Breathing Underwater

4:30 AM and Maya's already a zombie, shuffling toward the community pool where the water gleams like something from another dimension. She's the only one stupid enough to show up for optional practice, but that's kinda her whole life lately — optional things that feel mandatory.

Her phone buzzes against the bench. iPhone screen lighting up with that text she's been waiting three days to receive.

hey 😊 u up?

It's from Jordan. Jordan with the perfect smile and the effortless coolness that Maya's been crushing on since seventh grade, when Jordan moved here from California and proceeded to make everyone else look basic by comparison.

Maya's thumbs hover over the keyboard. What does she even say? She's been overthinking everything since their conversation at the party Friday, when Jordan had leaned in close and said, "You're different, you know that? Most people are just going through the motions like zombies, but you're actually interesting."

She'd almost dropped her phone.

Now she's diving into the pool before she can type something stupid. The cold water shocks her awake, and she's swimming laps, counting strokes like they're prayers. One, two, three, breathe. Her dad's old coach voice echoes in her head: "Swimming's 90% mental. The other half is physical."

He always made math jokes. He'd been the one to give her Bear, the ancient stuffed animal that still lived on her bed, because "every champion needs a mascot." She's fourteen now, practically an adult, and she still sleeps with a teddy bear. She's constantly checking to make sure no one sees it when friends come over, shoving Bear under her pillow like a guilty secret.

The locker room door squeaks open.

Maya's head breaks the surface at the same moment Jordan walks in, looking unfairly good even in sweatpants.

"You're actually here," Jordan says, leaning against the lockers. "I thought the zombie thing was just a metaphor."

"Ha ha," Maya says, pulling herself out of the water. Her heart is doing that thing where it forgets how to rhythm correctly. "What are you doing here?"

"Couldn't sleep," Jordan shrugs. "Figured I'd see if the rumors were true. About you being here at the crack of dawn. Like, who does that?"

"Someone who enjoys pain, apparently."

Jordan laughs, and it's this sound that Maya wants to record and listen to on repeat, which is pathetic and she knows it.

"You know what my little sister calls me?" Jordan says suddenly. "The zombie. Because I'm always on my phone, always checking social media, always half-asleep. But then she saw you swimming that day at regionals, and she was like, 'That's what zombies would look like if they could actually move.'"

Maya's not sure if that's a compliment or not.

"Is that your way of calling me a zombie?"

"It's my way of saying I noticed you," Jordan says, stepping closer. "I notice how you're always swimming, always working, always pushing yourself. And then I saw your phone background, and I was like, oh."

Maya freezes. "My... background?"

"The bear," Jordan says. "The stuffed one? Your old childhood one? My little sister has the same one. Hers is named Toast."

Maya's face is on fire. "His name is Bear."

"Obviously," Jordan smiles. "It's cute. That you still have him. That you're not ashamed of it."

"I'm actually pretty ashamed of it."

"Don't be," Jordan says. "It means you kept something soft in a world that wants to make you hard. That's not nothing."

The silence that follows isn't awkward. It's the kind of silence that feels like diving into deep water and realizing you can still breathe down there, that your lungs know what to do even when everything else doesn't.

"So," Jordan says, "after you finish zombie-swimming, you want to get breakfast?"

Maya realizes she's still in her swimsuit, dripping wet, hair plastered to her forehead, and somehow this doesn't matter. The thing she's been waiting three days for, the thing she's been waiting months for, is happening in the worst possible lighting and the most unflattering outfit.

"Yes," she says. "But I have to text my mom first."

Jordan's phone buzzes. "Me too. But full disclosure — I might need to borrow a charger. My battery's at like, 4%."

Maya laughs, and for the first time all morning, she doesn't feel like she's drowning.

"I've got you," she says. "But only if you don't judge my bear."

"Deal," Jordan says. "Long as you don't judge me for being a phone zombie."

"Deal."