Electric Blue Summer

Maya stared at her reflection, finger-combing the frizzy mess on her head. Her hair had always been her thing — thick, curly, basically its own ecosystem. But after she'd impulsively dyed it electric blue the night before freshman orientation, she wasn't sure if she was making a statement or just making a mistake.

"You look like a human lightning bolt," her younger brother Jay had snorted that morning.

Now she stood at the edge of Miller's Pond, where half the sophomore class had gathered for the end-of-summer blowout. The air smelled like sunscreen and lake water, someone's portable speaker thumping bass across the shore. Maya spotted Dylan by the diving board, his smile hitting her chest like actual electricity.

She'd been crushing on him since seventh grade, when he'd defended her from some jerk making fun of her natural hair. Now here she was, blue-haired and nervous, holding a red solo cup she'd only pretended to drink from.

"Mayaaaaaa!" Chloe screamed, grabbing her hand and dragging her toward the water. "You're not gonna stand there all awkward like a bear hibernating through summer. Get in!"

The pond was gross — murky water, suspicious algae patches, definitely not filtered anything. But Chloe was already splashing, and Dylan was watching, and suddenly Maya was ankle-deep, then knee-deep, then fully submerged while someone cheered. The water shocked her system, cold and grossly alive.

She surfaced, hair plastered to her face, blue dye running in streaks down her cheeks like emotional war paint.

Dylan swam over, water droplets clinging to his eyelashes. "Your hair," he said, and her stomach did that thing where it forgot how to be an organ. "It's literally the coolest thing I've ever seen."

Maya wiped her face, leaving blue smeared across her forehead. "It's probably dyeing the lake toxic."

"Nah," he said, grinning. "Just making it more interesting. Like you."

Thunder rumbled in the distance. The sky purpled, storm clouds gathering like they'd been waiting for this moment. Someone screamed about lightning getting too close, everyone scrambling for shore, but Maya just floated there, blue hair flowing like seaweed, feeling something like electricity in her chest that had nothing to do with the weather.

She'd spent so long trying to disappear, to blend in, to not be too much. But here, in this questionable lake water, with blue dye running down her face and Dylan actually looking at her like she was worth noticing, she realized: maybe being too much was exactly the point.

The first lightning strike illuminated the whole pond, electric and bright and perfect.

Maya grinned, treading water, blue and beautiful and ready.