Diving Into September

The invitation said pool party, but Maya's stomach said absolutely not. September meant school, and school meant The Locker Room Incident still fresh in everyone's memory except hers, apparently, because why else would Jake have invited her?

She'd spent the morning trying on different versions of herself like hats — Sarcastic Maya, Quiet Maya, I Don't Care Maya — but none of them fit quite right. Her mom had found her staring at the mirror at 2 PM, fully dressed but immobilized by existential dread.

"You're going," her mom said, handing her a towel. "You're sixteen, not dead."

Now she stood at the edge of Jake's above-ground pool, clutching her phone like a lifeline. The water glowed an artificial blue, surface already rippling with bodies she recognized from freshman year algebra. Someone's music playlist battled someone else's from a Bluetooth speaker. Laughter she couldn't decode.

"Maya!" Jake's voice cut through everything. He wore the same snapback he'd worn every day since seventh grade, the one with the mysterious stain on the brim that nobody mentioned. "You made it."

She nodded. Words had temporarily left the building.

"Everyone's doing palm readings," Jake continued, like this was normal teenage behavior and not something from a occult bookstore they'd stumbled into. "Chloe says she's basically psychic now."

Chloe was examining Jake's palm with the intensity of a bomb defusal expert. "Your lifeline is insane," she declared. "You're going to live forever, Jake. Honestly, it's annoying."

Someone splashed water. Maya flinched.

"Your turn," Jake said, and suddenly Chloe was grabbing Maya's hand, turning it upward like she expected something to be written there.

"Hmm," Chloe said. "Interesting."

"What?" Maya managed.

"You're going to..." Chloe paused dramatically. "...jump into this pool fully clothed in approximately thirty seconds if you don't stop overthinking everything."

Everyone laughed, but it was different from the laughter in her head. This was the kind that invited you in.

"Also," Chloe added, "you're going to pass chemistry. The palm doesn't lie."

Jake, wearing that stupid hat, grinned at her. And the weirdest thing happened — Maya believed them. She took off her shoes.

The water was cold. The hair she'd spent forty-five minutes perfecting was ruined instantly. Jake's hat bobbed away on the surface after he cannonballed beside her. Someone's phone played a song that everyone pretended to hate but secretly loved.

She surfaced, sputtering, to applause.

"See?" Jake called from somewhere behind her. "Not dead."

"Not yet," she shouted back, and somewhere between the artificial blue and the terrible music and the chlorine stinging her eyes, Maya felt something shift. Maybe versions of herself weren't hats you tried on. Maybe you just jumped in, and whatever surfaced, that was you.

"Again," Jake said. "Palm reading says you're doing it again."

Maya smiled. "Fine. But you're going down."

She cannonballed before she could talk herself out of it.