Bear Hat and the Deep End

The invitation said pool party, so Maya showed up wearing her lucky denim shorts over a swimsuit and—because she was nervous and sometimes made questionable choices—this giant fuzzy brown hat with bear ears that she'd impulse-bought online.

"Love the hat," said Jessica, who Maya had been trying to impress since seventh grade. "Very... bold."

Maya's face burned. She reached up to take it off, but then Chase—the actual Chase, who had dimples and somehow made varsity swim team look effortless—walked out of the house carrying a massive TUB of chocolate ice cream.

"Who wants to go swimming?" he called. "Like, actually swimming? Not just standing in the shallow end taking selfies?"

Everyone looked at each other. This was the thing about pool parties: nobody actually swam. It was all about appearances and who looked good in a swimsuit and who was dating who and who had brought the good snacks. Actual swimming was so... uncool.

But Maya was already standing there in a bear-eared hat. She had nothing left to lose.

"I'll go," she said, before her brain could stop her mouth.

Chase grinned. "Awesome. Last one to the deep end is a rotten egg."

He took off running and did this perfect cannonball that sent water everywhere. Jessica rolled her eyes. Maya's hands shook as she pulled off the bear hat and dropped it on a lawn chair—very dramatically, like she was shedding an old skin—and sprinted toward the pool.

The water hit her like cold reality. She surfaced, sputtering, to find Chase treading water beside her, grinning.

"You're actually fast," he said.

"I was on swim team until sixth grade," Maya admitted, which was more than she'd said to him in two years of sharing math class. "Then I quit because I thought it wasn't cool."

"Yeah," Chase said, splashing water at her. "Sixth grade was a whole bear. I'm glad you're not still that person."

They swam laps while everyone else watched from the edge, and for the first time in forever, Maya didn't care what she looked like or who was watching or whether her bear ears had been ridiculous. Sometimes you had to dive into the deep end to figure out you could swim.

Later, soaking wet and exhausted, she put the hat back on. Jessica was watching her now—actually watching her.

"That hat," Jessica said, "is honestly iconic."

Maya smiled. "You want to try it?"

Jessica did. They ended up taking the world's worst selfies together while Chase complained that they were blocking his lane, and maybe that wasn't how Maya thought the day would go, but sometimes the best stories weren't the ones you planned out perfectly in advance.