars. The water park was all about customer service, and that service began before any of us actually clocked in. It began when we took the parking slots farthest from the ticket booths. But we were young, in shape, and arrived before the sun was at its hottest so it was nothing for us to trudge across the asphalt.
Before Sean even brought the car to a complete stop, I opened the door, hopped out, and headed toward the entrance. I didn’t want to watch them holding hands and walking along, bumping shoulders as though holding hands wasn’t enough contact. Behind me, I heard two car doors slam shut.
“What’s your hurry?” Sean asked.
I turned around, walking backward. “We’re late. Maybe marketing assistants don’t have to be on time, but us lowly peons do.”
He’d put a spell over someone to get the supervisor’s job. He had that power. Look what he’d done to Robyn. Now he had a job in the front offices that was even better.
This summer was the first that Robyn and I had worked here. It was Sean’s third year, so maybe he did have the experience to be in charge. He was seventeen, two years older than Robyn and me.
Since I’d grown up with him believing he was the boss of me, I sometimes got a little irritated that now he actually was the boss of me. Even though he was no longer a supervisor, he was still in a position of authority.
I got to the employee gate, not paying much attention to the thousand or so people lined
up at the ticket windows waiting for the park to open for the day, and swiped my employee badge through the electronic card reader. The gate clanked, signaling it had unlocked. I pushed it open. A guard stood on the other side. We had a lot of security here: guards at every entrance, guards who patrolled, security cameras. We were pretty high-tech.
“Hey, Caitlin,” the guard said. He was shaped like a panda bear, big and cuddly, his round belly straining the buttons on his shirt. He was white-haired and had retired from some real job. I didn’t think he’d be able to chase anyone down, which was probably the reason that he guarded the employee entrance. We followed the park rules. “No running” was our mantra.
“Good morning, Mr. Smith.” I hurried past him to the path that led to the main part of the park, which meant walking by the park’s mascot.
“Brawk! Welcome to Paradise Falls! Brawk!” The green-and-yellow parrot greeted everyone who walked by.
Before I worked here, I spent a good deal of my summers playing at the park. It had shade trees and palm trees and a real island theme going. Several areas of the park were covered in sand that was at least twelve inches deep so kids could build sand castles or just dig around.
I arrived at the grass hutlike employee locker room, pushed open the door, and walked to my locker. Several girls were there already, changing into their uniforms, talking, laughing. It was usually a pretty friendly place.
Beside my locker, a girl with blond hair that had amazing highlights was tucking her white polo shirt with the Paradise Falls logo into her red shorts. Employees who had long hair were supposed to wear it in a ponytail, but no one ever got after Whitney about her hair. They didn’t get after her about anything, really. She said it was because she was so adorable. But I wasn’t buying it.
“Hi, Whitney.”
Robyn and I had met her at the beginning of the summer. She’d started out working with Robyn at Splash, a pretty boring slide in Mini Falls. Now Whitney worked in parties and entertainment. A lot of people reserved space for birthday parties or family reunions. The park also arranged special entertainment for certain occasions — like the upcoming Fourth of July.
“How’s it going?” Whitney asked.
“Fine.” I didn’t know her well enough to unload on her, and now that I was out of the car, I was feeling better about things.
Underneath my clothes, I was wearing the park’s official lifeguard uniform — a red tank bathing suit. It saved me a little time in the getting-ready department after I got to work. I took off my shorts and T-shirt.
“Are you going to have lunch with us today?” I asked.
“I’m going to try. We have three birthday parties scheduled for this morning.”
“Sounds like fun.” I almost sounded sincere.
“It’s more fun than standing around watching people swim.”
“I don’t usually stand,” I told her. “I sit.”
“Whatever.”
It wasn’t that I didn’t like her, but there was something about her that I didn’t trust. I couldn’t explain it. She didn’t look or act like someone who needed to work. She said she was working because her dad wanted her to. Although she didn’t really seem to understand the meaning of the word “work.” When she first started working with Robyn, Whitney didn’t do anything except work on her tan. Now she seemed to be into assisting with the parties, so her attitude had improved a little. Although I had a sneaking suspicion that she told people what to do rather than doing it herself. She wasn’t exactly a hands-on kind of girl.
I entered the code into the lock, opened the metal door, and tossed my clothes and beach bag — with my lunch — into the locker.
Whitney came a little closer. “So how is it with Robyn dating your brother? Used to it yet?”
“Weird and not really.” I never understood people asking questions one right after the other.
“She really likes him,” Whitney said.
“Well, obviously, otherwise she wouldn’t be seeing him.” I shook my head. “I had to stop listening to his phone conversations though. It was one thing to spy on my brother, but it seems totally wrong to spy on my best friend.”
I’d developed a habit of standing and listening outside his bedroom door, because he had a deep voice and I could always hear him when he talked on his phone. I picked up some good gossip about people and happenings that way. But when Robyn was on the other end of his phone conversation — well, I just couldn’t bring myself to eavesdrop.
“You really don’t like not knowing the scoop on everything, do you?” Whitney asked.
“I really don’t. Speaking of which, what’s your deep, dark secret?”
She laughed. “What makes you think I have one?”
“Come on. Everything you own has a designer label on it, so why are you working at a water park?”
“Because it’s so much fun to bug people like you.”
She walked away without saying anything else. She and I had this real love-hate relationship going. It was strange because I actually enjoyed bantering with her. Robyn usually just followed along with whatever I wanted to do. Whitney challenged me.
Besides, Robyn liked Whitney so I was okay with her hanging around with us, although it had bothered me at first. Robyn and I had always been a clique of two — ever since we’d met in kindergarten. I’d always preferred it that way. I was more about quality than quantity. One good friend whom I trusted with everything was better than a lot of friends whom I knew just a little.
I heard Whitney say hi to someone. I looked over my shoulder. She was talking to Robyn. I returned my attention to getting ready. I clipped my badge onto the side of my red hip-pack and grabbed my whistle from the hook where I’d left it the day before. I dropped the lanyard over my head, draped it around my neck, and felt the weight of the metal whistle hit my chest.
“Are you okay?” Robyn asked.
I jumped, startled by her sudden nearness. I hated that she’d sneaked up on me. Even though I’d known she was in the area, I hadn’t expected her to be by my side so quickly.
“You do realize he’s evil.”
She smiled as though I was silly. The dynamics of our relationship had changed once she started dating my brother. She didn’t always believe everything I said.
“He’s nice.” She opened her locker.
“Just don’t come crying to me when he hurts you.”
“You don’t mean that.”
No, I didn’t. I was there for her. I always would be. It’s what best friends did.
“I just don’t get why you like him so much.”
“I know, but you don’t have to.”
It was as though his being older was rubbing off on her or something. She used to be really shy, kind of quiet. Now she was confident about everything.
Although maybe it wasn’t him at all. Maybe it was the fact that she’d saved a kid who’d almost drowned.
That was supposed to be my job — as a lifeguard. So far, all I’d done this summer was blow my whistle when kids ran around the pool or didn’t follow the rules that were posted.
“Are we okay?” Robyn asked.
“Yeah, totally.” I adjusted my red Paradise Falls visor. Another part of our uniform. I slipped off my sparkly flip-flops, popped them in my locker, slammed it closed, and reset the lock. “Gotta go.”
“Don’t forget what Mr. T says.”
Mr. T was the park’s general manager. Supposedly his name was unpronounceable so he just went by “Mr. T.” Robyn and I pointed our fingers at each other, the way Mr. T did whenever he saw a park employee. “Be watchful out there!” we both said dramatically.
Then we laughed. It always felt good to laugh with Robyn. The problem was that these days she was mostly laughing with Sean. And I was laughing alone.
I was sitting in the lifeguard tower at the five-foot mark. Tsunami was twelve feet deep at the end of the pool farthest away from the Tsunami lounging deck. A huge wall was at the back end. Behind it were all th
e machines that created the awesome eight-foot waves. The alarm sounded to warn swimmers that the calm pool was about to transform and pretty soon the rippling waves would be heading toward shore. Tsunami was the cornerstone of the park. It was the largest pool, had the largest lounging deck, and the biggest pavilion. Around the outskirts, it had private cabanas for rent if people didn’t want to mingle with the masses.
I didn’t understand why anyone would come here for privacy.
I heard a girl release a high-pitched scream. It would take the waves a while to hit their maximum height, so right now they were just undulating around people. It could be scary if you were a kid and had never experienced it before.
But she wasn’t a kid. She was probably my age. Blond. She was wearing a black string bikini and sitting on a guy’s shoulders. He was so darkly tanned that I knew he loved being in the sun. I could relate. But I also had a job to do and since he was in my watch zone, I blew my whistle.
He turned around, looking all innocent. He was a true cutie. His wet black hair fell into his eyes. He flicked it back with a jerk of his head, his hands holding the girl’s legs so she didn’t go tumbling off.
“No carrying people on your shoulders!” I yelled.
“What?”
I didn’t know if he hadn’t heard me or he was just giving me a hard time. Lots of times people pretended not to hear us when we yelled at them, so I went into hand-signal mode. I made a motion to indicate the waves were starting up, made a motion of lifting something off my shoulders. “Put her down.”
Even with her sitting on his broad shoulders, he managed to shrug. “Why?”
I pointed to the huge sign behind me where large letters proclaimed NO STANDING ON SHOULDERS.
Although she wasn’t technically standing, it was still too dangerous. I was sure they’d done studies. Or someone had gotten hurt and sued the park. Rules were put in place for a reason.