Swim at your own risk

– There is no life guard on duty after 9pm

– The life guard on duty before 9pm is a 16-year-old boy

– The 16-year-old boy is an open marijuana user. He has vowed to spend the summer “always high.” He smokes pot the moment he wakes up, which means that by the time he sits down in his lifeguard chair, at 9am, he is already high.

– The life guard is on break from noon to 1pm. It is during this time that he goes from “high” to “stoned.”

– The life guard’s high peaks at around 4pm. By this point in the day, the boy is so narcotized, he actually loses contact with reality. His brain stops fighting the drugs and instead “gives in” to their effects. Rational thought ceases and his world becomes a dream-like wash of shapes and colors.

– From 5–9pm there is a second life guard on duty. She is a 15-year-old girl. She uses less marijuana than the boy, but still enough to be classified, by any rubric, as a full-fledged drug addict. The boy and the girl are beginning to fall in love. They spend the afternoons having earnest conversations about life’s great mysteries. One common discussion topic is how the world “might be a dream,” in which case “nothing matters.” They never look out at the water, only into each other’s eyes, two carefree children, high beyond reason, living only for today.

– The water contains sharks.