"All great beginnings start in the dark, when the moon greets you to a new day at midnight." ~Shannon L. Alder

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Tuesday - September 8th 

It's my second day in Hell on the Hill, and everything is pretty much the same as yesterday.   Except I skate myself to school instead of surviving another traditional traffic jam with ol' Aces. I don't need to drop by the Main Office to see the Sleestak Queen. May misses homeroom for some reason. And I know where my most of my classes are now, and some actual teaching begins. So actually everything about today is totally different from my first day in Hell?

After a Mayless homeroom, I drift through my first two classes with little or no interest. The only thing noteworthy is that it becomes painfully clear that Or'sir likes picking on people. Obviously in order to show off how much smarter at The Old English he is than everyone else. He especially seems fond of poking at the massive monster sitting next to me with the stupid stick, just about every chance he gets. No shocker there, because based on what little I know of their history, there is no love lost between The Butcher Boy and Or'sir. At the end of a very long and painful hour of Beowulf, I am not sure that anyone has hated the Grendel as much as The Butcher does now. Maybe not even Beowulf himself? 

After I finally escape The Old English, now comes my new least favorite class, gym with Captain Midnight. Per yesterday instructions, the entire class heads straight into the lockers and changes into our swim gear for our big day at the pool. For me that's easy, cause I wore my trunks for jocks anyways. So I just drop off my jeans and toss them in my locker with my book bag. I pull out my goggles, a pretty decent "used" pair I found floating at the bottom of the deep drain at the Annex that I own now. I figured some lapper probably lost them in the deep end, and was afraid to go down deep to the bottom drain in order to retrieve the not totally cheap pair of wide-frame goggles. But lucky for me, where I come from salvage is the law of the sea. So they are all mine now by right of finders-keepers  

After roll call, Chad marches the entire class of chum over to the pool complex to get his pool party started. It's been a couple of months since I graced the Plunge pools with my presence. I note that the ambiance around the complex has changed some since I worked here for a week during the summer. The miasma mist of chlorine is not nearly as overwhelming as I remember, and the water actually looks clear and clean without the greenish toilet tint. Long gone are all the chaise lounge deckchairs of summertime fun, hidden away somewhere in storage for next summer swim season. Even my old friend Princess Pee Pee in the kiddie pool is now completely locked down for the winter, with hard deck top cover. Or as in Plunger argot, "someone put the lid down on The Toilet."

When we finally get lined up in front of the Olympic pool, Chad's first order of business is to separate out the weak. 

"Lee go sit over on the benches!" Chad snaps and points to the aluminum bench rack stacks against the wall.

"Okay ladies, listen up!" Chad marches back and forth twirling his stopwatch like a majorette as he barks instructions at the collection of freshmeat chum.

"In order to pass this test, you will need to jump in the water. Then swim the length of the pool to the deep end. Where you will retrieve one of the blue balls..."  Chad grins mischievously at his own lame joke and waits for the rest of us to get it. When no one laughs he shrugs off the stupid and keeps pressing his luck.  "...from down in the drain and bring it back. Any questions about how to get blue balls, ladies?"

When no one raises their hands or acknowledges Chad at all, he takes that as a sign to just be himself.

"So who wants to go first? Lee?" Chad laughs psychotically and points to the kid sitting on the top of the aluminum bleachers against the wall, as humanly far away from the water as possible. I can only shake my head in dismay at the psycho. Oh yeah, let's shame the kid for never learning how to swim. Great plan, Cap't.

"What do you say Lee? Yes or no?" Chad waves to the water. 

When Lee finally shakes his head Chad snorts and returns his inattention back to the rest of the flock. 

"Okay, then alphabetically it is." Chad eyes his clipboard. "First up then is...Aaron Abrams?"

A super skinny kid with bushy fro' hair, wearing a pair of bright yellow Sponge Bob trunks two sizes too big, stands forward at the edge of the pool. He takes a long look down at the water like there's a shark waiting to eat him. Just one glance at Sponge Bob Square Shorts and my gut is telling me that this kid is gonna flock this up somehow. There is just a certain vibe that people who are afraid of the water give off ...and this kid is vibrating hardcore.

"Well, what are you waiting for Abrams? Let's go guy!" Chad snaps. "Jump in and go get blue balls already."

With an air of resignation Abrams takes a ragged breath and jumps awkwardly into the waiting water. Sure enough, I can immediately tell that kid is a weak swimmer on his best day. He flails at the water, expending a lot of energy to tread very little water. So while Chad goes down the list alphabetically, I keep an eye on Abrams as he starts to doggie paddle out towards the middle of the pool.

"Acosta, you're up. Let's see what you got stud." Chad smirks.

Speedo-clad Acosta easily dives in and slides past Abrams within one breath, before pounding away at the far pool wall. So I ignore Speedo Stud showing off to Chad what he's got, and keep watching Abrams struggle in his wake.  

After Acosta, it's Atkins, Braddock, Brauer and Castaneda, all of who are clearly proficient summertime swimmers. After Cole I should be up next, until of course, Chad skips me over to Dent, just to be an asshole. But I don't care, I sit back on the deck and watch the water.  

Abrams is now floundering in place in the churning water, his strokes are more futile than propelling. I can see that he is starting to have serious difficulty even maintaining bare buoyancy now. His head is bobbing up and down, his breathing looks forced to me, and his eyes are way too wide and panicky. All signs that someone is about to freak out in the water and in need of being saved from themselves. The only reason I don't point out the obvious problem to the idiot in charge is that Abrams is already beginning to angle off to the side of the pool, over to the safety of the overflow drains.

Chad is mowing down the list rapidly sending more kids to an early watery grave. Until he gets to the next potential drowning disaster, a seriously overweight kid named Steve Sporka. Both Chad and I eye this smiling rotund kid as he steps up to the edge of the pool. Then pinches his nose and proceeds to belly flop forward into the water. After the frothing water finally settles into Tsunami ripples, Sporka pops up like a cork and rolls over on his back exposing his enormous belly to the sky. Then proceeds to squirt up a plume of water like a whale, to the laughter of all the remaining kids on the deck. Even I have to crack a smile, as the oddly graceful whale slowly pushes his bulk backwards thru the water without a care in the world.

After the whales graceful departure too the deep, I turn back to watching Abrams again. Who has now given up on the test and grabs for the side wall gutter drain. But instead of pulling himself out of the water to safety, he begins using his hand to pull himself along the overflow gutter rail. Pretending to swim down the side, while Chad's attention is elsewhere. Abrams finally gets to the deep end gutter, retrieves a blue racquetball and starts to slide back down the overflow gutter once more. Cheating Chad, who has had his back turned to the water the whole time during the exam. While he has not once bothered to check on any of the almost drowning flock of Freshmeat. A cardinal sin for anyone who watches water professionally. 

By the time Chad finally finishes all fifty names on his list down to Williams, the idiot finally looks up from his clipboard to see the clusterflock in the pool for the first time. Which of course is right when he spots Abrams. Still sliding down the side of the pool, using the overflow gutter to pull himself along.

"You! Cheater!" Chad bellows enraged, pointing across the pool at Abrams. "Get out of the water now! You just failed!"

We both watch Abrams struggle to pull himself up out of the water and onto the deck. Where the poor kid immediately collapses on his back and starts sucking air. So with that fine bit of coaching accomplished Chad turns his attention back to me.

"Now who is left that I haven't called yet? Oh yeah...Princess Beachy." Chad smirks at me sitting on the deck with a bored expression on my face.

"O' Princess, it's time for your bath." Chad sings lamely. But I give him nothing in response, not even a side eye stare.  

"Well, what the hell are you waiting for Princess? A written invitation to get all wet for me?" Chad giggles like a little six-grade girl at his own joke.   

I know exactly what he is trying to do ...goad me into another confrontation with him. But this time without Brad around to intervene and make him play nice. He's probably practiced this whole scene in front of his strutting mirror this very morning. But I refuse to get sucked into his sick little world and play his games. Instead, I don't move a muscle, I just keep sitting stone still, and watching the chum churning the water.

"Aww, what's the matter, Princess? Don't you like your cool new pool name?" Chad feigns indignation.  

"Hey, beach boy. I'm talking to you, Princess!" Chad snaps, finally getting frustrated with being ignored. I know that I am getting under his skin now, because I refuse to play my part in his fantasy. So I just continue to ignore him, because he is utterly ignorable. 

One thing I learned over the summer about Chad, other than he is a narcissistic moron? Is that he can't take being ignored  ...it literally drives him crazy. It's one of his biggest weakness as a lifeguard and an excuse for a person. During the week I spent working with this idiot, I've seen him literally lose his shit on a four-year-old girl for ignoring his repeated commands to "Stop running!" I mean seriously, who screams themselves apoplectic at a four-year-old for not listening? Not listening is like the raison d'être of four-year-old's everywhere to ignore everyone in authority and keep on trucking. 

"Dean, I am talking to you!" Chad finally snaps, unable to contain himself any longer. 

"You call me princess again, and I will report you for sexual harassment. Lee over there can even be my star witness." I intone coldly, nodding over to the Lee's on the bleachers. "Or did you forget he's been sitting there this whole time? Listening to you refer to me with little pet nicknames full of sick sexual overtones?"

Chad blinks twice and slowly glances over at Lee, who actually looks like he is paying attention now. Even though I am pretty sure he can't actually hear the hostilities being exchanged, over the noise of the pool full of thrashers.

"Just get in the water asshole, and go fetch a ball like a good beach boy. Or I'll send you to the office for insubordination." Chad hisses under his breath, using his clipboard to cover his mouth, just to make extra sure in case Lee can read his lips.

So I stand and strip off my shirt and toss it behind me on the deck, and watch as Chad's eyes widen to the size of saucers at all my ink. As I roll my neck around once and twist crack out my back, I know that my tattoo's have his full and undivided attention. Having seen no evidence to the contrary over the summer, I've long surmised San Fall is not exactly the mecca of skin art that Sunset Beach is. 

My tatts are not small cute little things, with inspiration Celestial sayings like water is holy. No, my ink is big and bold, starting with the RIDE OR DIE, DIE OR RIDE necklaced under my collarbones. The big black X over my heart and it's opposite, the red nautical star of the Setting Sun. Not to mention the giant SETTING SUN, rocker across my back shoulders. And if that hasn't done the trick, the giant skull and bones in the middle of my back pretty much says everything that needs to be said. And not unlike the scarlet hourglass on the back of a black widow, my ink makes the clear statement ...those who wear these marks are dangerous, do not flock with them.

I snort in passing at Chod suddenly shocked eyes, and I can almost smell his weakness now.  

"What the hell..." I hear him mutter under his breath, as I slip into the water and down under the surface, to float off the bottom of the shallow end wall.  

The soothing liquid embraces me and I feel like I can finally breathe again. I am at home in the water like no other place, seeing I have spent almost half my life in its cool embrace. I slowly sink to the bottom of the shallow end and scan the water out in front of me. The pounders and thrashers are still on the surface are churning the water to a froth. So I avoid the entire lot of ineptitude and push off the wall and skim off the bottom.

On a single breath, I slide out half the distance of the pool, skimming across the bottom. I take my time rising to find a wide open spot in the middle of the pool to take my second breath. After airing up, I go back down to the bottom of the pool again. Using the steep angle of the floor to push off with my legs, propelling myself forward into the abyss. 

I slide through the deep using as little effort as possible until I hit the far wall at the deep end of the pool. Where once again I slowly float up the wall to the surface. I check the overflow drain gutter and grab one of the blue balls out, then shove the thing into the back wax pocket of my board shorts. With that task completed, I sink back into the blue depths to the halfway depth marker and just float off. Where I watching the last of the thrashers in the water above finish the test.

Without moving a muscle, I wait until the oxygen in my blood turns to carbon dioxide. Then my natural buoyancy eventual begins to pull me back up to the surface. So I slowly float back up to the air for another breath and wait out the last of the thrashers to leave the water. By my second surface, the pool is near empty now, so I can take my time. I inhale/exhale fast several times, and then take the deepest breath I can, packing as much air into my lungs as possible. Then I go under deep again to the bottom of the pool, where the atmospheric pressure under 10 meters will collapse the air in my lungs to half and expand as I rise. Packing air like this is highly dangerous to anyone that doesn't know the old abalone diver's trick. But it allows me to skim lazily along the cement bottom of the pool on one breath and avoid any unwanted eyes.  

When I finally rise out of the shallows in the far corner away from Chad, I pull myself up on to the deck. Only to find myself pleasantly ignored by the throngs of heaving freashmeat. Chad is over at the aluminum bleachers with Lee, berating Abrams for either lying or cheating or both? Most of the freshman are completely wrapped up watching Chad do his ego-crushing thing. But the few that aren't watching Chad meltdown are opening staring at my tatts and starting to edge away from me.  

I see fear in their eyes and I know what they are thinking: "Stop making eye contact with the scary tattoos, stupid!" Because a dude with big ink like mine in their super nice suburban school? Yeah, that's the guy who can seriously beat the shit out of you whenever he feels like it. Take all your lunch money for the entire year, and maybe your life? I ignore the stares and retrieve my shirt off the deck while Chad does his soul-crushing best on what little is left of Abrams self-respect.

The psycho looks like he's completely in his element, bullying Abrams and Lee to feel like crap about themselves for not passing a simple swimming test. Abrams cause he is weak and worthless in Chad's esteem. And poor Lee, probably just because he happened to be sitting on the bleachers next to Abrams when Chad started his tirade. 

To me, the dumbest thing about this whole thing is that Lee can't swim, so what's really the point of all this berating? And Abrams who can sorta swim, more or less, failed to understand the nature of the test and tried to push himself too hard. Of course, Abrams is not alone in this stupidity. As most of the freshman are heaving, and none of them have come up with the answer to this whole dilemma of this test, save Sporka the whale. Who is still floating lazily in the shallow end of the pool without a care in the world. 

The stupid thing was this test wasn't a race, or even timed at all. So all of these freashmeat idiots could have casual swam over and back at their own pace like Sporka. But blazing freshmen are too stupid to listen to instructions. Swim, get blue ball, swim back. Nothing was ever mentioned about the test having to be done at speed, or even completed under timed conditions. So instead of just following the instructions, they all pushed themselves to the limit to prove themselves ...just like Chad wanted them to.

Chad's asshole radar must have sensed that the test is finally over, because he stops mid bitch and turns on the rest of the flock watching him.

"Where's your blue ball, Dean?" Chad snaps eye raping me up and down suspiciously.

"In my pocket." I eye bone him right back. And no jackass, I am not happy to see you.

"Alright everyone passes except Lee, Abrams, and Dean." He smirks victoriously, waiting for me to say something about this bait he's thrown out. I know he's baiting me into yet another worthless confrontation, but on his terms with a class full of witnesses watching. So to his vast disappointment, I don't even bother to give him the time of day, let alone the fight he is looking for.  

"So moving along." Chad struts down the pool deck like Patton in front of his war troops. "Seeing that you ladies are already wet, why don't we go ahead and have us a relay race today? Four-man teams, winners get an extra credit A for the day. Second place gets a B, third a C, and rest of you losers get just a pass. You have ten minutes to pick your teams and get your lineups straight."

Now I know without a doubt what pool day is all about, and it was never about this stupid swimming test. It's all about Chad is having an impromptu swim tryouts out of season, in clear violation of the competition rules. So I opt out of this bullshit immediately and walk past Chad heading for the aluminum bleachers to check on Abrams, who looks like death warmed over.

"Where are you going?" Chad demands, still eyeing my ink necklace, trying to figure out what it means.   

"Obviously, I'll sit out with the rest of the failures on the bleachers." I snort in passing. "Seeing I didn't pass, after all."

"Jesus Dean, learn to take a joke."

"Oh, so now I passed?" I stop short and stare down into him.

"Yeah, you passed. Big woop-D-doo for you." He rolls his eyes all exaggerated around like a clown.

"Thanks Cap't, I just needed to hear you say that in front of witnesses." I shake my head at the idiot and lower my voice. "Oh yeah, and good job bringing Jesus into this, and making fun of Abrams Jewishness while you were at it? I'm sure his Jewish lawyer parents will appreciate your racist religious intolerance? You know ...for when they contact the school tomorrow morning, to file their racist religious discrimination complaint on you?"

Chad get's a twitchy look in his eye, and glances back at Abrams who is now starring at us.

"Ah, sorry about Jesus, Abrams. No offense." Chad shrugs this off, and on to the next problem.

The sad part of this entire exchange is I don't know anything about Abrams at all. Or if his parents are lawyers or plumbers. Hell, I don't even know if Abrams is Jewish or not? I just know that Chad is a flocking idiot and will probably believe anything I say at this point, until proven otherwise.

"Okay smart guy, seeing you're so gay for Abrams, he's on your team. You can swim laps for your new girlfriend." Chad is in full smirking mode now, impressed with his cleverness. It's like this guy is so full of himself he doesn't even hear the stupidity rolling out of his mouth anymore, as he move on from one prejudice into the next.

"Then give me Lee too, I could use the challenge." I counter back evenly.

"Fine. So let's see who else we can find for you." Chad looks around the faces to find my fourth and smirks wider. "Sporka you're on Dean's team."

"Even better." I smile slices right back into him because unbeknownst to this idiot, my team perfect for me. A whale, a weakling, and a dead body and a surfing water god? Yeah, I am really liking our odds at an easy A for the day.

"The rest of you girls find a team and get your lineups straight. You have ten minutes and counting, ladies." Chad struts off towards the mirrored windows of the pool office, I know only too well form my short time here in the summer of stupid. So strutting away from the fray, Captain Midnight throws a final smirking insult over his shoulder my way. 

"Make it quick ladies and don't make me assign teams ...like Dean's Losers."