Dead Battery Walking

Maya's sophomore summer had been defined by three things: the chlorine-soaked afternoons at the Hendersons' pool, her rapidly dying social battery, and the way Jake's hair looked when it was wet. Today, all three collided in spectacular fashion.

She floated on an inflatable orange raft — the only one left after Jake's little sister claimed the pink one — staring at the ceiling of the pool house while somewhere nearby, Jake's friends laughed about something she wasn't part of. Her iphone sat on the pool deck, face down, utterly dead. She'd forgotten to charge it last night, too busy overthinking whether she should text Jake first or play it cool.

"You good?" Jake appeared at the edge of the pool, dripping wet. He held out a soggy bag of pretzels. "You've been floating there for like twenty minutes. You look like a zombie."

Maya's stomach did that annoying flip thing. "I'm fine. Just ... conserving energy."

"Cool." He sat beside her feet, dangling his legs in the water. "My phone's at 12%. We're basically living in the Stone Age."

She laughed before she could stop herself. The pool water rippled around them, carrying the scent of coconut sunscreen and something else — maybe possibility, maybe just Jake's stupid vanilla body wash. She thought about last summer, when she wouldn't have been caught dead at a pool party. When orange was too bright, phones were too essential, and zombies were just something to watch on Netflix with her best friend.

Now she was here, floating on an outrageously colored raft, phone-free, sort of talking to the guy she'd been low-key obsessed with since September. And it wasn't terrible. It was actually the opposite of terrible.

"Hey," Jake said, after a silence that stretched long but not awkward. "Next week, my band's playing at the rec center. You should come. I can save you a spot. Like, not zombie-status back row, but actual good seats."

Maya felt something shift inside her — maybe her social battery recharging, maybe just growing up. "Yeah," she said, and this time her smile reached her eyes. "I'd like that."