Goldfish in the Deep End

Maya's iphone buzzed with another snapchat notification—Jenna's pool party, happening NOW. Everyone who was anyone would be there, including Lucas, who'd actually looked at her during algebra yesterday.

She'd been hiding in her room all weekend, scrolling through highlights of other people's lives while her mom kept asking if she was "still dwelling on it." The breakup with Tyler wasn't even that bad, except it was, because now she was that girl who got dumped via text three days before freshman year ended.

"You should go," her little brother Leo said, appearing in her doorway with his backpack on backward. "It's not like you have to bear the weight of human suffering alone. Also, Jenna has that diving board you've been scared of since sixth grade."

Maya threw a pillow at him. "Get out of my room, you literal goldfish."

"That's NOT what that means—"

By the time she arrived at Jenna's, the pool was already chaos. Bodies everywhere, music that made the fence vibrate, someone doing cannonballs off the diving board like they owned gravity. Maya hovered by the snack table, phone glued to her hand, strategically refreshing instagram to look busy.

Then she saw it—Jenna's prize from the county fair last summer, a glass bowl with a single goldfish (named Chad, obviously) sitting dangerously close to the pool edge on a decorative table. And then she saw Tyler, standing way too close to Bella, laughing like he hadn't ruined Maya's entire week.

Something in her chest just—broke. Not the crying kind. The other kind. The I'm-so-done kind.

Maya marched toward the diving board. Everyone was watching Lucas try to impress people with his terrible form when she climbed up beside him.

"Want me to teach you how it's actually done?"

He blinked. "What?"

She didn't think. She just—jumped. A perfect dive, knifing through the water like she'd been practicing in her head forever. When she surfaced, everyone was cheering. Even Tyler looked surprised.

That night, Maya posted her first real photo in weeks: her and Lucas, hair dripping wet, making ridiculous faces at the camera. No filter. No caption needed.

Some things, she decided, were better experienced than watched through a screen. Even if she'd definitely need to practice that dive again before trying it in front of Lucas twice in one summer.