Dead in the Water

I floated on my back, staring at the pool's ceiling, feeling like total absolute **water**-logged nothingness. Practice had ended two hours ago, but I couldn't make myself leave. The locker room meant facing people. The parking lot meant going home to explain why my grades had tanked again. Here, suspended in this blue nowhere, I could just *exist*.

"You know you look like a literal drowned rat, right?"

I didn't turn. I knew that voice. Maya. The new girl, the one with the half-shaved head and the jacket covered in band patches that no one at our school had ever heard of. She'd claimed the lane next to mine at practice for three weeks, silent and intense, cutting through the **water** like she was personally offended by its existence.

"What are you still doing here?" I asked, still staring at the ceiling.

"Could ask you the same thing."

She sat on the edge of my lane, dangling her feet in. "Coach says you're not sleeping. Says you're skating through practice like a **zombie**. Like you died somewhere around the 500-free and your body hasn't gotten the memo."

I finally flipped over and treaded **water**, facing her. "Wow. You're really good at this pep talk thing. You do, like, motivational speaking on the weekends?"

Maya's mouth twitched. Something that might've been a smile if it wasn't so busy being skeptical. "I'm just saying. I saw you at regionals last month. You were *on fire*. Now you look like you've been dragged backward through a car wash. Repeatedly."

The observation hit harder than I wanted to admit. Regionals had been the last time I'd felt anything like myself. Before the expectations, before my dad's disappointed texts, before the endless college recruitment emails that felt like a weight I couldn't carry.

Outside, the sky cracked open. **Lightning** flashed, flooding the pool with sudden harsh brightness, casting Maya's silhouette in sharp relief against the wall.

"Pool's closed during electrical storms," she said, hopping up and grabbing her bag. "Coach's rule. Something about how **lightning** and giant bodies of **water** don't mix well. Shocking, I know."

"That was literally terrible."

"Your FACE is terrible."

She extended a hand—not to shake, but to pull me up. I hesitated, then took it. Her grip was surprisingly strong.

"Come on," she said. "My mom's picking me up. We're getting boba. You're coming, and you're going to tell me why the fastest swimmer in the district looks like she wants to dissolve into literal **water** and never reform."

"I don't even know you."

Maya shrugged, already walking toward the exit. "We're teammates. That makes us **friend**-adjacent at minimum. Also, I saw you crying in the equipment closet last Tuesday, so we've basically skipped the small talk phase entirely."

"You WHAT—"

"Boba, Casey. You want milk tea or not?"

The storm raged outside as I grabbed my bag, something in my chest feeling lighter than it had in months. Maybe it was the **lightning**, bright and sudden and impossible to ignore. Maybe it was the absurdity of this girl I barely knew, refusing to let me disappear.

"Milk tea," I called out. "But if you tell anyone about the equipment closet, I WILL end you."

Maya's laugh echoed off the pool tiles. "Deal, **zombie**."