Original Flash Fiction: The Pool

Every day during the summer we gathered behind my parents’ apartment building. We leaned against the cheap wooden railings of our back porch, dreaming aloud what we’d buy if we ever found buried treasure in the nearby woods. A new ten speed, a pair of walkie-talkies, even a puppy.

We spent the weekends at the pool across the parking lot. Our parents sunned themselves on cheap, plastic chaise lounges, clinking wine coolers in approval of fresh gossip or chucking crumpled, sweaty Budweiser cans in and around the nearby trash bin.

We ran wild in and out of the pool, between the buildings and alleys. We danced bare-chested along the cool white parking lines until they disappeared into an ocean of steaming black. We burned our feet on the sunbaked asphalt, screaming words we learned through our parents’ paper-thin bedroom walls. “God damnit,” and “Son of a bitch,” rang out, echoing off vinyl siding and hanging in the air like it was the Grand Canyon.

We never had money to call our own, but there was always spare change hidden beneath the Coke machine at the pool, and one by one we wriggled our pruned fingers underneath, searching for quarters, dimes, and nickels that were long forgotten. We encouraged each other: “Come on, come on,” and “You’ve almost got it.” We despaired: “We need a coat hanger!”

While our parents baked, we scavenged the bottom of the pool like a team of treasure hunters, chlorine burning our eyes. But we usually surfaced bleary eyed and empty handed.

I lived the closest. Our apartment was just across the parking lot. I could have been there and back in thirty seconds with enough change from my father’s mason jar to empty the entire machine. But the hunt was better, even if we never found enough money to split a single Coke four ways.

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