Whitney by Jade Parker

wasn’t unusual to have that many on the weekend, but not on a weekday.
    “Who knows? Full moon, I guess,” Lisa said. “All the little monsters come out to play.”
    With clipboard in hand, she led the way outside. We nearly ran into Jake, who was pushing the stainless steel ice-cream cart in the direction of Mini Falls.
    “We’re gonna need extra ice cream today,” Lisa said, without breaking her stride.
    “Got it!” Jake called out to her. “Saw the message you left on my locker and the one you left on the cart.”
    I don’t know if Lisa heard him. She was power walking to the pavilion, leaving us behind. Of course it didn’t take much for her to power walk. She was almost six feet tall, so she had long legs that covered a lot of ground fast. I was all of five feet four. My legs couldn’t keep up with her. Or maybe I was staying behind on purpose so I could talk to Jake.
    “She’s control-freak central,” Jake muttered.
    “But she gets the job done.”
    He glanced over at me. “You know, when I filled out my application to work here, I thought I’d be a big, bad lifeguard. Not the scoop guy. It’s such a wimpy job.”
    “It’s an important job,” I assured him. Plus, it kept him working near me. If he was a lifeguard, I’d probably never see him. I might not have ever even met him. We wouldn’t have gotten to know each other.
    “Don’t you want to be a lifeguard?” he asked, almost like where I worked influenced where he worked. “Maybe we could work at the same pool.”
    Paradise Falls had several pools, each offering its own unique setting. I was encouraged that he wanted us to work in the same area, but I wasn’t really into the pools, especially after the near-drowning earlier in the summer. Being a lifeguard was a lot of responsibility.
    “I like working in parties because things change every day. At the pools, it just all stays the same,” I said.
    “The scenery changes.”
    Scenery was guy-talk for girls. I knew this because it was also Caitlin’s code for guys. Before she’d started dating Michael, she was all about the “scenery” at Tsunami.
    “Besides, parties are pretty much the same for me,” Jake said. “Scoop, dip, scoop, dip. You have any idea how cold my hands get?”
    “Oh, poor thing. Do you know how hot it gets standing around watching kids play?”
    “But how hard is it?”
    “Like I said, boring.”
    “I guess no one is ever really happy with their jobs.”
    “I am,” I said. “Ever since I moved to parties.”
    We arrived at the pavilion.
    “Come on, y’all!” Lisa called out to us. “We need balloons! We need setup! Make yourself useful, Whitney. I can’t do everything.”
    “I thought she liked doing everything,” I muttered.
    “Don’t take it personally,” Jake said as he headed over to the helium canister.
    “I wasn’t taking it personally.” Okay, maybe I was a little. She’d never gotten after me before. Maybe she was feeling stressed with the big luau coming up. We only had four days to prepare for it. Theoretically, I guess we didn’t have to do anything other than have the park open to the party guests, but we had a reputation to maintain so we did what we could to provide something extra.
    A storage shed was off to the side, cleverly disguised to look like a straw hut. I went inside, grabbed six sand pails, and filled them with all kinds of cheap trinkets. I put a pail on each table that had been designated for a party. Lisa had already put the reservation sign with the party’s name on it on each table. Jake was fast with the balloons. He had half the tables ready to go.
    The bells sounded, signaling the opening of the park.
    “Whitney, get to the front gate!”
    “Geez, don’t get your shorts in a knot,” I mumbled as I hurried to the front of the park.
    The gates that the customers used followed a long path past the parrot and came to an end near Tsunami. To one side was Tsunami, and beyond that Thrill Hill, which was