Breathing Underwater

Maya's arms burned from the fourth lap, but she kept swimming. The water silenced everything—her parents' fighting last night, the group chat blowing up about Jackson's party, the way her stomach dropped when she saw Emma whispering with Lucas in the hallway.

"You've been running from the actual meet, though," Chloe called from the pool deck, dangling her legs in the water. "Varsity trials are next week. You're literally the only one not signing up."

Maya flipped at the wall, pushing off hard. Chlorine stung her eyes, but it was better than crying about it.

"I'm not running," Maya said when she surfaced. "I'm... strategizing."

"Strategizing what? How to drown in the shallow end?" Chloe smirked, but her voice softened. "You're faster than half the team already. The only thing holding you back is... you know."

The locker room incident in September. The one everyone still whispered about. Maya had slipped on water pooling by the benches, face-planted in front of the entire swim team, and her period had leaked through her new white practice suit. Humiliated didn't cover it. She'd been running from that memory—and everything connected to it—ever since.

"They're gonna talk regardless," Chloe said, reading her mind. "Might as well give them something new to say. Like 'did you see Maya crush that backstroke?'

Maya tread water, heart hammering. The late afternoon light hit the pool's surface, making it glitter like something out of a movie poster. Something shifted inside her—lighter, like maybe she could actually do this.

"If I join," Maya said slowly, "you have to promise to stop saying 'literally' so much. It's actually painful."

Chloe grinned. "Deal. Now get out of that water before your fingers prune beyond recognition. We have a Spotify playlist to curate for trials, and I'm not letting you add anymore sad indie tracks."

Maya pulled herself up on the deck, water streaming down her face like war paint. For the first time in months, she wasn't running anymore.