The Pool Party

You know what? Playing lifeguard for a dozen 12-14 year olds wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it might be. Granted it was boring sometimes, and I'm just not going to go into how weird it is to have X-ray vision and be looking at a pool full of mixed sex teenagers, but I've had much worse experiences.

Part of the reason is, I think because I let Lauren talk me into wearing an itsy bitsy little string bikini. When I pulled off my t-shirt, it seemed to instantly like silence the guys, and even though the guys stared even more, they kept their distance. And even after I put it back on, I guess they remembered it, because not a single guy would look me in the eye all night. Every time I even opened my mouth, Ricky would look away, for example, almost like he was scared of me. Not a bad thing when you're supposed to be, like an authority figure and you're half a foot shorter than everyone.

Don't get me wrong, Lauren got more than her share of attention too, but she's much better at dealing with it than I am. Lauren's got a killer body, and unlike mine, which, if you look really closely, doesn't exactly jive with gravity, hers moves with like this awesome natural grace when she wants it. I think she really did like playing with the kids for a little while, but not for that long, because as soon as the food was coming off the grill, she and I were pretty much enmeshed in some pretty serious catching up. Lauren had been off on vacation, and we had a lot of stuff to talk about.

All in all, it was pretty tame, honest. One guy came in with alchohol on his breath, but he behaved and no one ever needed to know that I smelled it from across the yard. And while another guy brought in a bottle of vodka, I spotted it and confiscated it pretty easily. He was so confused over how I spotted it, I think, that he didn't even argue when I took it.

After the party broke up, and Alice's folks got home, they sat down with me and talked too, which was awesome. They told me, like how much of a good example I am for her, and how they really appreciate me. I'm not sure how true it was, but it sure felt good to hear.

I was so pumped up by that, that I let Alice's father walk me home, which was a little weird. When we got to my house, he put his hand on my shoulder and, damn, I almost freaked. It sucks sometimes to have supersenses, and it didn't take X-ray vision to know that his heartbeat was racing and all, like he was getting turned on by me. But you know what, he was cool.

He said, "Daphne, I just wanted to tell you again how grateful we are that you're around. Alice is very lucky to have you and so are we. I want you to know, we think of you like another daughter."

He sort of leaned down, and I thought he was going to do something really bad, but he just kissed me on the forehead. I blabbered something about how cool that was, and how I thought of them as my family too, but words didn't really explain how good I felt about it. It was WAY better than stopping a robbery, or even saving a person from a burning building.

Daph