The View From the Shallow End
Maya stood at the edge of the **pool**, clutching her towel like a lifeline. Across the water, the social **pyramid** revealed itself in terrifying clarity. There was Jordan at the...
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Maya stood at the edge of the **pool**, clutching her towel like a lifeline. Across the water, the social **pyramid** revealed itself in terrifying clarity. There was Jordan at the...
The heat wave had turned everything sticky, including my social life. Two weeks into summer break and I'd already been ghosted by the friend group I'd spent all year trying to impr...
Maya's first week at Vitamin World was equal parts cringe and cash money. The neon green polo shirt her manager made her wear was basically a social death sentence, but at $12.50 a...
Maya's first high school party. Her stomach did backflips as she stood in the corner of Tyler's basement, nursing a warm soda. The air smelled like cheap chips and desperation. "Y...
Maya's legs burned as she rounded the track for the eighth time, running on pure spite at this point. 6 AM practice wasn't in the brochure when she'd signed up for cross country, b...
Maya stared at her reflection, fingers tangled in what used to be shoulder-length waves. Now? A choppy, uneven mess that screamed "I tried to cut my own bangs at 2 AM and this is w...
I looked like a literal zombie. Fourth consecutive all-nighter will do that to you. My concealer wasn't even concealing anymore—it was waving a white flag. "You good, bestie?" May...
The papaya sat on the paper plate like a question I didn't know how to answer. Tropical, exotic, completely out of place at this Michigan beach party—kinda like me. "You gonna eat...
My hair looked like a small angry animal had attacked it. That was Maya's assessment anyway, as she stood behind me in her bathroom, holding scissors like she was about to perform ...
The chlorine smell hit Maya before she even stepped into the backyard. Taylor's end-of-year pool party. The kind of thing that appeared in every teen movie as the pinnacle of high ...
Maya stood at the plate, the baseball bat feeling heavy in her sweaty hands. The entire freshman class was watching from the bleachers—mostly because Tyler, the varsity captain who...
Maya stood at the edge of the **pool**, clutching her red solo cup like it was a lifeline. Her best friend Chloe had dragged her to Jessica Barton's end-of-summer blowout, and alre...