Breaking Surface

My hair had been a frizzy disaster since seventh grade, so when Tyler invited me to his legendary pool party, I panicked. Three hours straightening my hair until it looked semi-decent, then I shoved on my beanie to protect it. The hat was my armor - my you-don't-have-to-look-at-my-hair security blanket.

"You're not gonna swim in that, are you?" Maya said, sidling up to me at the party. Maya, who'd been my friend since elementary school but had lately been drifting toward the popular crowd. She was already in her bikini, hair perfectly beach-waved.

"Maybe," I muttered, clutching my red plastic cup like it could save me from social suicide.

The pool glittered like something from a movie, and suddenly everyone was chanting my name. Someone shoved me - gently, or maybe not so gently - and I tumbled in.

The water swallowed me, my hat floated away like a rejected thought, and when I broke the surface, gasping, my hair was plastered to my face in all its frizzy glory. I expected laughter. Expected pointing. Expected to spend the rest of high school as "that girl with the hair."

Instead, Tyler's quiet cousin Leo - the one who sat with me at lunch sometimes when Maya was busy with her new friends - reached into the water and handed me my hat.

"Your hair's actually pretty cool like that," he said, totally casual. "Looks real. Not like everyone else's Instagram hair."

I stared at him, water dripping from my nose, then laughed. Actually laughed.

Maya was watching from the edge, something unreadable in her eyes. Later, when we were drying off in the sun, she said, "Sorry I didn't jump in with you. That was messed up."

"It's fine," I said, and realized it was. The hat stayed off the rest of the day. My hair dried into its usual chaotic halo, and Leo taught me to do a cannonball that created actual splash damage.

Sometimes you have to fall in the deep end to figure out who's actually swimming beside you.