Page 61 of Rest In Pink

Elliott nodded, his thin little chest heaving.

“Okay,” Crystal said. “Elliott, you knew that all you had to do was stand up. What went wrong?”

“You weren’t here,” Elliott said.

“You do realize that I will not be with you every time you go swimming for the rest of your life,” Crystal said.

“You could be,” Elliott said, looking up at her with devotion. “I love you.”

“That’s nice of you, El, but you have to learn to swim alone. Everybody does.”

“No,” Elliott said simply.

“Come here,” Crystal said and they walked through the water to one side of the pool. “You stay here.”

Elliott said, “No!” but Crystal swam to the other side.

When she got there, she said, “Okay, Elliott. Swim to me, and I’ll swim back with you.”

“Yes,” Elliott said, and swam like a damn fish to get to her.

As soon as he touched the edge, she swam the short length back, and he swam right beside her the whole way.

“You’re a faker, Elliott,” Crystal said, climbing out of the pool. “Practice back and forth at this end, and I will watch to see how good you are. Impress me.”

She got out and I moved down to stand beside her.

“Does that happen often? Kids getting crushes?”

“Not that upfront about it,” Crystal said, casting her eyes over the rest of the pool. “And usually not with this age group. But he really is afraid of the water. The fact that he can swim doesn’t help with that. So, my plan has been to keep him in the shallow end until he’s strong enough to swim that end four times. Then I was going to put him in the middle and have him swim down and back twice, which is the length of the pool. And then I’d go into the deep end with him, and tell him to swim for the shallow end, and he’d swim the length of the pool and think he’s God.” She frowned in Elliott’s direction. “But he’s better than I thought. Elliott is going to see the deep end soon.”

“I have a friend in the fire department,” I said.

“That’s exactly right, Diana,” Crystal yelled at somebody in the pool. Then she looked at me. “What?”

“I have a good friend in the fire department,” I said. “Mac Blake.”

Her eyes widened a little bit. “He’s a firefighter and an EMT. He teaches the EMT course. He’sgreat.”

“Have you taken the EMT course?”

She shook her head. “When I finally turned nineteen, it was filled up.”

“Do you want to take the EMT course?”

She nodded, and then put her eyes back on the pool.

I took out my phone and called Mac.

“I am not taking your damn bears,” he said when he answered.

“This is a non-bear call. I need a favor.”

“Go.”

“I need you to put a friend of mine into your next EMT course,” I said, and Crystal turned to look at me, her mouth open. “She’s really great, and she wants to work at the fire department, so you should tell Otto about her, and show her around the place and explain what she has to do to get a job there, and definitely put her in your course. She’s nineteen, so she’s going to be working with you for years and running the department after you retire. If you hit on her, I will rip your balls off.”

“I don’t hit on nineteen-year-olds,” Mac said. “I don’t have that kind of patience.”

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