Innocence Lost

Theo tried to go back to normalcy then. At least she had a job she could focus on. For the second summer, she was a lifeguard at the state beach at Lakeside. That was where she and Derek had met the year before, and they were both planning to work there again this summer before heading off to college. Everyone knew about Derek's death, and if Theo had decided not to do it, the waterfront director would have understood. But Theo wanted the job. She longed for the familiarity of it, even the monotony of it, because what she needed most of all right now was time to think.

Lakeside was no Riviera. At that high elevation, Byron Lake was frozen in winter and marginally swimable only two months of the year: July and August. No one stayed in the chilly water for very long, which made Theo's job all the easier. Apart from paying attention and being where you were supposed to be, there was very little work involved. You just patrolled your sector of the beach or the floating dock, kept unruly children in line and enforced a few basic rules: No swimming outside the ropes. No horseplay on the dock. No swimming under the dock (where there was an airspace no one was supposed to know about). There were hardly any rescues or incidents, but the position was not without power. Lifeguards got to carry megaphones, and every once in a while they had the supreme satisfaction of using them to give people orders.

The first week went by without incident. Theo used the time to try to sort out the feelings inside her. There was a knot in her stomach she was trying to untie. She didn't trust her father and didn't like the direction her "training" had been headed, but she also missed him. There was a certain part of her life she could talk about with no one else. At the same time, she missed Derek, especially when everything at the beach reminded her of him. Knowing that her father had killed him put the two feelings at odds. For Derek's memory, how could she ever having anything to do with her father again?

In the second week of work, the knot was still there. Nothing seemed to relieve the tension inside her. Was this what her whole life was going to be like: a hell of impossible dilemmas and unresolved feelings? She thought about drinking, smoking cigarettes, taking drugs -- anything to relieve this tension. Instead, she decided to go swimming.

She worked only a half-day on Tuesday, and when her shift was over, she changed from her orange lifeguard bathing suit into her black Speedo. She walked to the end of the dock where the diving board was. She had been on the swim team and knew how to dive. She was in perfect form as she took three strong steps, catapulted off the end of the board and sliced cleanly into the water.

The cold water was a shock at first, but she continued down, down, all the way to the murky bottom. She touched the mud and stayed there. Then she closed her eyes.

Suddenly, the water was warm and comfortable, at just the right temperature where you almost couldn't feel it. Theo opened her eyes, and the water was clear, shimmering. Where there had been mud at the bottom, there was now white sand. She pushed off it and headed to the surface, to the mottled light above.

When she found the air, she also found a little slice of Paradise. It was a little protected pond or inlet in some tropical place. In the air was the smell of the flowers and the sound of distant surf. There were palm trees all around and the pond was fed by a little waterfall at one end.

She had never been here before. She only imagined the place, and there it was! She turned over and started swimming on her back, looking up at the palm trees. She figured she was on some South Pacific island, like Tahiti or Bora-Bora, but it didn't really matter. It was just a little relaxation, a little escape from her stress.

She spent a few minutes paddling around in the warm water, then she explored the edges of the pond. She found that at the end opposite from the waterfall, there an outlet, a little stream. She swam into it and followed it for a few hundred yards as it twisted through the palm forest. Then the sky opened up and the stream became too shallow to swim.

She stood up then and found herself on the edge of a perfect white-sand beach. It was just like a beach you might see on a calendar, bent palm trees hanging over crystal blue water with fluffy clouds in the distance. There were no people in sight, but a few empty beer bottles indicated they had been there. The beach was still perfect and, for the time being, totally hers. Theo surveyed her kingdom and walked along the shore a bit, then she sat under a palm tree and looked out toward the sea.

But her tensions were still there. All of her personal problems had traveled with her to this perfect place. She still didn't know what to do about her father. She didn't know what to do with her life. The knot in her stomach was still there, and the warm tropical breeze did nothing to unravel it.

Soon, the novelty of Paradise had worn off, and she was ready to go. She went back to the pond over land this time, following paths made by previous visitors. She skirted the pond's edge until she got to the waterfall. There, the rocks provided a natural platform a couple feet above the water. Theo could see all the way to the bottom and could tell it was deep enough. She straightened herself in diving form, jumped up and out and sliced cleanly into the water.

The cold water was a sudden shock, like it always was. She went all the way down to the bottom and touched the mud. Then she pushed off it and headed back to the surface.

When she broke through to the air, she found pandemonium! Boats everywhere! Radios crackling! People shouting instructions to each other. The dock was filled with emergency workers: firefighters, police, EMTs.

"There she is!" said someone through a megaphone.

* * *

Theo explained her absence by saying she had swam under the dock and come up in the air space there. Then she supposedly swam around the lake and came back.

That explanation only partly got her off the hook. People stopped asking questions, but they shook their heads in disgust.

Theo was fired!

The waterfront director explained that lifeguards, as enforcers of the rules, had an even greater obligation to obey them. Theo disobeyed two rules -- swimming under the dock and swimming outside the ropes -- not to mention the violating the commonsense wisdom of telling someone where she was going and not swimming alone. Her job was to prevent a safety crisis, not create one. Even though she was off-duty at the time, this event reflected badly on the park and its safety standards. The director said he had no choice but to let her go.

Theo understood and felt ashamed. She could have tried to tell people the real story, but aside from the fact that no one would believe her, it just wasn't relevant. She had gone off on her own selfish lark without considering the impact on others. Her actions had inconvenienced dozens of people and had put her family and friends through unnecessary stress. Derek's death and her father's part in it certainly weighed on her, but losing her job was the real clincher. For this, she had no one to blame but herself.

That was the point when Theo clammed up, checked out, shut down. She withdrew socially and folded into herself. She hardly left her bedroom for the rest of the summer! People assumed she was still grieving over Derek, but it was way more complicated than that.

She was grieving for herself.

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