Chlorine & Cherry Kool-Aid

The car smelled like coconut sunscreen and teenage desperation. My mom had volunteered to drive the "pool" to the lake, which meant I was trapped in a Honda CRV with my crush, his cool older sister, and two gallons of spilled cherry Kool-Aid slowly drying on the floor mats.

"You're not gonna go in?" Leo asked, bumping my shoulder with his. He was already shirtless, obnoxiously tan, with that effortless messy-thing happening with his hair that probably took forty minutes and three different products to achieve.

I tugged my baseball cap lower. "Nah. Not feeling it."

"Since when?" His sister Maya piped up from the front seat, turning around so smoothly it should've been illegal. "You were literally swim team captain in seventh grade."

"That was, like, a million years ago." I stared out the window, watching pine trees blur past. What I couldn't say: since my hair started falling out in clumps in the shower. Since the doctor said "stress-induced alopecia" like it was no big deal. Since I'd been collecting the shed hairs in a Ziploc bag under my bed like some kind of serial killer.

The lake appeared like a trick of the light—suddenly just THERE, glittering through the trees. Everyone bailed out of the car before it even fully stopped.

I lingered, pretending to look for something in my backpack. Just twenty more minutes of pretending everything was normal. Then school would start, and I'd figure something out. Maybe wigs. Maybe hats. Maybe transferring to a new district where nobody knew I used to have thick mermaid hair that brushed my waist.

"You coming?" Leo was waist-deep in the water already, grinning like he didn't know he was the reason I hadn't slept in three weeks.

Something cracked inside me. Maybe it was the humidity. Maybe it was the fact that I'd been metaphorically swimming in anxiety all summer, literally drowning in it, and I was SO done.

I pulled off my cap. The afternoon sun hit my head, and I didn't flinch. The patches were obvious now—coin-sized bare spots scattered across my scalp like some terrible constellation.

Maya stopped laughing. Leo's grin faltered.

Then I waded into the lake, fully dressed, cargo shorts and all, until the water closed over my head.

When I surfaced, Maya was standing waist-deep in the water, pulling her hair into a ponytail. Behind her ear, a neat quarter-sized strip of perfectly smooth skin.

"Been swimming in this condition since March," she said casually. "Mom's side of the family. Come on—I'll race you to the dock."