Jonah stared at the hole in the fence for a moment, running first down the list of who to blame for it, and then deciding that fixing the problem was slightly more important than finding the culprit, at least at this moment. The hole was about the perfect size for a person to fit through on their hands and knees, and it had been cut neatly with wire snips, the sharp edges bent back and away. She made a mental note that the wires were bent to allow easier access in than out.

Amanda leaned against the undamaged part of the fence, causing it to sag backwards. The chain links stretched up about six feet off the ground, in some places brushing the bottom edges of the tree branches that surround them. Amanda was the friend of Jonah's younger sister, about seventeen, and she had gotten the job at Arcadis upon Jonah's recommendation, which she was now wishing she could take back.

"Don't just stand there looking pretty," Jonah said. "Do something useful."

"Like what?" Amanda asked, blowing a bubble with her gum.

Jonah didn't respond for a second, because she spied, on the other side of the fence, the missing piece, half buried underneath a fallen tree branch. The branch's leaves were still the new green of summer, and the raw wound that had snapped it from its parent tree was clearly due to the storm of several days prior. Jonah dropped to the ground and crawled through the hole, grimacing as the soggy ground soaked through her jeans almost instantly. She retrieved the missing piece of fence and held it up to the hole, considering how easy it would be to patch.

"Go back to the park, you know where the landscaping maintenance shed is, right?" Jonah asked. 

Amanda narrowed her eyes slightly as she said, "No."

"Liar."

"I don't want to walk all the way back," Amanda whined.

Jonah delivered her instructions as though Amanda's whining had no impact on her. "In the maintenance shed, there's a big pair of pliers, should be hung up on the wall right as you come in, past the rakes. Bring that. Oh, and that bush wire stuff, if we have any more of it."

"You can go yourself," Amanda said. "Or I'll just tell Rebecca that you're off property during your shift."

Jonah stared at her flatly. "You're the one who called me out to fix this problem," she said. "If you would prefer that I go get the pliers myself, you can walk back to work with me, and you can take a turn guarding the wave pool."

"Ugh," Amanda said. "Fine."

"I'm going to check if there are any more holes while you're gone," Jonah said. "Call me if you can't find the pliers."

Amanda left, making a terrible racket as she crashed back through the woods towards the main part of Arcadis Park. 

Jonah did not immediately make good on her promise to investigate the remainder of the fence for holes. She spent a solid few minutes leaning back against the fence, feeling it sag behind her, staring up at the dappled sunlight that passed through the heavy leaves above her. The cicadas whined on, almost too loud to tune out. They didn't make this momentary pause in the workday peaceful, exactly, but it was better than the omnipresent screams and shouts and hubbub of people and voices that the park itself provided. Any excuse to escape was a good one.

But she did eventually walk down a segment of the fence, towards the lake, checking for any other holes. There weren't any, just the usual places where the fence had been dented out of shape by park employees hoisting themselves up and over to take the shortcut to and from town. 

Amanda crashed back through the trees, summoning Jonah to the hole.

"You didn't answer the snap I sent you," Amanda complained.

"I told you to call me."

"Do phone calls send pictures? No." Amanda held up two bundles of gardening twine, one thick and one skinnier. "You didn't tell me which one you wanted."

"Either one is fine," Jonah said. She sat back in front of the fence hole. "Give me that. And the pliers." 

The pliers were not the ones that Jonah had been imagining when she had made the request, but they would do. Instead of passing the twine and tool through the fence hole, Amanda lobbed them over the top of the fence, forcing Jonah to lean, dodge, and grab.

"You hold this up," Jonah instructed, positioning the fence piece. "I'll tie it back together."

Amanda made a face as she was forced to sit on the ground, but since she was just as eager to avoid returning to actual lifeguarding work as Jonah was, she obediently held the fence segment in place as Jonah bent and tied the fence back into position. By the end of it, even with the pliers, Jonah's hands were bruised and scraped, and she wished that she had told Amanda to bring her a pair of gloves as well, but it was too late. They had both managed to kill a half hour with this little excursion, though, and that was better than nothing.

"How are you going to get back in here?" Amanda asked.

"You should learn how to jump the fence," Jonah said, backing up a few steps so that she could get a running start. "I might not be able to drive you in every day."

"If you call out, I just won't come in."

"That's a good way to get fired." Jonah ran for the fence, jumped, and rattled her way up and over, scraping her stomach a little as she flipped over the top and dropped heavily down to the other side. It had been a good few summers since the last time she had done that on a regular basis, and she was simultaneously glad that she hadn't lost the skill completely (in order to not embarrass herself by being trapped on the other side) and glad that she had a car to drive to work now, which saved her the time and effort of hiking through the woods shortcut.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

The pair walked back to the chaotic slice of civilization that was the park, the sound of it growing ever louder, surpassing the drone of the cicadas as they approached. At the edge of the trees, just before they passed into full view of the Thunderdome waterslide line, they paused.

"I'll put that stuff away," Jonah said, taking the twine and pliers from Amanda. "You go find something useful to do."

"Like what?"

"Either you decide for yourself, or I'll get Rebecca to decide for you. I'm gonna go tell her that she needs to make an announcement to stop people from cutting holes in the fence."

"You think it was one of the staff?" Amanda asked.

"Of course it was one of the staff."

"Who do you think it was?" Amanda leaned forward, apparently hungry for Jonah's salacious gossip about which employee was ready to destroy company property.

"Ma-" she stopped herself. "On second thought, none of your business."

"Come on," Amanda whined. "Tell me."

"We're not gonna do a trial by assumption here."

"You were going to say Markus, weren't you?" Amanda said. "Just because he's fat."

"No, I wasn't," Jonah protested lamely, and began to walk away. She had been about to say Mario, who last summer had sprained an ankle while traversing the fence. Markus carpooled to work, which Amanda didn't realize.

Amanda tagged after her for a few seconds, but deflated when Jonah said nothing else and headed resolutely in the direction of the maintenance shed. The pair of them in their bright orange staff shirts, emblazoned with the word 'LIFEGUARD' on the back, made them stick out from the crowd, and another employee flagged them down. It was actually Mario, and Jonah gave him a suspicious glance.

"Sorry," Jonah said, neatly evading whatever task it was by holding up the pliers and twine. "I have to go talk to Rebecca."

"Good luck with that," Mario said, shaking his head and causing drops of water to fly out from his curly hair. "She's in a mood."

"When is she not?"

"That's the question of the century," Mario said. "Anyway, can you take the chair?" He pointed to the top of the stairs of the Thunderdome waterslide line, which was closed but full of guests. "I have to fill out an incident report."

"Amanda will do it," Jonah said, and prodded the girl forward.

"But I've never guarded this slide before," Amanda whined. 

"You'll figure it out. Like I said, gotta go." Jonah darted away, pressing through the crowd before there could be any further incident. She went first to the maintenance shed, where she returned the pliers and twine, stacking them both haphazardly among the random mess of tools and supplies that seemed to grow organically in the space, and then she went to find her boss, Rebecca. 

Rebecca was the aquatics staff head, and had been working at Arcadis for far longer than Jonah had, and Jonah had been working there every summer since she had been old enough to get work papers. How many years was it now? Six? Shitty, dead end summer job. But it paid money, and it hired her back every year, and now she got to boss the younger lifeguards around more than anybody else. That made it at least better than doing nothing. Maybe.

Rebecca wasn't in her usual place (her "office", a glorified closet attached to the guest information desk building), and she wasn't reaming any of the staff out at any of the attractions that Jonah passed along the way. She stopped by the desk to ask where she could find Rebecca, and was told to try Mr. Calvin's office.

Mr. Calvin was the owner of Arcadis, and Jonah disliked him much more than she disliked Rebecca. Rebecca was a known quantity. Mr. Calvin, on the other hand, could be anything. He was usually fine, she supposed, but...

Mr. Calvin's office was its own building, on the far side of the park, down a path that attempted to hide itself from guests.It abutted the parking lot, and right outside it was a spot painted reserved, in which was parked Mr. Calvin's huge truck. It was one of those pickups where the back two wheels had been turned into four, making it ultrawide. A pair of gold painted truck nuts dangled from the back. Jonah had noticed them the first time she had walked past his car, and couldn't stop noticing them every subsequent time. 

Even from a good distance, the yelling was plain.

"I don't know how you expect me to staff this place when you refuse to hire new guards!" That was Rebecca. Her voice was shrill. "It's not like this place isn't already a deathtrap!"

Mr. Calvin's voice was low enough that it didn't quite carry to where Jonah stopped. She definitely didn't want to walk into this altercation, but she did want to talk to Rebecca (even if she was in a mood), so she was forced to wait around awkwardly outside, hands in her pockets.

"There are rats in my changing rooms! Rats!"

Something banged inside.

"I don't care if it costs money! My staff have to--" Rebecca's voice was cut off suddenly, and Jonah could hear Mr. Calvin roar clearly now.

"They're not your staff! It's not YOUR changing room! This is not your park! It's mine. You need to remember who you work for."

"Oh? Oh!" Rebecca's voice teetered on the edge of maniacal. "You want to play that game? I quit."

Mr. Calvin's booming laughter was clear, and clearer still when a red faced Rebecca slammed open the office door and emerged into the sunlight. She saw Jonah, and smiled perhaps the first genuine and apologetic smile that Jonah had ever seen her give.

"Sorry, kid, this place has gone to shit."

"Get out of my park!" Mr. Calvin yelled.

Rebecca complied, unlocking the fence gate with the pinpad. "Remember to change the code when I leave, asshole," she yelled as she headed into the parking lot, disappearing into the rows and rows of parked cars. The fence clanged shut behind her. "Better change all the locks, too. I'm not giving back my keys!"

Mr. Calvin emerged from his office, his dark brown hair slicked back from his face in a greasy looking wave. He wasn't a young man, but he wasn't an old one, either. He could have been anywhere between thirty and fifty-five, and Jonah wouldn't have been able to tell. He stared out over the rows of parked cars, watching Rebecca depart. Then his gaze turned, and he seized upon Jonah, who was frozen in place, having watched the scene unfold.

"Jonah," he said with a smile, and Jonah did not like the sickly tone that he delivered her name with. "You've worked here for a while, right?"

"Uh, six years," Jonah said, shoving her hands into her pockets, desperately wishing to not have witnessed the past couple moments.

"Would you say you're a senior lifeguard?"

"I guess," Jonah said.

"So you take responsibility for the newer staff, right?"

"Yeah."

"How about you come into my office," Mr. Calvin said, holding the door open for her. "Let's see if we can't make that responsibility a little bit more official. As you may have heard, I'm in need of a new aquatics staff head."