My local outdoor community pool was revamped a few years ago. The generous donors who funded the million dollar facility upgrade provided a large free spray park, a small free splash park, and two tall water slides that exited into a large lap pool. The slides and lap pool was behind a big fence that you had to pay & be logged in/out for entry. You'd enter through the locker room building. Pretty darn secure if you asked me. Our town is fairly rural so having all these fun features for the pool was a big deal for the whole town. The town itself is really small, the kind of “Everytown, USA”.
Ever since the facility upgrade, I have always bought a summer pass for the pool cause it was only three blocks from my house. I love swimming, and specifically I love putting on sunglasses and just floating on my back (like a float tank) Being an adult without any children of my own, I always tried to go to the pool when there weren’t many kids. I never want to look like a creep; that lady that just floats with all the kids around. Most parents never swim with their kids. They look on from the deck and make a point to stay dry. The lifeguards are mostly teenagers on their summer break. Chilling with their sunglasses, quietly observing the swimmers.
The pool’s water slides were the kind you’d see at a really nice water park. One was a bright, shiny red open slide that wound around the stairs and the three story tall platform. The other one was a brilliant cobalt blue enclosed tube that was a speed slide with a water chute at the bottom. Most of the kids preferred the blue tube cause it was really fast and makes a big wave of water when you came out of the chute. Both slides had a little pool at the top.
A week ago, I went to the pool on a 68° overcast day. The kind of weather that didn’t attract many families. I hurried through the locker room and into the water. The pool is heated so the water always stayed the same during any kind of summer weather. The clouds didn’t bother me at all. There were three other families at the pool, but each family was just a Mother and her child / children. There were only 12 people in the whole pool, lifeguards included. I had never seen any of the Moms or their kids before that day. There was one mom, who’s preteen son appeared to be on the autism spectrum. He was non-verbal but absolutely loved being in the water. He was laughing loudly, splashing and having a blast. She was sitting on the side of the pool deck with her feet in the water. Talking to him softly, encouraging him to keep his laughter a little bit more quiet. “Leave some laughs for the rest of us, Connor.”
I was floating face up in the middle of the lap pool. His laughs were the kind that filled those around him with joy. Seeing him smiling made me smile. Connor was splashing and started lunging forward to climb out of the pool. He was giggling with his mom before grunting loudly and pointing at the slides. She nodded and started to stand up and grab her phone. The two of them walked happily over to the staircase up to the slide platform.
Connor tugged her hand and pointed up the stairs, as if asking her if she was going to come with him. She patted him on the shoulder and said “I’ll be waiting down here for you! I’ll get a great picture that you can send to Grandma!” He hesitated and then resigned with a big smile to quickly climbing the stairs alone. The lifeguard at the top of the platform met him with a warm and respectful greeting “Hi! Which slide do you want to ride?” Connor pointed at the bright red one and grinned largely. He was making the same kind of excited whines that a puppy makes when it’s ready to play. The teenage girl lifeguard was very kind and got into the staging pool with him and showed him to keep his ankles crossed and that he could put his hands up in the air, like a roller coaster! “Wheee!” she said quietly to him, as she nodded to him to make sure he was ready to slide down. He nodded enthusiastically and she pushed the button to release foot board so he could start to go down. Connor was laughing very loudly as he swirled around the stairs, splashing his hands upwards at every turn. His mother was ready at the bottom of the slide to take a picture of him. He made a huge wave when he hit the water and the air was filled with sounds of his joy. He was ecstatic. He waded over to the edge and got out of the pool quickly. His mom commented how happy he looked in the pictures. The boy started to point at the blue tube slide. His mom nodded with a smile on her face, so they both walked back to the staircase. Connor didn’t hesitate the second time and ran up the stairs without her. He was eager to slide again. The lifeguard was helping another child down the red slide as Connor stood next to her.
She turned towards him and said “Ready for another go?” He shook his head “YES” and wiggled his hand at the other slide this time. She told him “This one is a little different. Cross your ankles and put your hands on your chest, OK? Like this…” and she posed like a mummy, hands crossed over her chest. “You’ll go faster if you stay like that!” Again, the kind lifeguard stood in the staging pool and helped Connor get in the right pose. This slide didn’t have a foot stop so she encouraged him to scoot forward until the flow of the water took him down. He was laughing very loudly, in a way that the tube slide amplified his joy. His mom waved ‘come down’ as he looked at her from the platform on high. Connor scooted forward and plunged into the tube.
Almost as quickly as he scooted into the tube there was a piercing and scared “MOMMY!!!” screamed from inside. Then silence. No laughter. The distress on his mother’s face was immediate. She readied herself for her son to exit the chute in front of her, she still had her phone in her hand for the picture she wanted to take. The speed slide normally spits out a rider in about 3 seconds from top to bottom. Four… five… six… Seven seconds… The time passing started to feel longer and longer as the mother grew more agitated. The water coming out of the chute grew calm.
The lifeguard at the top platform was staring at the chute to make sure he exited the slide, and his mother was starting to look around. The teenage girl shouted “Where is he?” the mother responded “Still in the slide!” The girl hailed an older lifeguard to talk to the mother at the chute. Connor still hadn’t exited the slide. There was a quick discussion to turn off the water in the slide and ‘crawl’ down the tube from the top to help Connor out. The water turned off and the older lifeguard put on deck shoes to help him walk down the tube better. The older lifeguard was a thin and small man but he was fit and crouched down to descend the slide.
The mother was showing her worry. Shaking her head and walking around the tube slide to see if she could locate where he was in the slide. There was no direct sunlight so there were no shadows in the tube. Everyone at the pool is starting to pick up on the situation. The other two mothers start to corral their children and leave quickly. I’m still floating in the lap pool, but I’m now closely watching the mother and two lifeguards.
Connor’s mother shrieked when the older lifeguard walked out of the bottom of the tube with absolute terror on his face. “I didn’t see anything in there. He’s not there. You’re sure he was in there?” Both the mother and the girl lifeguard were adamant “Of course!” Yes he was!” The mother started grabbing her head in fear and screamed “Where is my son!?” Her screams caught the attention of the rest of the lifeguards, one was already on the phone with 9-1-1 as she was trained to do so if there was any incident on the slides.
“EMT’s are on the way!” the one shouted at the pool.
“WE NEED THE POLICE, the kid is MISSING, not injured!” the older lifeguard shouted back.
The mother collapsed to the ground, going over the events audibly… “He was just here, I saw him go down the slide.” She looked wildly around the fenced facility and started to scream “Where is Connor?! CONNOR? ARE YOU THERE?!? Connor where are you?!?!” The young lifeguard on the platform hurried down to the mother’s side, confusion and fear plastered on her face. Connor was just a few years younger than her.
At this point, I felt incredibly uncomfortable and was already getting out of the pool. The cops were coming, you could hear their sirens from across town (it’s that small of a town). By the time I grabbed my towel and walked through the locker room, there was one officer stomping through the building onto the pool deck. The officer seemed to know the mother, he touched her shoulder while asking what happened. She explained “He wanted to go down the tube slide. He screamed like I’ve never heard before and he disappeared! He said my name, he never says my name!!!” The officer scrunched his face in a “Say What?” kind of expression, and asked her to calm down. All of the lifeguards that were on duty repeated the same explanation. I quickly checked-out and exited the building, not even bothering to change in the locker room and hurried towards my car. The parking lot is right next to the slide platform and as I was getting closer to my car, I heard a few lifeguards off to the side discussing “What do you think it was?” “I have no idea, the kid was JUST here!” “He couldn’t have been abducted, All of the people in the pool were checked in and checked out as they left.”
I got into my car and drove away filled with a deep sadness. I have no idea what just happened, but something was completely unreal about the situation. I was trying to think of an explanation for myself that whole night. The next day was 90° and sunny. The kind of day that would have a packed pool. As I drove home from work, I saw the splash & spray park was very busy with lots of young children and parents, but the pool was empty. There was a commercial scissor lift in the middle of the slide area. It appeared like workers had been disassembling the blue slide all day. As I drove closer to the pool entrance, there was a small handwritten note on the doors on red paper. I couldn't read it at the time.
As of today, It’s been six days since Connor went missing at the pool. No trace of the boy has been found yet. His family started to distribute ‘Missing’ posters of Connor all over the county. Sadly, his biggest missing poster now hangs next to the newly printed sign “Pool Closed Until Further Notice”.