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and two police cars pulled up, causing sheer commotion for an hour or so while they checked me over, filled out reports and dispersed the crowd. All my vitals registered as satisfactory so I declined any more medical treatment. When the excitement died down, the crowd filtered away, leaving just Mark and me. We began the walk back to the pavilion.
    “Are you really okay?” Mark asked.
    “Yes,” I said.
    “Why don’t I take you to the hospital, just to make sure? I’m worried.”
    “End of subject, please?” I interrupted. “As far as I’m concerned, my fall’s now in the past. Done and over, never to be thought of again.”
    “Fine.” Mark added, “So Francesca’s back from Europe?”
    As I walked, squishing sounds came from my soaked gym shoes. I think I even felt a minnow swimming in my undies. Keeping up with Mark’s long strides, I shot back, “Apparently she is. I don’t keep up with her. We're not exactly friends okay? Let’s leave it at that.”
    “But you told me that you and she were once best friends.”
    “ Were .”
    “Do you think she’d date me?”
    “Please? I’ve got a splitting headache. Can you lay off about Francesca?” I wasn’t mad that he asked about Francesca. I just felt out of sorts now that I had seen her again. It dug up too many memories I’d rather leave buried, as well as a plethora of memories I cherished.
    “You know, you were a lot nicer before you almost drowned,” Mark said.
    “Weird how something like that can change a girl. Can we talk about something else, like your internship at the dead people place? How’s that going?” I asked.
    “It’s great. I’ve got the embalming down. It's the makeup I’m tanking. Men don’t naturally have that glamour gene.”
    “Neither do I. It takes practice.”
    He turned and pointed a long skinny finger at me. “Great idea. I'll practice on you.”
    “One problem.” I gently pinched his arm. “Feel that? Corpses don’t pinch, and you need a corpse.”
    “A mere technicality.” He rubbed his arm. “There are no extra corpses lying around. But you, you’ll be perfect.”
    “No.”
    “I'll buy you dinner.”
    “Forget it.”
    “A Reuben on rye at H&K’s, with crispy chips and a beer?”
    “No.” I picked up a rock and tossed it in the lake. “Mark, don’t you need somebody without blood in their complexion?”
    “You know, you're looking kind of pasty.”
    I rolled my eyes and looked up at him. “Flattery will get you nowhere,” I said, although I knew I'd let him do the makeover on me. He had me at Reuben.
    Mark stopped and knelt on the ground, put his hands in a prayer configuration and fluttered his lashes over his big aqua eyes.
    “Please? I have my final exam tomorrow, and I really need the practice. If I pass this last exam, I’ll be that much closer to fully fledged mortician status.”
    I crossed my arms over my chest and huffed. “To get you off my back, fine. But you better not make me look like Bozo.”
    He jumped up. “You’re in luck. I haven’t learned clown corpse makeup 101 yet. But I know how to make non-clown corpses look animate.”
    Mark wanted to make me look like a cadaver after he saved me from being one. Something in the universe was twisted today.
    “So we’re on?” he asked.
    “You bet,” I said.
    “First, I’ll wrap up with Samuel and Annie, make sure that everything is in order. Meet me in the locker room in ten minutes. I have all the stuff with me.” He winked. “I knew you’d let me practice on you. You can't resist my baby blues.”
    Whacking him in the arm, I said, “If you screw up my makeover, you’ll have black and blues.”
    After Mark left, I paused by the public dock, calmed by the sound of the water gently splashing against the rocks on the shoreline. I liked peace.
    Since seeing Francesca, something felt out of whack.
    Turning from the lake I walked over to the ticket booth at the pavilion and approached Hazel, who had staffed the booth from