Electric Blue Summer

Maya stood at the edge of the pool clutching her phone like a lifeline, the cracked screen reflecting the Saturday afternoon sun. Jackson Miller's annual pool party. Everyone who was anyone was here, and Maya felt like a **zombie** going through the motions of teenage social rituals she'd never fully mastered.

Her best friend Chen had bailed at the last minute—something about family dinner—and now Maya was floating (literally and metaphorically) in the shallow end, trying to look casual while simultaneously calculating the optimal time to escape without drawing attention to herself.

"Hey Maya!" Jackson himself materialized beside her, droplets of water **swimming** down his chest like they owned the place. "You gonna actually get in today or just guard your phone all afternoon?"

Maya's face burned. She'd been wearing her cover-up for forty-seven minutes exactly. "Just warming up," she mumbled, which was pathetic because it was eighty-five degrees and humid enough to fry an egg on the pool deck.

That's when it happened. A single flash of **lightning** split the sky despite zero clouds, followed by thunder that shook the deck chairs. Everyone screamed, Jackson dove toward the house, and in the chaos, Maya's phone slipped from her grip and sank straight to the bottom of the eight-foot end.

"My LIFE," she whispered, watching it disappear into the blue.

"I'll get it!" this freshman kid yelled, already **swimming** toward the deep end with terrifying determination.

"No wait—" Maya started, but he was already gone, surfacing seconds later with her phone triumphantly held high like Excalibur.

"Got it!"

She wanted to die. He must have seen everything—her texts to Chen about how awkward she felt, her Spotify playlist titled "Songs to Cry to When You Feel Like a Fraud," and worst of all, that embarrassing note app entry where she'd written "Jackson Miller" approximately fifty times in various fonts.

But he just shrugged, water streaming from his hair. "Your **cable** connection was showing anyway. You should probably restart it in rice."

Then he was gone, darting toward the snack table where Maya's mom had dropped off her infamous **spinach** dip that no one ever touched but always felt obligated to comment on.

"Someone actually made something edible," Jackson called out, and suddenly everyone was crowding around the spinach dip like it was the most normal thing in the world.

Maya stood frozen, phone dripping in her hand, heart still racing from the lightning strike that had somehow broken everything open. And then Jackson was there again, somehow already dry, holding out a paper towel.

"You okay? That was pretty intense."

"Yeah," Maya said, and for the first time all afternoon, she actually meant it. "Yeah, I think I am."

The storm had cleared, everyone was eating her mother's spinach dip, and somehow, somehow, she wasn't the only one who felt like a zombie anymore. Sometimes the world just needed a little lightning to wake everyone up.