Foxes Don't Care About Cool

The summer before sophomore year, Marco decided to throw the pool party to end all pool parties. I stood by the snack table, clutching a red plastic cup, pretending I wasn't internally screaming about being in a swimsuit in front of half our grade.

"You gonna swim or just stand there looking like a zombie?" Riley appeared beside me, dripping wet, cat-eye sunglasses perched on her head like she'd just walked off a Pinterest board. I'd been crushing on her since seventh period English, when she'd corrected my pronunciation of "existential" and made it sound flirtatious.

"Maybe I'm just contemplating the existential dread of social interaction," I said, then immediately wanted to die. Who talks like that?

But Riley laughed. "Nerd. Also, you need vitamin D or something. You're pale as hell."

She didn't know I'd spent the entire week locked in my room, doom-scrolling through her Instagram and watching zombie apocalypse marathons because my brain had decided this was the summer I'd finally become interesting. Spoiler: I wasn't.

Suddenly, someone screamed. "OH MY GOD, LOOK!"

An orange fox trotted out from the bushes along the fence line. It moved with this quiet confidence, stopping near Marco's lounge chairs like it owned the place. The fox's amber eyes swept over the party — over Juan doing cannonballs, over the girls taking selfies, over me and Riley standing there like idiots.

Then Marco's cat, a fluffy orange monstrosity named Pumpkin, jumped onto the fence and hissed. The fox barely glanced at it, like *please*, then turned and vanished back into the bushes, completely unimpressed by teenage drama, pool parties, or cats with attitude.

"That fox," I said, "has more game than everyone here combined."

Riley looked at me, really looked at me, and grinned. "You're weird." She splashed water on my arm. "I like it."

Maybe next time I'd actually get in the pool. Maybe next time I wouldn't stand on the sidelines watching everyone else live. But for now, watching Riley dive back into the water, her laughter cutting through the summer afternoon, I thought: maybe that was enough.

The fox had the right idea. Some things don't need to perform for an audience. Some things just *are*.

I took off my shirt and jumped in the pool. The water was perfect.