by Jade Parker
The first time our paths crossed after the Bermuda Triangle, Caitlin had given me a big grin, like she was absolutely happy, totally into Tanner. The next time, maybe some of the novelty had worn off, because she’d given me a what-are-you-still-doing-with-my-brother look.
But she wasn’t so worried about it that she was going to leave Tanner to find out what was going on. I was glad because I wasn’t really sure what was going on. I was having fun with Sean.
“Do you like Screaming Falls?” he asked.
“It’s my favorite. I was really sorry they closed it down for the night.”
“You can keep a secret, right?”
“Oh, yeah. No problem.”
“You can’t even tell Caitlin — and you absolutely can’t tell Whitney, because we’d all get in trouble.”
“I know the party was Whitney’s idea, but it’s not like she’s the boss. And she’s not exactly Miss-do-everything-she’s-supposed-to-do either.”
“Still, she … we just don’t want her to know about this.”
“Who is ‘we’ and what is ‘this’?”
“I’m putting my job in your hands.”
Then he put my hand in his and started pulling me off toward the shadows. They hadn’t left any lights on in this area, because we weren’t supposed to do the rides in this section of Thrill Hill. Most required an attendant.
Sean turned a corner and started leading me up the stairs that would take us to the top of Screaming Falls.
“Wait, what are we doing?” I asked.
“I can’t tell you because I swore I wouldn’t tell a nonsupervisor —”
I heard a scream and then a splash.
“Are y’all doing the slide?”
He put his finger to my mouth. “Shh. We gotta hurry before we get caught.”
I laughed. “You’re not Mister-I-never-do-anything-I’m-not-supposed-to-do.”
“Keep it a secret, okay?” he said as he pulled me up the steps.
Lisa was waiting at the top. “Morgan, supervisors only.”
“She won’t tell.”
He pulled me into the booth and closed the door.
“We’re going to do —”
The floor dropped out before I could finish asking him if we were doing this together. I hadn’t even realized that he’d wrapped his arms around me and I’d wrapped mine around him. But we were hurtling down another slide, holding each other.
It was fun and exhilarating.
I liked this slightly bad Sean — the one who wanted to have a good time. We hit the water, went under, bounced back up. Then we were swimming to the side to get out as quickly as possible — before we were discovered.
They sounded the alarm to signal that they were going to start turning off the water to the various slides.
Sean and I started walking toward Tsunami where we’d left our stuff on lounge chairs earlier. We’d been so comfortable going down slides together, traveling through the rapids. Now suddenly we were quiet, almost like strangers.
I wanted to say something, but I couldn’t think of anything clever — or at least un-stupid — sounding.
Caitlin was waiting for us at the lounging deck. “Tanner is going to take me home,” she announced. “I already called Mom and she said it was okay.”
But she hadn’t asked me if it was okay. She was leaving me to ride home alone with her brother. What was wrong with her?
I guess when it came to choosing between a possible boyfriend or a best friend that she was going to choose the possible boyfriend.
“All right,” Sean said.
“I’ll talk to you later,” Caitlin said.
Maybe she was getting back at me for hanging out with Whitney. But that just wasn’t Caitlin. We were on the same team always. Unfortunately we’d had so much going on that we really hadn’t had a chance to talk, and she had no idea that I was starting to have all these thoughts about her brother. But even if we did have time, I couldn’t tell her that I was starting to like Sean. She’d never understand.
She thought he was irritating.
I watched her and Tanner walk off, holding hands.
“Seems kinda serious,” I said to no one in particular.
“Yeah,” Sean said, reminding me that he was standing nearby.
“I wonder if Whitney could give me a ride home,” I murmured.
“What?”
I looked over at him. “Well, I just hate for you to have to go to the trouble —”
“We live in the same neighborhood.”
“I know, but I know you put up with me because I’m Caitlin’s friend.”
He stared at me for a minute, shook his head, and sighed. Then he shifted his gaze past me. “Whitney, can you give Robyn a ride home?”
“What? Oh, sure.”
“Sean —”
“It’s okay. I get it. You’re Caitlin’s friend. I’ll pick you up in the morning.”
Watching him walk away, I wondered what had just happened.
I heard Whitney’s flip-flops slapping the ground as she walked over. She had a towel wrapped around her waist, her wet hair caught up in back with a jeweled clip.
“What was all that about?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“I saw you guys hanging out. I thought maybe …” Her voice trailed off.
“Maybe what?”
“That you liked each other. You’re always hanging out together.”
“I thought he liked you. I mean, he never yells at you for not working and he always wants to make sure you’re happy.”
“What are you talking about?”
“He’s always looking out for you, telling me to be friends with you —”
“So you’re friends with me because he told you to be?”
My night was going from bad to worse. “In the beginning, yes, but not so much now. I mean, now I like you. I want to be friends.”
“Well, geez, thanks so much.”
She started walking toward the entrance.
I glanced around. Almost everyone had left.
“Are you still giving me a ride?” I called out after her, grabbing my tote bag, and hurrying to catch up with her.
“Don’t see that I have much choice. Who else are you going to ride home with?”
Mr. T was standing at the entrance, adding a personal touch, saying good night to the employees.
“Great idea, Whitney,” he said as she and I walked through. “Went over really well. Sorry we couldn’t get the movie set up here in time, but it’s in the works and as soon as it’s ready we’ll have employee movie night.”
“Thanks, Mr. T.”
“Good night, Robyn,” he said.
I nearly tripped over my feet. He knew who I was? “ ’Night.”
The white stretch limo was waiting near the front.
“Your dad had to work again?” I asked.
“Yep.”
The driver opened the door for us.
“David, we’re taking Robyn home.”
“Yes, Miss Whitney.”
He had a wonderful British accent that reminded me of James Bond.
Whitney and I crawled inside. I settled back against the seat. “So your dad works a lot.”
“Oh, yeah. All the time. But that is so boring to talk about. So do you like Sean or not?”
I groaned, wishing I could just disappear into the seat. “Yes. Do you?”
“I like him, but I don’t want him for a boyfriend.”
“But he might want you for a girlfriend,” I told her.
“If that was true, why was he holding your hand tonight?”
“Because yours wasn’t around?”
She laughed. “Are you really that dense? Do you not see the way he looks at you?”
“I guess not.”
“He likes you. Big-time. So are you going to tell Caitlin you like him?”
“No!” I buried my face in my hands. “She so won’t understand.” I peered through my fingers at Whit
ney. “Caitlin thinks he’s irritating.”
“Of course she does. He’s her brother. What’s important is what you think.”
Was I actually considering confessing everything to Adorable Girl?
“I thought he was irritating, too, until this summer. And now, I … I don’t know. I like him. He works hard, and he’s nice, and he worries about people. And he’s fun.”
And he knew so much about me, like maybe he’d been noticing things about me all along — while I’d only started noticing things about him this summer. Was it possible that he’d never talked to me before because he liked me and didn’t know how to tell me? That maybe he worried about what Caitlin would think as much as I did?
I always thought that the first time I started falling for someone that I’d talk to Caitlin about him. But I couldn’t tell Caitlin. And here was Whitney willing to listen. When had I become friends enough with Whitney to tell her how I was feeling?
Everything was changing this summer. I was so confused.
“So what you are going to do?” Whitney asked.
“I don’t know. What if tonight was just an aberration? What if we were hanging out together because there was no one else?”
“There were plenty of other people. I think he was with you because he wanted to be. The real question is: Why were you with him?”
When Whitney dropped me off at home, she offered to give me a ride to work the next day, which meant that I needed to let Sean know not to pick me up. But I didn’t have his cell number, which was a good thing / bad thing. Good because I didn’t have to talk to him. Bad because I had to talk to Caitlin.
I was sitting on my bed, staring at my cell phone trying to figure out how to say what I needed to say. When had I started to worry about telling Caitlin anything? We’d been friends forever. We always confided in each other. She never judged me.
Maybe I’d just never done anything that needed judging.
I was about to quick-dial Caitlin when my phone rang. It was her.
“Hey,” I said when I answered.
“What were you doing hanging out with my brother?”
Just like Caitlin to get straight to the point.
“How was your date with Tanner?” I asked, trying for a subject change. “Did he kiss you?”
“No, he didn’t.” She sounded majorly disappointed. I didn’t blame her. He was cute and they’d hung out all night.
“But you were together all night.”
“And you were with my brother. Did he kiss you?”
“No.”
“Did you want him to?”
“Caitlin, let’s talk about you and Tanner.”
“You did!”
“Caitlin, shh! He listens at the door.”
“What? No, he doesn’t.”
“Sometimes he does. Listen, I want to talk about you and Tanner.”
“I need to know what’s going on with you and my brother. He’s acting weird. I can’t explain it. It’s like he’s upset, and I don’t like to see him upset. What did you say to him?”
“Nothing. Things have suddenly gotten really complicated. Whitney is giving me a ride to work in the morning.”
“Whitney? What is it with you and Whitney? Is she your new best friend?”
“She’s my new friend. You’re my best friend. You’ll always be my best friend. But just tell Sean not to come get me on his way to work tomorrow morning.”
“I don’t even know who you are anymore.”
Would it make her feel better if I said that I didn’t know either?
“I’ll see you at lunch,” I told her. Then I hung up before she could say anything else.
I rolled over onto my side, curled up, and tried to make sense of things. But no matter how hard I thought about everything, nothing made sense.
* * *
It was a little pretentious arriving at Paradise Falls in a limo.
“Does your dad always work?” I asked Whitney as we were walking to the employee entrance.
“Pretty much.”
“Is the limo really rented?”
“No, it’s just a little embarrassing to be driven around. I really can’t wait until I’m sixteen. Although I’m not getting a used car.”
I smiled at that. “Must be nice.”
“Yeah, maybe I’ll get that knockoff Ferrari that Caitlin was talking about.”
I was really starting to like Whitney. I thought she came from a different world than I did and that maybe Mom had been right: Her dad wanted her to work so she’d learn the value of money. But our friendship wasn’t to the point where I could really ask her something that personal.
“So who were you hanging out with last night?” I asked her instead.
“Lots of different people. I like partying. I don’t like settling on one person.”
I pushed open the door that led into the employee locker room. “But you want a boyfriend, don’t you?”
“Maybe. Yeah. Sure. Someday. When the right guy comes along.”
When we got to our lockers, I saw Caitlin standing there — like maybe she’d been waiting for me.
“You’re almost late,” she said.
“Almost doesn’t count.”
I opened my locker, tossed my tote inside, and took off my shorts and T-shirt. My bathing suit was on underneath.
“So, will I see you at lunch?” she asked.
“Yeah, definitely.”
“Okay.”
She headed out, but I thought maybe she had something else she wanted to say. And I had a lot that I needed to say to her.
“I’ll catch you later,” I said to Whitney, then I rushed out of the locker room. “Caitlin, wait!”
She stopped walking and I hurried over.
“I like Whitney,” I said. “She’s my friend.”
“That’s cool. You always wanted us to be a bigger group.”
“Maybe sometime the three of us can do something together — away from the park. She gets driven around in a limo.”
“You’re kidding?”
“Nope. And all her knockoffs? I don’t think they’re really knockoffs.”
“So why is she working here?”
“I don’t know.”
“Mmm. Well, maybe we both need to start paying more attention to her. I’ll see you at lunch.”
I watched her walk away. Maybe I’d worked out the friendship part of my life. Now if I could just figure out the rest of it.
* * *
I couldn’t believe it. Even though I’d taken time to talk to Caitlin, I still got to Splash before Whitney did.
Nick was already there. “Thought I was going to be working solo,” he said.
“I think you could handle it,” I said.
“Yeah, me too. Really, I think they need to move us around.”
“You don’t have to convince me.”
Although now I liked working here, because it meant that I saw Sean a little more. Or at least usually I did.
He wasn’t around either, which made me wonder if he and Whitney were off doing something together.
Did she like him? Would she tell me if she did? She’d told me the limo was rented, indicated it was a one-time thing but it wasn’t. What else had she told me that wasn’t true?
I finally spotted her practically skipping toward us. Obviously happy. Maybe they’d given her a job somewhere else.
Only I wasn’t sure that I wanted her working somewhere else. Yes, she was a little quirky and not completely into actually working, but she was getting better at it.
“They figured out how to do the movie setup that we wanted. The equipment should arrive in the next couple of days,” she said when she got to Splash. “It’s gonna be awesome. We’re going to have another party and if it works the way that I think it will, we’ll start having one late night a week with a movie — for the guests.”
“That would mean we’d have to work extra,” I pointed out.
“Overtime pay.” She wiggled her eyebro
ws. “That would be cool, huh?”
“I didn’t think you wanted to work at all.”
“It’s growing on me. Of course, we’d have to have family films,” she said, like she was creating the schedule in her head. “Like Finding Nemo or The Little Mermaid. We need to come up with a list of appropriate water films. For us — the employees — it’s going to be Jaws.”
I gave a little shudder. “Just the thought of it gives me chills.”
And I could imagine guys going underwater and trying to scare us. I grinned. Might be fun.
“So what did you decide about Sean?” Whitney asked after a moment.
We were standing there, holding our rescue tubes, just watching kids slide, every now and then telling them to settle down. Like they listened to us.
“Nothing. I haven’t even seen him today.”
“He was in the office waiting to talk to Mr. T when I was in there.”
“About what?”
She shrugged. “He didn’t say. I mean, why would he tell me?”
“I don’t know. Y’all seem kinda close. That first day you were having lunch together.”
“He’s just looking out for me, because they asked him to.”
“Who asked him to?”
She waved her hand like it was nothing. “It’s not important.”
“You know, sometimes you make me feel like … I don’t know. Like, maybe you have secrets.”
“We all have secrets. You know that little boy out there sure can hold his breath for a long time.”
“What little boy?”
“The one floating in the Lost Lagoon.”
I spun around and saw him. He was maybe three or four. Where was his mother?
“Nick, call for help!” I yelled. Nick ran down toward the office as I jumped over the edge of Splash and landed in the Lost Lagoon. I started wading, trudging, toward the little boy.
I heard another splash. It was Whitney coming up beside me.
“Isn’t he playing?” Whitney asked.
“I don’t think so.”
I got to him, turned him over. His lips were blue. I lifted him up and hurried back to Splash where we’d at least have an area with only maybe a quarter of an inch or so of water, which kept the cement from getting hot. People used it as a path.
I set the little boy down on the cool cement and climbed up out of the lagoon. Whitney was right beside me.
