Electric Summer

The pool party was supposed to be lowkey. Just the squad, some music, and maybe Malik would finally notice me wearing something other than my usual hoodies and joggers. Instead, I was hiding behind a potted palm, clutching a papaya smoothie like it was a lifeline, while everyone else actually knew how to exist socially.

"You good?" Trinity asked, sliding up beside me. She'd been my best friend since sixth grade, back when I still thought Aeropostale was high fashion. "You've been standing there for twenty minutes."

"I'm observing," I lied. "Reading the room."

"You're being weird." She adjusted her bucket hat, the one I'd told her looked like something a grandpa would wear to fish. "Malik keeps looking over here, by the way."

My stomach did that thing where it forgets how to organs. "No he's not."

"Bro, he literally just smiled at you."

Before I could panic-sip my smoothie, actual panic arrived in the form of dark clouds rolling in fast. Someone yelled something about weather apps, and then—CRACK.

Lightning split the sky closer than I'd ever seen in my sixteen years of living in this suburban wasteland. The pool deck erupted in chaos. People grabbed towels, phones, abandoned snacks.

And then I saw Malik running toward the pool house with a backpack, looking like he was about to save something important.

Without thinking, I took off after him.

"What are you doing?" Trinity called, but I was already booking it across the wet concrete, my sandals slapping awkwardly, smoothie forgotten somewhere.

Malik reached the pool house first, throwing the door open and ducking inside. I followed, breathless, my heart hammering like I'd just finished a 5K instead of sprinting across a backyard.

"You okay?" he asked, framed in the doorway while thunder shook the ground beneath us. "You looked like you were running from something."

"I—" Rain started pouring, sheets of water turning the world outside gray. "I don't know."

He laughed, and somehow the weirdest moment of my life turned into something else. "Cool. Wanna hang out till it stops? I was grabbing my speakers before they got soaked."

We spent the next hour talking about nothing and everything while the storm raged outside. I learned he hates papaya (my smoothie allegiance was immediately challenged), thinks my friend's hat is actually cool, and had been trying to talk to me all day but thought I was avoiding him.

The lightning, as it turned out, wasn't just weather. It was the moment I stopped standing on the edges of my own life.

Trinity found us later. "Took you long enough," she said, and I realized she'd orchestrated the whole thing.

Some friends, man. Best ones, though.