Electric Palm Summer

The pool water shimmered like crushed diamonds under the July sun, but Maya couldn't appreciate it. Her frizzy hair had already expanded into its natural state — a halo of rebellious curls she'd spent forty-five minutes trying to tame. The humidity at Tyler's house was absolutely not respecting her blowout.

"Maya!"Tyler called from the diving board, doing that thing where he looked like a Greek god except for the massive wedgie he was definitely going to have later. "Get in here! The water's perfect!"

She clutched her vitamin C supplement bottle like a security blanket, which was ridiculous because it wasn't even hers — her mom had shoved it at her this morning muttering something about immunity and why did teenagers always think they were invincible?

The palm tree at the edge of the patio cast shadows that looked like fingers reaching toward her. Maya swallowed. She'd been crushing on Tyler since seventh grade, and somehow three years later she still got tongue-tied around him. It was pathetic, honestly. Her friends kept telling her to just shoot her shot, but what if she made it weird? What if he laughed? What if —

CRACK.

Lightning split the sky, a jagged scar of electric purple-white that made everyone at the party freeze. The summer storm had materialized out of nowhere, because apparently the weather forecast app was about as reliable as her ex-boyfriend's promises.

"Everyone inside! Now!" Tyler's mom shouted from the back door.

The pool area emptied in seconds. Maya grabbed her towel, but her Vitamin C bottle slipped from her fingers and rolled right under — oh, universe, you cannot be serious — right under Tyler's lawn chair.

She froze. Should she just leave it? It was literally three dollars of vitamins from CVS. But her mom would definitely ask about it, and then there would be a whole thing.

"You drop something?" Tyler was suddenly there, dripping wet, chest doing that post-swim expansion thing teenage boys did when they thought girls were watching.

"My vitamins," Maya croaked, her voice suddenly two octaves higher than normal. Because smooth. She was absolutely crushing it.

Tyler reached under the chair, his palm brushing hers as he handed her the bottle. Their fingers touched, just for a second, and Maya felt something that had nothing to do with vitamins and everything to do with the way his eyes lingered on her face.

"Your hair," he said, and Maya steeled herself for the吐槽. "It looks really cool like that. All wild and stuff."

Maya blinked. "You're just saying that."

"I'm not." He gestured at the sky where lightning continued to flash, now distant and rumbling. "Sometimes the storm thing is the whole point, you know? Not the calm before."

He smiled, that crooked thing that made her stomach do backflips, and ran inside.

Maya stood there holding her bottle of vitamins, her hair still wild in the humid air, and watched him go. Maybe, she thought, maybe the humidity wasn't the enemy here. Maybe some things were better when you stopped trying to control them.

She finger-combed her curls and followed him inside, smiling.