Bottom of the Pyramid

The social pyramid at Northwood High had seventeen distinct tiers, and I was currently occupying the basement level with the debate team kids and that guy who brought a ukulele to lunch every day. My former best friend Chloe, however, had ascended. She now floated at the apex with the varsity cheer squad, her Instagram stories featuring enough ring lights to illuminate a small nation.

"You coming in or what?" Chloe called from the pool, surrounded by her glittering new entourage. The July heat wave had turned her backyard into a steam room, and I'd been nursing the same water bottle for forty minutes like it was a lifeline.

I adjusted my towel, suddenly hyper-aware of my one-piece against everyone's else's carefully curated bikini situations. "Maybe in a bit."

"Maya!" Her voice shifted, something genuine breaking through the performance. She swam over, water sluicing off her shoulders. "Don't make me come over there."

I sighed and stepped toward the pool edge. Someone had set up a human pyramid in the deep end—a wobbly, laughing catastrophe of teenagers trying not to drown each other. Chloe looked at me, really looked at me, and I saw it: the same girl who'd held my hair back when I threw up slushies after sixth-grade roller skating, who'd helped me study for bio until three AM, who knew I couldn't swim without plugging my nose.

"Remember when we tried to build a pyramid out of those juice boxes?" she said quietly. "For your eleventh birthday?"

"And they all exploded?" I smiled. "Ruined your favorite dress."

"I still have that dress. Stained purple." She held out her hand, palm up. "Come on. We're going to the very top."

The pyramid tilted dangerously as we joined it, girls scrambling and laughing, someone's cousin from college filming for TikTok. But when we reached the top, wobbling and breathless, I looked down at everyone—the perfect girls, the ukulele guy, the terrified freshman—and realized something: the view was actually pretty great from up here.

"Race you to the shallow end," Chloe whispered, and before I could process it, we were both underwater, surfaced gasping and splashing, and for the first time in months, the pyramid didn't matter at all.