Dead Girl Swimming

Maya's alarm went off at 4:45 AM, and she honestly felt like a **zombie**. Not the cool, dramatic kind from movies—just the hollowed-out, functioning-on-autopilot kind that happened when you got five hours of sleep for the third night in a row because you were up till 2 AM texting your crush and then overanalyzing every single message like your life depended on it.

"You alive in there?" her mom called from the kitchen.

"Barely," Maya mumbled, grabbing her swim bag. The **water** would wake her up. It always did.

Summer swim practice was this weird liminal space where everyone looked like garbage—hair plastered to their heads, eyes red from chlorine—and somehow that made it okay. No pretenses. You couldn't fake being put-together when you were literally half-drowned.

"Coach says if we don't drop time at regionals, we're doing extra conditioning all week," said Jules, adjusting her goggles beside Maya. "Just thought you should know. In case you needed more reasons to question your life choices."

"I don't have the emotional capacity to **bear** that information right now," Maya grooved, though she kind of did. That was the thing about being sixteen: somehow you were always carrying around this invisible backpack full of expectations and anxiety and A Very Big crush on the diver who smiled at you once in May, and you had to act like everything was completely fine.

Her phone buzzed in her bag. Lucas had texted: pool party after practice?

Maya stared at the message, her heart doing this stupid little flip thing that made her feel powerful and pathetic at the same time. She'd been operating on zombie energy for weeks, caught between I'm not good enough and what if I am?

"You going?" Jules asked, reading over her shoulder.

"I don't know." Maya pulled off her cap, shaking out her hair. "Maybe."

"You should." Jules bumped her shoulder. "You're not gonna get better at the whole existing-around-boys thing by avoiding them. Also, Lucas literally invited you. That's not nothing."

The whistle blew. They dove in.

**Water** erased everything. For forty-five minutes, there was only the rhythm of stroke, breathe, stroke, breathe—the chlorine smell, the burn in her lungs, the way the world narrowed down to survival and forward motion. Being half-**zombie** didn't matter. The pressure to be cool and confident and interesting didn't exist. There was just movement.

After practice, steam rising off the pool, Maya's phone lit up again. Lucas: i saved you a seat

"Okay," Maya said, her voice steadier than she felt. "Okay. I'll go."

She'd figure out how to **bear** the awkwardness. She'd figure out how to be a person who went to pool parties and talked to boys without wanting to dissolve into the pavement.

Baby steps.

First, she needed coffee. Then she'd deal with having emotions in public.

Progress, not perfection.