Chlorine Summer

The pool party at Jessica's house was supposed to be my social resurrection. Instead, I stood by the snack table clutching a Vitaminwater like it was my last anchor to sanity.

"Hey Marcus!" Jessica waved from her throne by the diving board. Her iPhone glowed in hand, live-streaming the whole event like the queen she was. "You coming in or what?"

I looked at my phone, then at the pool. The blue water rippled with laughter and splashing bodies. Tyler was there, of course, doing that thing where he pretended not to notice everyone watching him.

"Yeah, just gotta charge my phone real quick," I mumbled, fumbling with my fraying charging cable that stopped working three days ago. Lies. All of it.

Megan rolled her eyes as she walked past, grabbing a soda. "Just swim already. Nobody cares about your dead battery."

She wasn't wrong. The thing was, I hadn't been swimming since last summer's incident where I'd done a belly flop off the high dive and somehow lost my trunks in the process. The video had been on everyone's Snapchat for weeks.

But Jessica was still watching. Tyler was still there, doing that shoulder-roll thing that made my stomach feel like it was doing gymnastics.

I put down the Vitaminwater. I dropped the useless cable.

Whatever. I grabbed a towel and headed toward the pool steps. The water felt cool against my legs, then waist, then chest. I took a breath and pushed off the bottom, swimming toward the deep end where Tyler was floating on his back.

"Yo," he said, flipping upright. "Finally decided to join?"

"Something like that," I said, treading water beside him. The chlorine burned my eyes in that familiar way, sharp and real.

"Good," Tyler nodded at Jessica, who had finally put down her phone. "She's been asking where you were."

My heart did this stupid little flip.

"Oh yeah? Why?"

Tyler smirked. "No cap? She thinks you're funny. Says you make good memes."

I blinked. Chlorine stung harder.

"For real?"

"Bro, I never lie about memes."

Jessica dove in then, surfacing between us with a splash that soaked everyone nearby. Her iPhone was somewhere safe on dry land finally.

"About time," she said, smoothing wet hair from her face. "We're playing sharks and minnows. You're it."

And just like that, I wasn't the belly-flop kid anymore. I was just Marcus, treading water at a summer pool party, finally learning that the worst thing that could happen wasn't that bad—and sometimes, the best things happen when you let yourself sink a little.