I need to calm down.
“Samantha? Mind if I take my lunch break?” I ask Samantha, my human colleague, a college freshman home for the summer.
She looks up from her phone for a second with puffy red eyes. “Huh?”
Poseidon give me strength.
Actually, no. Not him. Modern krakens typically try not to mention our ancient Greek deity bloodlines, or the centuries we spent wrecking ships (or being blamed for shipwrecks we never caused) and philandering, and let’s not even talk about the whole tentacle thing.
“Samantha, you’re not the primary guard at the moment, but you’re still supposed to be actively scanning if you’re in the chair or near the water’s edge. No phones. No scrolling,” I snap. If she wants to make herself cry by watching those videos of kids getting surprised with kittens and puppies, she needs to do it when she’s not in charge of people’s lives.
Samantha looks up at me, looks down at her screen, and makes a wet, squeaky sound, and points helplessly at her phone before she bursts into tears.
Was I harsh? Living alone for the last decade hasn’t made me exactly... sociable. “Samantha, I know how touching it is when a child receives a pet. Why, when I was three, my mother gave me my first sea otter. Spark, I named him. But I wouldn’t watch moving videos of otters at play or kittens springing out of Christmas boxes while on duty,” I say, forcing myself to sound compassionate. I think. At least, I wastryingto sound compassionate. Samantha’s scrunched-up face leaves me with doubts that I’ve succeeded.
“It’s Bradley!” she wails.
“Your dog?”
“That’s Barney! Bradley is my boyfriend.Wasmy boyfriend. We promised we’d stay together even though he went home to Pennsylvania to work at his parents’ vineyard over the summer!”
I blink and try to think about what I know of Pennsylvania, the state just south of us. “They have vineyards there?” I ask.
Samantha just wails louder. Heads are turning.
“Um. Well. Pennsylvania isn’t so very far. A long drive or a short flight,” I attempt to soothe.
“We didn’t even make it two weeks before he sent me a text about long distance not working out, and he thinks we should see other people. He’s not even sure he’s coming back to school in the fall!” Samantha swings her phone wildly in my direction as if eager to show me proof of the terrible texts.
“Um. Uh.” My cautious noises turn to alarm as Samantha walks closer and closer, and then she’s sobbing on my chest. “ Oh... Oh, dear. Okay.” I pat her back with the tips of my fingers and tell my tentacles to behave as they start inching near her ankles, intent on dragging Samantha off of me.
“He’s such a jerk.”
“I see that.”
“I hate him. I love him.”
“That seems confusing.” I was trained to deal with shock, near-drowning, hypothermia, sunburn, even jellyfish stings...
Hysterical teenage co-workers are not in theHarmony Glen Lifeguard Manual. Break-ups are not in the manual, and they really should be, because krakens avoid them. Seriously.
Samantha blows her nose on my shirt and then goes, “Hey. You’re kind of hot for an old guy with too many legs. Do you work out?”
“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that. Any of that.”Old guy? Too many legs! You wouldn’t like it if I said humans have way too few!
“No, no! I could send Bradley a picture of us cuddled up on the beach, and that’d really piss him off.”
“Go. Home. Go home, Samantha. Take a few days off. You need time to process. Grieve.” Yes, that would be ideal. Ideally,far from my now sob-stained shirt and comments about my tentacles, which are just magnificent, thank you very much.
Samantha hesitates, twirling her long brown ponytail in a nervous gesture.“But there are always supposed to be two—”
“I’ll make an exception. This is an emergency,” I say, pushing her away with a firm but gentle smile, before turning in the other direction and whispering, “And you’re out of your mind.”
It’s not until eight, when the darkness has almost completely taken over the sky, that I get the break I wanted. The public beach area is “closed,” and lifeguards are off duty. Water beings and their friends might still be active in the lake, but that’s a matter of “swim at your own risk.”
I have a cave under the water that I call home—at least for now, and a locker in the guards’ changing area where I keep my more “human” belongings, like my cell phone and non-perishable groceries.
The beach has a few stragglers, couples holding hands, teenagers giggling and eating popcorn...
