"Rachel! Rachel, help!"
I looked up from the show I was watching, annoyed at the interruption, though it wasn't any good in the first place, and saw Maria outside by the pool. "What is it?" I asked, getting up.
"I dropped Sharon and I can't get her back!" Maria said, pointing a Barbie doll floating in the water.
"Who's fault is that?"
"You gotta help me! She's drowning!"
Drowning? A Barbie doll? I had worked as a life guard last summer, and I knew a lost cause when I saw one. "Don't worry, kid. She's not going to drown. She's going to get eaten by sharks."
Sharon jumped in the air, her face turning pale. "No!"
"Duh-dun! Duh-dun!" I said, humming the Jaws theme. "You gotta swim faster, Sharon! Their gaining on you!"
"Save her! Save her!"
I got on my hands and knees and reached out. "Quick, Sharon! Grab my hand! You have to …" I stood back up and dusted off my jeans. "Well, I've done all I can do." I could have grabbed the skimming net and fished the doll out, but I had more fun teasing her. "She will be missed."
Maria, in a fit of desperate anger, shoved me. That would have done next to nothing, but I was standing right on the edge of the pool, and that was all it took to knock me off balance and I fell right in.
"Quick, Sharon!" Maria called. "While they're eating her, keep swimming!"
Okay, I can admit that was pretty funny, now, but at the moment I was furious and trying to remember whether or not I had my phone in my pocket (I didn't, thank goodness). I lunged out of the water like a soaked, teenaged sea monster, grabbed Maria by the bottom of her shirt, and pulled her into the pool.
And that, my friends, is the story of how I discovered that Maria couldn't swim. She managed to drown in two seconds flat, I tried and failed to administer CPR (they make it look so easy on TV), and I never babysat anyone again. But on the bright side, in a few short years, I'm getting out of prison.
Okay, I'm kidding. (Gosh, that turned dark fast). But Maria seriously didn't know how to swim, which was odd considering how her family, you know, owned a swimming pool. If my parents owned a pool when I was eleven, I would have grown fins, but that's besides the point. I dragged her out of the water (like I said, I was a lifeguard), and somehow Maria had managed to grab onto her stupid doll, so at least one of us got what we wanted.
After we got out of the water …
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