Don't Drink The Gene Juice

4

Seth and Wyatt timidly walked through the back gate of Zoey's yard.

Immediately, Seth was struck with that feeling of, "I am not nearly important enough to be in a place this nice."

As he'd heard about many times before, there sat their indoor pool, built onto the house. Through the glass, he could see a waterslide built into rockwork behind the pool.

They also had a volleyball court, and a shed with some fourwheelers parked inside, visible through the open door.

They had what was basically a two story deck on the back of the house around the pool building, like a balcony with a normal deck below it, and staircase connecting the two.

I feel so poor, Seth thought.

On the top deck Seth saw some people he thought he recognized from school, lounging on chairs to try to get some of the springtime sun.

On the lower deck, a woman, probably Zoey's Mom, was out cooking food on a grill embedded in a stone counter.

Gosh, too rich even for a normal barbecuer.

He was being judgemental now. He put on a hopefully not fake looking smile as Zoey came out of the backdoor, wearing a swimsuit.

"Hi guys!" she said, "the food should be ready in about a half an hour or so. You can take a dip in the pool if you want right now. There's changing stalls over there if you need them."

She pointed over to where - legit - she straight up had changing stalls, like this was a public pool.

"Do you like, rent this place out to people?" Wyatt asked.

"Yeah," Zoey answered. "We do all the time. We let friends use it too. My Aunt does swimming lessons here during the summer."

"Neat," Wyatt said.

Zoey went out to the pool, and Wyatt and Seth walked through after her. There weren't a whole lot of people there yet, less then ten probably. The surface of the pool was undisturbed.

"What should we do?" Wyatt whispered.

The people sitting around the pool briefly glanced at them, but then returned to their conversations, one of which Zoey was now joining.

"Wait," Seth suggested to him. "I'm not going to be that guy that's the first to get into the pool."

"I am." Wyatt grinned.

Before Seth could stop him, Wyatt jumped into the deep end. Thankfully, Wyatt wasn't dumb enough to do a cannonball, but Seth noted surprise and disapproval from his peers.

That's where Seth drew the line in the popularity contest. Wyatt was his friend, and he wasn't going to be ashamed of him.

Seth tossed his stuff onto one of the pool chairs, and then jumped in after Wyatt.

The water was surprisingly warm as he sank down towards the bottom. Seth was thankful for it being inside, as any water outside, especially the ocean, would probably be too cold right now to comfortably swim in.

Seth relaxed in the comfortable boyancy of the water. He enjoyed swimming, and during the summer went to the ocean a lot to swim.

Wyatt laughed. "Thought you said you were going to wait."

Seth shrugged, which was kind of hard when he was treading water. "Just didn't want to be the first one in."

"Someone's gotta do it man," Wyatt smiled.

They looked over, and saw that Zoey and some of her friends were entering at the shallow end.

"Just promise me you'll hold off on going down the waterslide for now," Seth teased.