Lifeguard On Duty

Chapter 1: Lifeguard on Duty

The heat was thick, suffocating, the kind that pressed down like a weight on your chest and made every breath feel like a workout. Summer in Hawkins wasn't like summer in California—no salty ocean breeze cutting through the humidity, no endless beaches to drown the heat in. Here, the air stuck to your skin, soaked through your clothes, and clung to you like a second layer, inescapable.

Billy Hargrove hated it.

He stood at the edge of the Hawkins Community Pool, arms crossed over his bare chest, watching the water ripple in slow, lazy waves as kids splashed and parents sipped from sweating cans of soda. His sunglasses—mirrored aviators, reflecting the blinding glare of the sun—hid his eyes, but his scowl was all too visible. The muscles in his jaw tightened, a constant tic, as he scanned the crowd with the same bored disdain he'd felt for months. Everything here was dull—gray and flat in a way that made him itch for something, anything, to break the monotony.

This place wasn't California. And it sure as hell wasn't home.

Billy wiped a bead of sweat from his brow with the back of his hand, irritated by the stickiness of his own skin. He missed the dry heat of the West Coast, the kind that made you feel like you could breathe, like you could move. Hawkins was the opposite. It was a small town, a suffocating town, filled with people who were small in ways he couldn't quite put into words, but could feel. He could smell it on them, the way they settled into their mundane lives with no ambition, no spark, content to live out their years doing the same thing day in and day out. It made his skin crawl.

"Lifeguard on duty," he muttered under his breath, the words slipping out in a low growl. "Yeah, no shit."

He shifted his weight, moving from one foot to the other, and flexed his hands unconsciously. His fingers curled into fists, then relaxed, over and over. It wasn't the job that bothered him. Hell, it wasn't even the heat, or the sweat, or the endless screeching of kids too stupid to know they were supposed to stay out of the deep end. It was everything. Everything that was wrong with this goddamn town, with these people, with his life.

He caught his reflection in the glass window of the pool house. The same old face stared back at him. Jawline sharp as broken glass, golden tan, hair that fell in perfect, sun-bleached waves—he looked good. He always looked good. He knew it. It wasn't vanity, it was fact. People like him didn't blend in. They didn't go unnoticed, and they sure as hell didn't end up in places like this unless something had gone terribly, terribly wrong.

Billy's mouth twisted into a bitter smile. Yeah, something had gone wrong, all right.

The memories were there, just below the surface. California. His old life. His mother's face—warm, laughing, her hair blowing in the breeze as she smiled at him from across the beach. His father's fists—cracking across his cheek like thunder, the sting of it a reminder that happiness didn't last long in the Hargrove household.

And then, Hawkins. The middle of nowhere. A fresh start, they'd said. Fresh start, his ass.

He'd been here a little over a year now, and nothing had changed. Hawkins was just another cage, another place to trap him. The people here treated him like some kind of celebrity—whispers and stares followed him everywhere he went, girls giggled and blushed, boys scowled with jealousy. But none of it mattered. None of them mattered. They were all just as pathetic as the ones he'd left behind.

Billy's gaze drifted to the water, watching the sunlight dance on the surface, refracting in a thousand directions. He let his mind wander, losing himself in the memory of California waves, real waves, the kind that made you feel alive. The kind that could crush you, rip you apart, and still make you come crawling back for more.