Chloride Stains and Palm Lines

Maya's palms wouldn't stop sweating. Which was ironic, considering she was literally about to go **swimming**.

"You're overthinking it again," Chloe said, tossing her phone onto the lounge chair. "Just jump in already. The water's fine."

Maya's supposed-to-be-best **friend** had been distant all summer, ever since Chloe got her contact lenses and suddenly realized half the soccer team existed. Now she sat with the popular girls, occasionally glancing back at Maya like she was checking to make sure her annoying little sister hadn't drowned.

"I'm good," Maya said, even though she wasn't. Her mom had started her on **vitamin** D supplements because apparently fifteen-year-olds who spent all summer indoors reading tarot cards online weren't getting enough sun. The pills sat in her pocket like accusation.

Some girl Maya didn't know was reading palms by the snack bar, surrounded by a cluster of freshman who looked at her like she was broadcasting their futures directly from the universe. Maya thought about joining them, then immediately thought better of it. Nothing said I'm trying too hard like showing up to a palm reading with sweaty palms.

"Maya! Come here!" Chloe waved her over. The popular girls giggled about something. Maya's stomach did that thing where it tried to exit her body through her throat.

She waded into the pool, the chlorine smell hitting her like a memory of every summer she'd spent hiding behind books instead of learning how to People. The water was shockingly cold, or maybe that was just her anxiety manifesting physically again.

"You have to **bear** witness to this," Chloe said, pulling out her phone. "Tyler's mom posted the most embarrassing photo of him from fifth grade on Facebook. He's literally crying about it."

Maya laughed because that's what you did when your once-best friend decided your only value was as audience to someone else's humiliation.

The palm reader caught her eye from across the pool and winked.

That night, Maya looked at her own hands in the bathroom mirror. The chlorine had dried her skin into tight lines, her palm prints standing out like topo maps of places she'd never been. She traced her lifeline, which curved shorter than she'd expected.

"Whatever," she said, and swallowed her vitamin D pill with a glass of water that tasted like pool water and growing up.