Chlorine Dreams

Maya's iPhone buzzed against her pool towel, screen lighting up with three urgent texts from Chloe. "You coming???" "Everyone's here" "PLZZZ"

She'd spent forty minutes fixing her hair—curling it just right, making it look effortless even though it wasn't. Now she stood at the edge of Jordan's pool, clutching her phone like a lifeline. The water glittered like liquid sapphire, and laughter echoed across the backyard. But Maya couldn't stop thinking about the smoothie she'd had earlier. Was there spinach in her teeth? Her mom had gone through this huge health phase, stuffing their fridge with kale and spinach and insisting they take these gross vitamin gummies every morning.

"Maya!" Jordan waved from the pool, dripping wet. "Get in here!"

She slipped her phone under her towel and took a deep breath. This was it—her chance to finally be part of the group instead of the quiet girl who sat behind them in algebra. She'd barely spoken to anyone since moving here three months ago.

But then she caught her reflection in the sliding glass door and froze. Something green. Definitely green. Between her front teeth.

Maya's stomach dropped. No way was she going into that pool looking like she'd been grazing in a garden. She turned to sprint back to her house—which was, like, two blocks away—but someone grabbed her wrist.

"Hey, you okay?" It was Tyler, the guy she'd been secretly crushing on since school started. Water droplets clung to his eyelashes. "You look like you've seen a ghost."

She wanted to die. Actually die. Instead she managed, "I forgot... something. At home."

"Chloe said you were coming." He smiled, and it was genuine, not the polite kind. "We saved you a seat on the inflatable."

Maya hesitated. Something about his expression made her pause. Like maybe he'd been waiting for her to show up.

"I have—" She gestured vaguely at her face. "Something in my teeth?"

Tyler laughed. "Bro, I have spinach in my teeth half the time. My mom's basically a health vampire with all the smoothies she makes me drink." He pulled his phone from his pocket. "Here, use your camera."

Maya checked. No spinach. It had been a trick of the light.

"See? You're good." He raised an eyebrow. "Now are you getting in, or what? Because that inflatable isn't going to ride itself."

She slipped her phone into the dry bag by the pool's edge and jumped in.

The water was perfect. The vitamin gummies her mom made her take had seemed so annoying this morning, but now Maya floated on her back, staring up at the sky and thinking that maybe, just maybe, this summer would be the one where she finally stopped watching from the sidelines.

Her iPhone buzzed again from the grass. Probably Chloe. But Maya wasn't checking it. She was here, finally here, and that felt like everything.