She was getting a raise. That was at least something. Three whole dollars more an hour, bringing her all the way up to eighteen. That wasn't much, but it was more money than Jonah made at her work study at school, and it was three whole dollars more than she had been getting paid before, so that was... worth it?

Jonah looked at the park with fresh eyes as she left Mr. Calvin's office in a kind of daze. The weight of responsibility dropped on her felt comically large: the whole aquatics staff, which was (functionally speaking) most of the staff of the park. She was kind of a ruler of this new kingdom, and she didn't know whether to laugh or cry about it.

She said new, but really, Arcadis was anything but. She could see the cracks in it as she walked around, pushing through the crowds and taking a long lap of the place, seeing who was guarding where, what the status of all the rides were. Arcadis was one of those amusement parks that clung to profitability by the skin of its teeth, and remained open by the slimmest margin every year. Jonah's dad had told her about how he had worked as a lifeguard when he was a kid. The cycle of the place was predictable. Arcadis was a kind of dump, but a charming one, and the owner decides to sell it for whatever reason. It sells, because it makes money. It's reliable. The new owner comes in and decides that they want to increase revenue, and the best way to do that is to improve the attractions. They build a few new rides, then realize exactly how much that costs, and how little it improves park attendance. The owner hangs on for a decade or two, scraping blood from stones and trying to get as much money back as possible, and then decides that the money just isn't coming, so they sell it to the next poor sap who comes along to try their hand at running an amusement park. In this way, Arcadis was shaped rather like an onion, with the oldest rides in the center, near the lakefront, and the newest ones pushing ever outwards into the wooded area, expanding in haphazard ways with no regard to planning or sightlines or anything of that nature. Disneyland, Arcadis was emphatically not.

But, Jonah knew, it didn't have to be. All it had to be was entertaining enough for kids in a, say, hundred mile radius to beg their parents to take them a couple times a summer. They had a steady stream of guests, and plenty of regulars.

She made it back to Rebecca's office, which she supposed was her office now. Mr. Calvin had not given her any actual, well, instructions, so Jonah's first thought was to get into the office and try to figure out what it was that Rebecca was responsible for doing all day.

That plan was foiled immediately when she tried the office door and found it locked. She went around to the front desk, asked about the key. Genesis, who manned the desk, gave her a bored look.

"I don't know why you need the key," she said.

Jonah was confronted by the fact that she was going to have to tell everyone about this new change in status. "Rebecca quit."

Genesis laughed. "Hooooly shit."

"Yeah. I know. Anyway, Mr. Calvin promoted me. I need the key."

"I don't have one," Genesis said. "Try maintenance?"

"Can you call them for me? I don't want to walk all the way down there."

Genesis rolled her eyes but obligingly dialed and asked maintenance if they had a spare key. They didn't. Apparently, Rebecca kept sole control of her office.

"Great," Jonah said. "Love that."

"I can call a locksmith," Genesis offered, "but I don't know if we can get one in tonight."

"Whatever," Jonah said. "I really just want to be able to use her computer to call a staff meeting."

"You think if she kept the one key to her office, she didn't keep her computer password locked down tight?" Genesis asked. "You're out of your mind."

"Can you call a staff meeting then?"

"Hah. No. I don't have staff records. I'm a glorified lost and found station."

"Okay... Who does keep staff records?"

"I think the heads of each department do."

"Genesis. How does payroll work if everyone is keeping their own stupid records?" Jonah asked, getting frustrated now.

Genesis leaned forward over the marred surface of the welcome desk and whispered in a conspiratorial voice, "Don't let Mr. Calvin hear you asking that question."

"Jesus fucking--"

The bell over the door rang as a guest walked in to the office. Genesis immediately sat back in her chair and smiled broadly, her best customer service face on. Jonah took that moment to leave.

Outside, the wind had picked up a little, and the sun was beginning its meandering journey down towards the treeline. It was a bit past six, and the crowds were beginning to thin out as most of the park's guests began to contemplate leaving to get dinner. Jonah passed by a food stand, handed over her employee swipe card, and received her complimentary shitty park hot dog. Since most of the staff worked nine to eight, four days a week, they were compensated at least in part with a limited amount of free food. If Jonah thought too hard about how bad the food actually was, she wouldn't have eaten it, but hunger got the best of her on a daily basis.

She ate as she walked, headed first towards the attraction that always had the largest number of guards at it: the wave pool. It had the largest number of guards because, in general, people had to be rescued from it on a more than daily basis. Was the thing a menace? Oh, absolutely. Was it a major draw for guests? Well, it sure was popular. Maybe that was due to the fact that people enjoyed the danger. There certainly wasn't anything else enjoyable about the wave pool. Jonah would know: she guarded it for several years, and was pleased to report that no one ever died on her watch. She was glad to escape that responsibility though, because the water was always ice cold and rather slimy, being pumped in from the lake, unheated and barely treated. Now that she was more senior, Jonah had more of a choice of where she guarded, and she picked the cushier areas for herself. She was a little lazy, in that respect.

As she approached the wave pool, she didn't hear its characteristic set of screams and 'wooshes' of water being sucked in and out of its inscrutable machinery. She came closer and saw all the guards who were supposed to be guarding the wave pool (Amanda among them), standing around and drinking sodas as they shooed away guests who attempted to stop by.

Jonah stared them down.

"What's going on?" she asked.

"It broke," Amanda said.

"For the four millionth time," Kyle said, looking rather smug about it.

"Did you call maintenance?"

"They're busy," Amanda said, then blew a bubble with her gum.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

"Did you pester them about it?"

"They said they'll be here in, like, an hour."

"Do you know what's actually broken?"

"Probably the intake again," Kyle said.

"The lake intake?"

"Yeah. Well. I mean," Amanda said, stuttered, and gestured at the wave pool. "Look at the level."

The pool was still, and from the shallow end where it slopped up onto the paved surface where they were standing, everything looked relatively normal, but down towards the other end of the pool, where the waves originated, the depth was abnormally low. Jonah knew that if she stood along the top edge of the pool, she would be able to see through the still water to the massive crack through which the pool water slowly leaked. Last year, she had hoped that Mr. Calvin would fix the hole over the winter, before it got worse. That hadn't happened. Of course, she had also hoped last year that she would be able to get a different job, and not be stuck working here for another summer. That hadn't happened either.

"You know that's an easy fix, right? You could do it yourself," Jonah said, though the concept of "easy fix" was perhaps a bit of an obfuscation. It might have been technically easy, but cleaning out the stuck lake intake was often beyond filthy.

"Here, show Bay how to fix it," Kyle said, pushing forward the third member of the little crew. Bay, her full name was Bayleigh or something, was a short girl, no taller than five feet, with black hair that fell about her face in an artsy bob. This was Bay's first year at Arcadis, and Jonah had only spoken to her briefly during the mandatory lifeguard training that all the aquatics staff took at the beginning of the season.

Bay looked anything but pleased about being dragged into fixing the problem, but she didn't say anything. Jonah felt herself get distracted from her original task of telling everyone that she was their new boss now, but as boss, it was probably her job to deal with this issue. "Fine," Jonah said. "Like I said, not that difficult."

Bay followed Jonah silently, headed behind the pool and out to the squat concrete building that held the actual wave pool mechanisms.

"You been in here before?" Jonah asked as she keyed the pin to unlock the door.

"No," Bay said.

"Ok, well the code is 5555. Not that hard to remember."

Bay made a face, a half smile.

"Yeah, I know it's not secure, but I don't know how to change it. I don't think anybody else does either. Anyway, there's two main things in here..." The lights in the filter house barely worked, but she flicked them on anyway, revealing a set of stairs leading down into the ground, along with piles of old equipment-- lane lines, broken chairs, the pool vacuum, all scattered around on the concrete floor.

"Down the stairs are the pumps that make the waves. You don't usually have to touch them." She pointed out the massive hydraulic paddles, long and orange, visible from the top of the stairs. "I don't like to go near them. Seems kinda dangerous. Anyway, the intake is up here, because of, you know, gravity."

Then she showed Bay the water intake, a long pipe that snuck out of the building.

"So, unfortunately, this is kinda gross if it gets really stuck," she said. "There's a filter further up the line, but sometimes that lets enough garbage through that the intake here gets messed up. Anyway, first thing you gotta do is stop the flow, just in case. It should stop automatically, but I don't like to take chances, because it gets shit in here if you flood it. Turn that valve over there." Jonah pointed at a large metal wheel on a thick, green painted pipe.

Bay obligingly turned the wheel.

"Now here, we have to open the filter box." The lid of the box lifted off easily, and the problem was immediately visible: the whole thing was filled with dark mud, clogging up the filters and preventing water from coming through.

"Not as bad as it could be," Jonah said. "So really, all you gotta do is pull out what's blocking it, and it should be good to go. Any questions?"

Bay had been silent the whole time, which Jonah didn't mind, but she did think it would be good to get some sort of acknowledgement before she left.

"Is it actually sanitary to be feeding the pool with lake water?"

Jonah shrugged. "If it wasn't safe, it wouldn't be legal, and if it wasn't legal, Mr. Calvin couldn't do it."

"Uh. Okay," Bay said, and left it at that. The skepticism in her voice was clear.

"Look, it's above my pay grade to worry about, and it's definitely above yours. Anyway, I don't think it's ever caused a problem before. We just have to clean this out. Gimme one of those buckets."

Bay dragged the bucket over and positioned it below the filter box. Jonah steeled herself and reached down into the filthy water, feeling tiny bits of debris swirl about her hand in the shockingly cold soup. She scooped out as much as she could and slopped it into the bucket. She stared at Bay until Bay got the hint and came over, helping to pull out gunk with a grimace. It took a good few minutes of work, silent except for the sick slopping and splashing sounds, and eventually the filter box was clean enough that water could get through once more. Jonah opened the valve, and water came pushing through, still muddy and disgusting, but through nonetheless.

"Perfect," Jonah said. They left the filter house, dumping the bucket out on the ground behind it, and Jonah rinsed off her arms in the pool water. Was that any better? Probably not, but it got some of the gunk off, anyway. Near where water entered the pool, a brown-ish stain was spreading out, the remnants of the mud.

"Gross," Amanda said, looking at it.

"It is what it is," Jonah said. "It'll clear out in a bit, as soon as the lake water clears up."

"And when will that be?" Amanda asked.

"Eh, by tomorrow, probably, as long as it doesn't rain again. Rain makes everything get gross."

"Hey, Jonah, you coming to the party tonight?" Kyle asked, finishing the last of his soda.

Two thoughts flashed through Jonah's head, and unfortunately the less professional one fell out of her mouth first. "It's Friday already?"

"You bet it is," Kyle said.

It was tradition that every Friday, at least when the weather was good, a good number of Arcadis employees, at least all the ones who were friends with each other, would get together in the park at night and use it as their own personal playground. This was, of course, definitely not allowed by upper management, but what upper management didn't know didn't typically hurt them.

Unfortunately, about an hour prior to this moment, Jonah had joined the elite ranks of upper management, and she was faced with the first personal problem which that entailed.

"Kyle," Jonah began, and placed her slimy hand on his shoulder with mock seriousness. "I will not be attending the party, and neither will you."

"You asking me on a date instead?"

"What?" Jonah asked.

"I'd say yes if you were," he said, and made a mock kissing noise. "But really, what?"

"Rebecca quit."

Kyle laughed loudly, causing some guests hustling past to look at him. "Ding dong, the witch is dead."

"I got promoted," Jonah said.

"Seriously?"

"Yeah."

"But I thought that Zack was going to take the job."

"I happened to be standing in front of Mr. Calvin at the time. Directly in the line of fire."

"That's a dumb reason to get promoted."

"It's the only reason there had to be. Anyway. That means I'm in charge now."

Kyle shrugged. "Okay?"

"And that means no more parties."

"No more parties. Right." His tone indicated that there was unspoken mutual agreement between them, that the parties could and would continue, as long as Jonah didn't "know" about them.

"I'm serious," Jonah said. "No more parties."

"Gotcha." If he had winked at her, she would have maybe yelled at him, but he didn't. She didn't know what exactly the professional thing to do was, but this was the best she was going to get right this second.

"Anyway," Jonah said. "I need to call a staff meeting for all the aquatics people to make this announcement, but I don't have access to everyone's phone numbers and stuff."

"Why not?"

"Long and dumb story," Jonah said. "I'm sure it will be a problem that we'll be figuring out for a while."

"I bet. Anyway, what do you want me to do about it."

"You know everybody here. I don't know, can you maybe send like a group text or something?"

"You gonna pay me for use of my phone for work?" Kyle asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Kyle."

"Jonah."

"Just do it, please? I really don't want to start off my tenure on the wrong foot."

"You know I'm just joking with you, right?"

"It's been a long and crazy day. I don't think I could bear much more weird stuff happening."