Drowning in Blue Light

The pool party smell—chloride mixed with cheap coconut body spray—hit me before I even walked through the gate. My heart did that thing where it felt too big for my chest, pounding against my ribs like it was trying to break out. I gripped my iPhone tighter, screen black, not even checking it because that would look desperate, but the weight of it in my hand was like an anchor. Like if I let go, I'd drift away.

"You good?" Jordan asked, sliding up beside me with two red Solo cups. She'd been my friend since seventh grade, when we both got sent to the principal's office for carving our names into the bathroom stall with a mechanical pencil. But lately, something had shifted. She'd started hanging with the cross country kids, the ones who woke up at dawn to run laps and talked about caffeine like it was a controlled substance.

"Yeah," I said, taking the cup. "Just... vibing."

Inside my backpack, tucked in a side pocket so nobody would see, were the vitamins. These gummy hair-skin-nail things some TikTok influencer swore would change your life. I'd been taking them for three weeks, still checking the mirror every morning like maybe I'd missed it, the moment my frizz transformed into effortless waves. Pathetic. I knew it was pathetic. But I also knew that Jordan's hair had gotten shinier since she started drinking green juice every day, and maybe that was why everyone was suddenly inviting her to things.

"Marcus is looking at you," Jordan said, bumping my shoulder with hers.

"He's not."

"He literally is."

I checked my phone, just a quick glance, and there it was—his Instagram story from ten minutes ago, a blurry pic of the pool with the caption better things than this lol. My stomach did a little flip, the good kind and the bad kind all at once. I was typing out a response—something chill, something that said I was here, I was present, I was the kind of girl who didn't overthink everything—when someone shoved past me, knocked my elbow.

Time went weird, like slowed down but also fast. The iPhone slipped from my fingers, arcing through the humid air in this terrible graceful way, and then splash. It hit the water, sank immediately, screen glowing one last time before it disappeared beneath the blue.

"Oh my GOD," someone shrieked, and I realized it was me.

I didn't think. I just lunged, dress and all, into the pool. The water shocked my skin, cold and chemical-smelling, swallowing me whole. Everything went muffled and blue, and I was thrashing, grasping, my fingers brushing concrete and empty water, and then hands were on me, pulling me up, breaking the surface, gasping.

"I got it, I got it," Jordan was saying, and she held up my phone, dripping and ruined but there, and I realized she'd jumped in after me. Her perfect hair plastered to her face, her makeup running, her cross country friends watching from the edge with these weird expressions.

We hauled ourselves out, dripping everywhere, my dress clinging to me like a second skin. We sat on the pool edge, feet in the water, and Jordan reached into my backpack, fished out the vitamin bottle without asking, popped two gummies into her palm.

"These things?" she held them up to the sun. "I take them too."

"You do?"

"Yeah," she said, popping them into her mouth. "I mean, obviously. Everyone does." She paused. "You think my hair actually looks like this naturally?"

I started laughing, couldn't stop, and she joined in, and we were just two soaked idiots laughing by a pool, holding a dead phone and sharing gummy vitamins that probably didn't even work. And for the first time in months, I wasn't performing. Wasn't curating. Wasn't worrying about who was watching, who was judging, whether I was doing this whole being-a-person thing correctly.

"Marcus is definitely looking now," Jordan said, nodding toward where he stood by the snacks, openly staring.

"Let him," I said, and meant it.

The water lapped against our legs, carrying away the blue light, the expectation, the version of myself I'd been trying so hard to become. What was left was this: a dead phone, a friend who'd jumped in after me, and the feeling that maybe the messy, uncurated version was enough.