Fox in the Water

Maya's legs were already burning from running three blocks to Jake's house, but she didn't care. Today was the day. The day she'd finally talk to him—at his pool party. The invitation had been casual, thrown her way in chemistry like it was nothing, but Maya had spent three hours perfecting the messy-casual hair look and another thirty minutes psyching herself up in the mirror.

"You got this," she whispered. "You're not some awkward freshman anymore. You're calm. You're confident. You're basically a fox." She'd overheard her brother use that expression once—sly, smooth, untouchable—and she'd never actually used it out loud, but whatever worked.

She rang the doorbell. The door flew open and there he was. Jake. Shirtless. Water droplets still clinging to his shoulders like they'd personally decided to stay.

"Maya! You made it!" He grinned. "Everyone's out back. Mom made those loaded nachos you like."

She stepped inside and immediately spotted the problem. His grandmother was in the living room, watching some cable news channel at full volume while knitting something enormous and orange. A small terrier mix—the family's actual fox-colored dog—was sleeping at her feet. The dog lifted its head, sniffed in Maya's direction, and went back to sleep.

Rude.

"Your grandma's cool," Maya said, because what do you say to that?

Jake laughed. "She's awesome. Don't let her fool you with the knitting. She once told a bull at a petting zoo to back off, and it actually listened."

"Wait, what?"

"Long story. Come on, everyone's swimming."

And then her brain short-circuited. Swimming. As in, swimsuit. As in, the one-piece she'd bought because two-pieces were for people who didn't overthink everything, which was literally everyone else at school. Maya had maybe three usable mental states right now, and confident-swimming-Maya wasn't one of them.

"Actually, I think I'll just—" she started.

"Nope. No you don't." Jake gently grabbed her wrist and pulled her toward the backyard. "You're not sitting inside with Grandma and Fox—yeah, we named the dog Fox, I know, we're creative—when it's ninety degrees out. You're getting in that pool."

The backyard was chaos in the best way. People she'd known since middle school, now somehow taller and louder and braver. Someone had hooked up a speaker to an extension cable snaking through the bushes, and music was thumping. Bodies everywhere, screaming and splashing and not caring.

Jake jumped in, resurfacing with a splash that hit her square in the chest.

"Your turn!" he called.

Maya stood there, suddenly very aware of the twenty pairs of eyes on her. The old panic started rising—that tight-chested feeling that had kept her on the sidelines for years. But then she noticed something: no one was actually looking. Like, at all. They were too busy being their own awkward, loud, wonderful selves.

Jake doggy-paddled to the edge and looked up at her, water streaming from his hair. "You coming or what?"

Maya took a breath. Then she jumped.

The water was perfect. She came up sputtering while Jake laughed, and someone high-fived her, and she was still Maya—the same Maya who overthought everything and had never been called cool in her life—but she was also something else now. She was the girl who jumped.

Later, she'd learn that Jake had been running away from his own stuff too. That the cable in the bushes had been his desperate attempt to set up music before anyone arrived because he was just as nervous as she was. That the bull story about his grandma had been exactly one hundred percent true.

But for now, she just swam.