Instead of wincing at the loudness of the pop song his mother played on their ride to the community pool that day, Grant listened. He found it helped him picture Kailey the lifeguard more clearly.
Without love. . .give me some value, some worth.
Without love. . .no life left on Earth.
The beat made sense, even if the lyrics were sometimes difficult to understand. The song faded and a man shouted that Brock of Brock’s Hardware had too many paints and wood conditioners in stock. Grant’s head bounced as asphalt changed to the gravel of the pool’s parking lot.
The other children, towels wrapped around themselves like wings, ran up the walkway to the locker rooms, their parents begging them to slow down. Grant’s mother looked at him in the rearview mirror. He waved, but she’d already looked away. He grabbed his towel and scurried from the parked car as his mother rolled down the window.
While everyone made their way down the ladder one at a time, Grant jumped in, popping up quickly to see if Kailey had seen him, but she was helping a few of the more scared kids climb in, their hands leaving white marks on her thin arms where they held onto her. She kept her head tipped to the side, grinning as she settled them each into the water, reaching to adjust the strap of her bright red lifeguard suit every so often.
He cupped water in his palms and tried to catch his reflection in his hands until everyone was in the pool. Kailey called out, and they swirled themselves into the daily circle for the first activity: getting used to the water by going under and holding their breath for just a few seconds. Grant blinked at the others, who were splashing and slapping the surface. Nobody was crying yet; some of the kids screamed if their parents weren’t near the pool’s edge. He thought about his mother smoking in the parking lot and staring at the road atlas, reading the names of roads that ran through places she used to visit and shading her eyes with the sun visor. Kailey smiled and laughed at the two kids closest to her. Then she whistled and pointed downward with both hands.
Biting his bottom lip, Grant sat cross-legged at the bottom, watching the small bubbles float out of his nostrils. The other children went up and he was left alone. The moving surface of the water hid their heads and their chests, so he could see only their bony legs kicking and hands poking into the water like birds’ beaks. He tried to ignore the pain in his chest by studying the colors of the swimsuits, one by one. Purple with a black swoosh. Lime green. Dark blue. After he had inspected every color, Grant began to count knee scabs.
There was suddenly a much longer set of legs striding through the water behind everyone else’s, shining lines of bubbles trailing them. Grant let go of the rest of the air in his lungs, and the silver explosion of his breath wrapped over the arms reaching into the water after him.
Grant let his hand slide across the soft skin on the inside of Kailey’s thigh as she rushed him back to the air. He gasped and spat like always, hoping some of his mouth water landed on her shoulder and chest. He tried to remember the song in the car before the ad for the hardware store sale. He squinted at her while he caught his breath to see if the song made her more even more real, like it had in the car, but it was difficult to see her face with the sun in the middle of the sky.
“Remember what we talked about, Grant? Just for a few seconds, okay?” she said, with that mix of friendliness and worry that brought the happy hurt to his chest. That happy hurt grew as Kailey carried him to her spot in the circle. After she gently set him down and rubbed his back, she returned to teaching the class, and Grant felt the hurt begin to leave him. For a moment, the song caused it to bob up and down and back again, like he hoped it would, but then it was gone. He thought about his mother and how she might have pulled him out of the water. Probably by his right arm, with her long nails digging uncomfortably into his skin.
“Let’s try floating on our backs,” Kailey said. She grinned as she came to him first, and he flipped onto his back, trying not to let the water run into his eyes. The tip of her long hair was like a blonde, wet paintbrush, and he tried to stay still as she placed her palms under his back, keeping him from sinking.
Patrick Bernhard received his BA from Oberlin College and his MFA from Northwestern University. His work has appeared in Wilder Voice, Funny In Five Hundred, Maryland Literary Review, and New Ohio Review. He currently teaches English at College of Lake County.