Deadpool Summer

The summer before junior year, I got a job as a lifeguard at Raging Rapids — basically the bottom of the social pyramid. My friend Chloe immediately tried recruiting me into her vitamin pyramid scheme, convinced we'd both be driving Range Rovers by September.

"Just trust the process," she'd say, flexing her positivity like it was a muscle she'd been training at the gym.

Meanwhile, I was dealing with Tyler, the senior lifeguard who was a total bull — constantly charging through the shallow end, barking orders, making sure everyone knew who ran the pool deck. He had this way of looking at me like I was a zombie who'd wandered in from the apocalypse.

The worst part? I couldn't actually swim well. Like, at all.

"Yo, you good?" Tyler asked one afternoon, gesturing at the diving well where some kid was doing cannonballs off the three-meter board.

"Yeah," I lied. "Just conserving energy. Strategic lifeguarding."

He raised an eyebrow. "Right."

The moment came during the Friday rush. A kid surfaced in the deep end, splashing like he was fighting off an invisible shark. I froze. My brain went full zombie mode — blank, unresponsive, definitely not built for emergency situations.

Then I saw Chloe in the snack bar window, frantically waving a bottle of her miracle vitamins at me like they were some kind of magic rescue potion.

I jumped in.

The water swallowed me, cold and shocking and deeper than I'd mentally prepared for. But I reached the kid, grabbed his arm, and somehow got us both to the edge. Tyler hauled us out like we weighed nothing.

"You froze first," he said afterward, while I sat wrapped in a towel, shaking. "But you jumped in anyway. That's what matters."

Later, Chloe admitted her vitamin thing was totally a scam. "I made, like, twelve dollars," she said, dumping the remaining bottles into a trash can. "Want to get boba instead?"

"Yeah," I said. "But you're paying."

That night, I lay in bed feeling sore and exhausted in a way that somehow felt good. Like I'd actually done something. The summer stretched ahead, full of possibility and probably more embarrassing moments, but maybe that was okay. Maybe growing up was just repeatedly jumping into the deep end even when you were terrified.

At least now I knew I could.