“I guess Fred finally got his fishing employee,” Elliot said. Lucy only shrugged, and Elliot turned to me. “He’s been trying for years. But rumor is that he started dating Jillian in the office, which I guess gave him some kind of pull.”
“Don’t you have a lesson?” Lucy asked, glancing up at the round wall clock hanging crookedly above the microwave.
Elliot looked down at his watch, which I saw now was big and plastic and practically took up his whole wrist. It looked like a diver’s watch, and like it would be capable of withstanding much greater depths than Lake Phoenix. “In ten,” Elliot said with a sigh. “Unfortunately.”
“Lesson?” I asked. In my peripheral vision, I saw Lucy roll her eyes. But since my introduction to this place had been so vague, I was desperate to get what information I could from the one person in the snack bar who seemed willing to talk to me.
“I teach some sailing lessons, plus working snack bar,” Elliot said to me. “We all kind of overlap here. And today is my day for the advanced beginners, who seem to be allergic to retaining any sort of knowledge.” He started to head out the door, then stopped and turned back to us. “If you see the fly,” he added gravely, “avenge me. Okay?”
Lucy nodded in a distracted way that made me think he said things like that a lot. When Elliot stepped back out and the door slammed behind him, Lucy turned to face me, arms still folded, her face inscrutable. “So,” she said after a long moment. She leaned against the counter and studied me in silence. “You’re back.”
“I am,” I said, my voice sounding a little shaky. I was feeling off-balance, and had realized that no matter what I might look like now, some things were still the same. I still hated confrontation. And Lucy thrived on it. “Just… recently.”
“I heard,” she said. I blinked, and was about to ask from whom, but something in her expression stopped me. I realized that it could have been from any number of sources, Jillian included. Lake Phoenix was small enough that news tended to travel fast. “I just didn’t think I’d see you,” she continued, arching one eyebrow at me, something she’d always been able to do and that I could never get the hang of. It used to make me incredibly envious, since whenever I tried to do it I just looked like I was in pain. “And I certainly didn’t think I’d see you here.”
I stuck my hands in the pockets of my shorts and looked down at the scratched wooden floors. I could feel the restlessness in my legs that was my body’s way of telling me to get out. I glanced to the door for just a second, considering it. “If it’s going to be a thing,” I said after a moment, “I can leave. See if I can get placed somewhere else.”
I looked up at Lucy and saw a flash of hurt cross her face before her more blasé expression returned. She shrugged and looked down at her nails, which I noticed now were painted a dark purple, and I wondered if she’d matched them to her shirt. The Lucy I’d known certainly would have. “Don’t do it on my account,” she said, her voice bored. “I don’t really care.”
“Okay,” I said quietly. I took a breath and started to say what I probably should have said right away—what I should have said to Henry as soon as I saw him. “Lucy,” I started, “I’m really—”
“Can I help you?” Lucy hopped off the counter, and I turned and saw a customer at the window, a harried-looking mother with a baby on her hip. The top of the kid’s head just cleared the wooden counter, his eyes fixed on the bowl of individually wrapped Star-bursts and Sunkist Fruit Gems.
“Yes,” she said. “I need two waters, an order of fries, and a Sprite with no ice.”
Lucy punched the total into the register and turned back to look at me. I moved uncertainly over toward the cups, my hand hovering near them, but otherwise totally unsure what to do. “Go get Elliot,” Lucy said, shaking her head. “You don’t know what you’re doing.” She turned back to the woman and deftly moved the candy bowl away just as the kid made a grab for it. “Nine twenty-nine,” she said.
I pushed open the door and closed it fast behind me, stepping into the hallway. The whole interaction had shaken me. For some reason, I felt like I was on the verge of bursting into tears, so I was glad to have a minute to walk it off. I knew Elliot had ten minutes before his lesson, so I didn’t have long to find him. I started by looking for Elliot in the few rooms in the building—but I found only an equipment shed, piled high with life preservers and buoys, and a supply cupboard with plates and cups and syrup bags for the soda machine. Fred’s door had a GONE FISHIN’ sign attached to it—no help there. I was beginning to panic, knowing the longer I took, the madder Lucy was getting, when I saw Elliot sitting on the grass near the bike racks, next to a curly-haired guy playing guitar. There were about ten life preservers arranged in a circle, but no kids there yet. Incredibly relieved, I hurried over and started speaking before I’d even reached him. “Lucy needs your help in the kitchen,” I said, as Elliot looked up at me and the guy with the guitar paused mid-chord. “I don’t really know what I’m doing yet.”
Elliot raised his eyebrows. “But she can show you, right?” he asked. “Luce is great at training. She taught me everything I know.”
“Oh,” I said, glancing back to the stand, thinking about how she’d hustled me out, clearly ready to be rid of me. “Well,” I said, “I don’t think that she really… um… wanted to.”
“Right,” Elliot said, nodding. He gave me a sympathetic smile and pushed himself to his feet. “Well, I guess you can’t blame her, right?” He started to head toward the snack bar before I could formulate a response. “Oh,” he said as he turned back to me for a second, pointing at the curly-haired guy, “Taylor, that’s Leland. Leland, Taylor. She’s new.” With that, he hurried toward the building, and a moment later, I heard the door bang shut.
Leland looked tall, with pale, freckled skin and sun-bleached hair that seemed like it might not have been combed too recently. He strummed another chord and then glanced up, giving me a sleepy smile. “Hey,” he said. “You a lifeguard too?”
“No,” I replied. “Snack bar.”
“Cool,” he said as he strummed a few more chords, lingering over the last two strings. As I watched him play, it seemed a little incongruous that this guy, with his chill, spaced-out vibe, was a lifeguard. It wasn’t what I had expected.