Robyn (6 page)

Not because the dolphins were there.

But because Sean was.

Saturday, Memorial Day weekend, the parking lot was almost full by the time we arrived for work. People were lined up with beach bags and ice coolers. And little kids. Lots and lots of little kids.

It was going to be a very busy day. I probably wouldn’t even have time to notice how lazy Whitney was.

As employees, we got front-of-the-line privileges. Well, actually, we had a special entrance, a gate off to the side where we swiped our employee IDs. The gate clicked open and in we went, saying hi to the guard on the other side.

After changing into our uniforms in the employee locker room, I promised Caitlin I’d see her at lunch and headed to Splash. Nick was already there waiting. Whitney was oddly, or maybe not so oddly, absent.

Maybe she’d convinced her dad that he didn’t want her to work. Or maybe she’d gotten fired. Who knew with her? And here I was all prepared to be nice.

The area filled up pretty quickly once the park actually opened. Little kids yelling and screaming and rushing down the slide, throwing water on me. Wild and crazy. I really wished I could be doing my own playing.

About half an hour into my shift, Whitney strolled over.

“It’s insane around here,” she said, like maybe I hadn’t noticed.

“You wanna help?”

“Not really.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “There’s no place that I can sit without getting splashed. Can’t you make them go away?”

I stared at her openmouthed. “You’re not serious.”

“Dead.”

“Why don’t you go sit in the kiddie pavilion or, I don’t know — walk around. It’s not like you’re really helping here.”

“This is my assignment.”

A little girl almost tumbled. I caught her before she smashed her chin on the edge of the slide. “Okay, kids, calm down!”

Where was her mother?

“Like they’re going to listen to you,” Whitney said.

“You wanna try?”

She shook her head. “Nah. Not worth the energy.” She glanced around. “You know, without the tubes we really don’t have much to do over here. Getting rid of them might not have been one of my brightest ideas.”

“What do you care? You weren’t doing anything anyway.”

“But you were. And it was so much fun to watch you work.”

I sighed. She was really annoying. I returned to watching the kids. They seemed okay with the slide only, didn’t even seem to notice that the tubes were gone. Of course, maybe this was their first time here, and they didn’t know better.

I saw Sean striding through, making his rounds. He cut a sharp corner, coming toward us. I wondered if maybe he’d finally — at last — noticed that Whitney was pretty much useless as an employee.

“Hey, Robyn,” he said when he got close. “I was wondering if you could do us a favor.”

How many favors was he going to ask for? Did I have “favor-giver” tattooed across my forehead? On the other hand, perfect employees moved up the ranks, right? So, I said, “Sure.”

“Lisa is the supervisor for parties and entertainment. Someone overbooked. We’ve got, like, eight parties coming in at the kiddie pavilion, so could you go help her out?”

Something to do besides stand around? I couldn’t say yes fast enough, mostly because before I could say anything, Whitney said, “I’m most excellent with giving parties. I can do it.”

I was shocked that she’d volunteer to do
anything
.

“Yeah, but I already asked Robyn.”

I wanted to hug him for not changing his mind about me. “Where do I go? The pavilion?” I asked.

“Yep. Just tell Lisa I sent you.”

“Thanks.”

I hurried off before Whitney cast her spell over him and made him forget that he’d asked me first. She had some sort of control over him, making him think she was nice, letting her get away with things he scolded me for.

Lisa was hard to miss. She was almost six feet tall. She was wearing red shorts and the familiar white polo shirt. She smiled broadly as I approached.

“Great!” she said. “You must be Robyn. Sean said he’d send you over.”

How had he known I’d come? Maybe he’d only made it
sound
like he was asking. Maybe when it came right down to it, he was going to order me to come over here. It didn’t matter. I was away from Whitney.

“So what do you need me to do?” I asked.

“We’ve got about an hour before the first party arrives. To start with, we need a lot of balloons. I’ve put a reserved sign with the party’s name and number on each table. You just tie that many balloons to the ring at the end of the table. Can you do it?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Wonderful. Sean said you were his go-to girl.”

Before I could ask her what that meant, she was hurrying off to see about something else. As I walked over to the helium tank, I thought about Sean saying positive things about me, asking me — me, not Whitney — to help out during a crisis. Maybe he was beginning to realize that I
was nice. Made sense, since I was starting to think he was nice.

I reached the tank and saw the box of balloons resting beside it. I inserted the first balloon on the nozzle, blew it up, tied it off, and wrapped the end of the ribbon around a nearby chair. I reached for another —

“Oh, good, more helpers,” Lisa shouted.

I looked over. It was Sean and Whitney. Sean stopped and talked with Lisa while Whitney walked over to me.

“Who’s watching Splash with Nick?” I asked.

“Sean found someone. I wanted to help. I love doing parties.”

I couldn’t believe it. How had she wrapped him around her finger like that? He had to have a crush on her, had to want her to be his girlfriend. But why say I was his go-to girl? And why did I want so badly to be his go-to girl?

“You do realize we’re not actually invited to the party. We’re just supposed to help.”

“Oh, sure.”

“Hey, Whitney, you want to help me put out the party favors?” Lisa asked.

“Oh, yeah. I love giving gifts.”

She said it like the gifts were from her personally.

Smiling, Sean came over. “I’m pretty fast at doing balloons. Why don’t I blow them up, you tie them off?”

I thought about how many we had to get done. “Sure.”

I moved aside. He grabbed a balloon, but before he attached it, he put the hose in his mouth, swallowed a breath —

“Shouldn’t take us long,” he said in a high-pitched squeaky voice that made me burst out laughing. He grinned broadly. “Want a hit?”

Laughing even harder, I shook my head. “I get in trouble for sliding down a slide in an inner tube and you play with helium?”

He stopped grinning. “Oh, man, what was I thinking?”

He still sounded like a chipmunk — if chipmunks could talk.

“I won’t tell,” I promised.

It was so funny, so strange, seeing him not so serious. He was the one who was always looking out for Caitlin. Both their parents worked, and he’d taken care of her after they decided he was old enough. I never realized that he could actually be fun, had never stopped to think how much responsibility he shouldered.

He blew up a balloon, handed it off to me.

“So, uh.” How did I say this? “So you decided to let Whitney help, too?”

“Yeah, she really wanted to. Was practically begging.” He sounded normal again, his voice deep, which made me smile. “I don’t get girls and parties.”

“Shouldn’t you be supervising?” I asked.

“Someone’s covering. Newbie supervisor. I go where I’m told.” He nodded toward someone. “Hey, Jake.”

It was the ice-cream guy. He was even cuter up close, with dark, serious eyes.

“Got the ice cream,” he said, pointing toward a silver cart on wheels.

“Talk to Lisa. This is her gig,” Sean told him.

“Will do.” He walked away.

“So we give the partygoers ice cream?” I asked.

“We do everything except the cake. They bring that.”

“Makes it easy on us, I guess.”

He laughed. “Yeah, right.”

“Okay, okay, y’all need to work harder,” Whitney said, taking a group of the balloons. “Front gate just radioed Lisa and the first group is on its way in.”

I didn’t miss the fact that we — not Whitney — needed to work harder. I didn’t know how we managed to do it, but we had all the balloons in place by the time the first group joined us. Twenty kids around the age of eight were screaming, laughing, and running around.

And that was just the first group. By the time all eight groups arrived, it was madness. But what really surprised me was what Sean did with the balloons. Not the ones he’d blown up using the helium. But the ones he was using to make balloon animals. He went from table to table, entertaining the kids, creating fish, ducks, crocodiles. I was pretty impressed.

Jake was scooping out ice cream. Whitney was taking pictures of people, borrowing their cameras, making sure everyone was in the party picture, making a big production out of posing the group. Lisa was making sure everyone had everything they needed. And me?

I was trash girl. Sounds a little like a superhero, but I rolled a big trash container around and put the discarded gift wrap, used paper plates, empty cups, and anything else that looked like garbage into the can. We only had to watch the groups for an hour or so. Then they were on their own.

I was working at a table, clearing away the debris when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around. Sean was holding a balloon dolphin out to me.

“Thanks for helping today,” he said.

I took it from him. “Thanks. That was nice of you.”

Sean smiled at me. “Maybe you haven’t noticed but I do ‘nice’ really well.”

Hadn’t I said practically the same thing to him yesterday? And okay, I had started to notice, but it made me feel funny to admit it. I’d spent so much of my life believing he was a jerk. What would Caitlin say if I told her that I thought her brother was nice?

Caitlin!

I looked at my watch. “Oh, my gosh! I missed lunch with Caitlin.”

“She’ll survive,” Sean said.

I wasn’t so sure.

“Hey, guys, let’s finish cleaning up real quick so we can grab something to eat. We have a group of thirty six-year-olds
coming at two,” Lisa said. “It’s going to be wild.”

*  *  *  

“You didn’t even let me know,” Caitlin said.

She was sitting on the lifeguard platform, staring at the pool. The waves were calm. In a little bit, they’d sound the alarm and the pool would shift into Tsunami mode, creating its eight-foot waves.

“I didn’t know I’d be there that long,” I said, staring up at her. My neck was starting to ache. “We just got busy and time flew.”

“I had to eat alone. It made me look like a total loser. How can I impress Tanner if it looks like no one wants to hang out with me?”

What could I say to that? I knew Caitlin didn’t like doing things by herself.

“I’m sure no one noticed,” I said, trying to appease her.

“What are you doing hanging out with my brother and Whitney anyway?” she asked.

“We weren’t hanging out — we were working the birthday parties.” I glanced at my watch. Sean had told us we could all eat at the food court, that management would treat us to lunch. Even though I’d brought a sandwich, I was really in the mood for a burger, so I wanted to get to the food court. “I’ve got to go get something to eat. I’ll see you after work.”

The alarm sounded, signaling that the large waves were about to start up.

“Yeah. All right. Later,” she said.

I wanted to believe she was distracted watching the swimmers, making sure they were all safe. I didn’t like Caitlin being upset with me, but it really hadn’t been my fault. I hadn’t considered that when you’re working, a lot of things happen that you have no control over — that you have to put the job first. Unless you’re Whitney, of course.

But I didn’t want to be Whitney. I liked being Sean’s go-to girl. I couldn’t tell Caitlin that, though. She wouldn’t understand that I
was starting to like her brother — as a person. That I thought he was nice. That I was impressed with how hard he worked, everything he knew, everything he did.

I wandered over to the food court, knowing that I wouldn’t have much time to eat — - might not even have time to order anything. So many people were standing in line at Scavenger’s that I decided I’d just grab my lunch out of my locker.

Before I could turn to head back to my locker, I saw Sean stand up and wave at me. He was at a table with Whitney and Jake.

“Went ahead and ordered you a burger,” Sean said when I got there.

“Oh, geez, thanks, but —”

“I know. Meat, cheese, mustard only.”

“How did you know?”

“Come on, Robyn. You practically live at our house.”

He suddenly seemed embarrassed. Me, I was stunned that he’d noticed my eating habits. Granted, he’d been right about the
ice cream. His mom did keep a carton with my name on it in their freezer. But how I liked my burger? We didn’t have burgers that often. When had he noticed?

I sat down and unwrapped it. Everyone else was almost finished eating.

“We didn’t think you’d have much time,” Whitney said, as though she was the one responsible for making sure I had food.

“Where’s Lisa?” I asked, just before biting into my burger.

“She wanted to get back to start setting up for the next set of parties,” Sean said.