Chlorine Memories

Standing at the edge of the **pool**, I tugged my **hat** lower like that would somehow make me invisible. Jenna's birthday party was in full swing—literally. Everyone was **swimming**, laughing, being the kind of effortless cool that I'd spent fourteen years trying to fake.

"Yo, Maya!" Jenna called from the water. "Get in here!"

Her **friend**—that would be me, or at least the girl she kept around because our moms were college roommates—hovered somewhere between popular and invisible. I caught Chloe rolling her eyes at Jenna from the shallow end. The social ecosystem of freshman year was brutal.

I reached into my pocket and fingered the **vitamin** D gummies my mom had shoved at me before I left. "Sunshine supplement, Maya! You're pale as a ghost!" In her defense, she wasn't wrong. I was basically a sentient piece of paper.

Chloe paddled over, dripping wet and perfect. "What are you waiting for? The water's fine."

She said it with that tone—the one that meant either she actually meant it, or she was about to dunk me and I'd spend the rest of the party humiliated.

"Just—admiring the tiles," I said weakly.

What I was actually doing: recalibrating my entire friendship strategy. Jenna had been drifting toward Chloe's crowd since September, and I'd been clinging to the edges like pond scum. But here's the thing about pond scum: eventually you realize you deserve better than being the algae someone tolerates.

I took out the **vitamin** gummy. Orange flavored, shaped like a bear, and allegedly full of something I needed. I chewed it slowly.

What if I didn't get in the **pool**? What if I stopped **swimming** upstream trying to be someone I wasn't?

"Maya?" Jenna sounded genuinely confused now.

"You know what?" I said, pulling off my **hat** and letting my hair frizz the way it wanted to. "I'm actually gonna head to the snack bar. Want anything?"

Jenna blinked. Then something shifted in her expression—like she'd just realized her **friend** had been standing right there all along, waiting to be seen.

"Actually," she said, swimming toward the edge, "I'll come with."

Sometimes growing up means finding the courage to step out of the water you've been drowning in—even if it's just to go eat snacks together in the shade.