Fox in the Deep End

I wasn't supposed to be at Tyler's pool party. I definitely wasn't supposed to be hiding behind the oak tree in his backyard, wearing jeans in ninety-degree heat, watching everyone else cannonball into the water like they owned it. My dog Buster, who'd slipped his collar three blocks back, was currently making friends with a girl I'd had a crush on since seventh grade. Great.

"Hey!" she called, and I froze. "Is this your dog?"

She was wearing a turquoise bikini that matched her nails. Her wet hair dripped onto her shoulders. I was wearing anxiety and a stained band tee.

"Yeah, sorry, he's—" I started, but Buster had already decided he was her new best friend, tail thumping against her legs like a metronome.

"He's adorable," she said, scratching behind his ears. "I'm Maya."

"Leo."

"Leo!" Tyler's voice boomed from the pool. "Dude, you made it! Get in here!"

Twenty faces turned toward me. And then I saw him—Fox, leaning against the side of the pool, arms crossed, that smirk plastered on his face like he knew something nobody else did. Fox had been calling me that since sixth grade, when I'd choked during a presentation and turned bright red. "Little Leo got scared like a fox in headlights," he'd announced, and the name had somehow stuck to HIM instead of me. Irony at its finest.

I couldn't swim. Not really. I could dog paddle, barely, enough not to drown, but that was it. In a town where everyone spent June through August at the lake or someone's pool, I'd never learned.

"Come on, Leo!" Maya grinned, grabbing my hand before I could process what was happening. "We're doing chicken fights!"

"I don't—"

"You can be on my shoulders," Fox called out. "Unless you're scared."

Everyone laughed. Maya squeezed my hand, just for a second, and then I was being pulled toward the water, jeans and all.

I stood at the edge. The pool stretched out before me, deceptively calm. Someone splashed water at my feet.

"Jump!" Maya said.

So I jumped.

The water swallowed me whole—chlorine and cool and sudden, terrifying weightlessness. For a second I panicked, arms flailing, feet kicking nothing. But then I pushed downward, hard, and broke the surface, gasping.

Fox was there. "Not bad, Leo."

Maya was laughing. "You came up like you were ready to fight the whole pool."

I wiped water from my eyes, suddenly grinning. I felt ridiculous and brave all at once. Buster barked from the edge, tail wagging.

"Again," I said.

That summer, I learned to swim. I learned that Fox's smirk was actually just his resting face, that he gave me his old board shorts because "someone needs to challenge me at chicken fights," and that Maya had been waiting for me to show up for weeks. But mostly I learned that sometimes the only way to stop standing at the edge is to jump, even when you have no idea what's beneath the surface.