Electric Summer

So there I was, standing at the edge of the pool at Jessica's end-of-summer party, watching the popular kids forming their human pyramid in the water. I should've been having the time of my life—sophomore year was starting next week—but instead I was just stressing about how I still hadn't learned to swim.

"You gonna jump in or what?" said Jake, the biggest bull at our school, already shirtless and flexing for everyone. Jake had been giving me crap since middle school, always finding new ways to remind me I was at the bottom of the social pyramid.

"I'm good," I mumbled, feeling the heat climb up my neck.

The truth was, my parents never had the money for lessons. And somehow, at fifteen, admitting you couldn't swim was basically announcing to the world that you were uncool.

That's when Marcus appeared beside me. Marcus, who'd moved here last year and somehow managed to float between every social group without really belonging to any of them. He was that guy who could sit with the nerds at lunch and then play basketball with the jocks after school.

"They're being annoying," Marcus said, nodding toward Jake and his crew. "Wanna hang out inside?"

I hesitated. Going inside felt like admitting defeat. But staying out here meant...

"Yeah," I said. "Actually, yeah."

We ended up in Jessica's basement, where her older brother had a pool table. Marcus racked up the balls like he'd been doing it his whole life.

"You play?" he asked.

"Terribly," I admitted.

"That's okay. I'm terrible at swimming." He grinned. "We all got our stuff."

Something about the way he said it made me feel less pathetic. We played pool and talked about everything—how fake social media was, how stressful school felt, how none of us really knew what we were doing with our lives. Marcus told me he'd moved six times and still hadn't figured out how to make real friends.

"You're my friend now," I said, and it sounded corny but I meant it.

"Ditto," he said, sinking the eight ball.

When we finally went back outside, everyone was out of the pool, staring up at the sky. A storm had rolled in, and lightning was cracking across the horizon in these purple-orange streaks that made everything look surreal.

"Look at that," Marcus said, and he sounded honestly amazed.

Jake was saying something dumb about how he could probably outrun lightning, and everyone was laughing, but it didn't matter. For once, I wasn't the one being laughed at.

I stood there with Marcus, watching the lightning paint the sky, and realized that maybe swimming wasn't the point. Maybe the point was finding people who made you feel less alone in the deep end.