Blue Hair and Goldfish Summers

Maya stood at the edge of the pool, clutching her towel like a lifeline. Her newly dyed blue hair made her feel like she'd stuck a neon sign on her head that flashed LOOK AT ME in giant letters. Which was exactly what she didn't want.

"You coming in or what?" Jake called from the water, splashing water toward her.

She'd been crushing on Jake since seventh period English, when he'd let her borrow his notes after she'd been out sick with the flu. Now, at his sister's graduation party, Maya felt like a total zombie—awkward, brain-dead, and barely functioning.

"I'm good!" she called back, wincing at how fake-cheerful she sounded.

Her phone buzzed. A text from Jake: *The sphinx awaits your answer. What loses its head in the morning but gets it back at night?*

Maya stared at her screen. A riddle? Since when did Jake do riddles?

"A pillow!" someone yelled behind her. Jake's sister, Skylar, flopped onto the lounge chair next to Maya, her perfect curls somehow immune to humidity. "He's been sending people riddles all day. It's his whole 'I'm mysterious and deep' phase."

Maya laughed, some of the tension in her shoulders loosening. "Is it working?"

"On you?" Skylar wiggled her eyebrows. "Pretty sure you've been staring at him since you got here."

Heat rushed to Maya's face. "Is it that obvious?"

"Only to someone who's been there." Skylar pointed at herself. "Freshman year, I thought Jake was the sun and moon. Turned out he's just a guy who thinks he's deeper than he actually is. But the riddles? That part's actually fun."

Jake had moved on to interrogating a goldfish float about its philosophical views on existence.

"He's such a dork," Skylar said fondly.

"Yeah," Maya said, watching him. "But he's our dork."

"So are you swimming or what? Because that hair color is giving 'main character energy' and you need to own it."

Maya touched her blue hair. For months, she'd been hiding—her opinions, her sense of humor, herself. But something about Skylar's straightforward acceptance made something click into place.

She dropped her towel on the chair.

"Watch this," Maya said, and executed a perfect cannonball right next to Jake and the goldfish.

When she surfaced, Jake was laughing so hard he'd nearly inhaled half the pool.

"Did you just attack me with water?" he asked, wiping his face.

"Consider it my answer to your riddle," Maya said. "The answer is 'someone who's done overthinking everything.'"

Jake blinked, then grinned. "Wrong answer, but I like your style."

Skylar gave her a thumbs-up from the edge of the pool.

And just like that, Maya stopped feeling like a zombie. Maybe growing up wasn't about becoming someone new—it was about becoming who you'd been all along, just brave enough to let people see it.