Bear in the Deep End

Maya's stomach had been doing backflips since Jordan texted about the pool party. Senior year. Last chance to not be the girl who never showed.

The problem wasn't the swimming—she could swim circles around everyone. The problem was the pool itself, the way it amplified everything she'd spent sixteen years trying to hide.

But here she was, standing by the chain-link fence in her oversized t-shirt, watching Jordan do cannonballs off the diving board while her classmates clustered around the shallow end like penguins. Maya's palms were sweating so bad her phone kept slipping.

Then she saw it—a massive blur of brown fur and paws tearing across the manicured lawn. Bear. Her dad's rescue dog. The one who'd eaten three couches and still acted traumatized about it. He'd escaped the backyard AGAIN.

"BEAR!" Maya screamed, but the dog was already airborne.

He hit the water like a meteor. Splash radius: approximately everyone.

The screams were spectacular. Jordan's girlfriend Kendall surfaced with her hair plastered to her face like some glossy magazine disaster shoot. Maya was already running, flip-flops abandoned, because this was it—this was the moment she became the girl with the demon dog who ruined everything.

"BEAR!" She waded in. No t-shirt shield now. Everyone staring. Every insecurity she'd ever harbored about her shoulders, her scars, her body—exposed.

But Bear wasn't attacking. He was dog-paddling toward the diving board, looking impossibly pleased with himself. And then Jordan—the actual Jordan who'd invited her—started laughing. Not mean laughing. The real kind.

"Is that a bear?" someone yelled.

"It's a DOG," Maya shouted back, waist-deep in chlorinated water, hair plastered to her face, hands on her hips. "His name is Bear. We're working on the irony."

Kendall surfaced again, wiped her eyes, and cracked up. "Your dog just made the best entrance of the summer."

Maya looked around. Nobody was looking at her scars. They were looking at her dog doing laps like he owned the place.

She took a breath, dove under, and came up grinning. Some pool parties you swim in. Some, you just survive.

Bear paddled over, nudged her hand, and for the first time since seventh grade, Maya didn't wish she was anywhere else.