Chlorine Lies & Vitamin Gummies

The pool glittered like someone had spilled a galaxy across the backyard, but Maya stood at the edge in her oversized t-shirt, feeling like a fraud. Everyone else was already in—Jake doing cannonballs that sprayed water ten feet, Chloe and her clique floating on inflatables like they were posing for a TikTok they'd never post.

"You coming in or what?" Jake called, grinning that way that made Maya's stomach do something annoying and predictable.

"Maybe later," she lied. She'd been saying that for three summers.

Her best friend Sarah had dragged her to this party, then immediately abandoned her for some guy from the football team. The treacherous memory of their conversation yesterday played in her head: *I won't leave you hanging, I promise.* Sarah's promises had the half-life of a mayfly.

Maya retreated to the snack table and shoved a handful of gummy vitamins into her mouth—Sarah's mom's weird organic ones that tasted like artificial strawberry and desperation. She was washing them down with lukewarm Sprite when Jake appeared, dripping pool water and entirely too close.

"You're really not gonna swim?"

"Not everyone lives in the water like some kind of amphibian,"

He laughed, and she hated that she liked the sound. "You know, my cousin has this thing about pools. Says they're just bacteria soup with chlorine added."

"Your cousin sounds fun at parties."

"She's got a point though." He leaned against the table, all sudden seriousness. "We're all just pretending to be cool while floating in chemicals. That's basically high school, right?"

Maya swallowed. Something about the way he said it made her chest feel weirdly tight.

"I can't swim," she said, before she could talk herself out of it.

Jake blinked. "Oh."

"Like, at all. Not even a little bit. My parents tried lessons when I was six and I almost drowned the instructor, so we called it a day."

The silence stretched. Maya braced herself for the laugh, the excuse to drift away.

"I suck at math," Jake said instead. "Like, actually failing. My parents think I'm texting during tutoring, but I just... don't get it. It feels like everyone speaks a language I missed the first day of."

Maya looked at him, really looked at him, and saw something she recognized.

"We could be pathetic together," she found herself saying. "You can tutor me in swimming, I can tutor you in algebra. We'll be the most mediocre people at everything."

Jake's grin returned, but different this time. "Deal. Starting Monday?"

"Monday."

"Cool." He paused. "Also, those vitamins you're eating? They're actually my mom's. She puts them in the candy bowl to trick us."

Maya looked at the empty bottle in her hand.

"Well," she said. "That explains a lot."