Goldfish in the Deep End

The pool lights flickered blue against the concrete, turning Maya's backyard into something between a dream and a nightmare. I stood there in my one-piece, feeling exactly like that **goldfish** my brother won at the fair last summer—trapped, glassy-eyed, and definitely not built for this environment.

"You coming in or what?" Jordan called from the deep end. His hair dripped **water** down his face, and my stomach did that annoying flutter thing it always did around him.

"Yeah, just, uh, warming up," I lied. Because warming up was definitely a thing people did before swimming.

That's when I noticed her. Jordan's ex, Chloe, perched on a patio chair like a fox watching something small and edible. She had her phone out, angled weirdly, and I realized—she was taking pictures. Not normal pictures either. **Spy** mode. I'd seen her do this before to other girls who dared to talk to Jordan.

My face burned. This was it. My social life was about to become a group chat screenshot.

Then this random girl I'd never met—turns out her name was Riley—splash-landed right beside me. "You look like you're calculating your escape route."

"Is it that obvious?"

"You've been staring at the **pool** for twenty minutes without getting wet." Riley grinned. "Wanna know what I do?"

"What?"

"I cannonball. No one can look cool while cannonballing, so you stop trying to."

So we did. We cannonballed. We looked ridiculous. We got **water** everywhere. And somewhere in the chaos, Chloe put her phone down.

Later, Jordan found me by the snack table. "You and Riley seem cool."

"Yeah," I said, actually smiling now. "She's kind of amazing."

"Cool." He paused. "Hey, I noticed Chloe was being—"

"A total **fox** about everything?" I said, and we both laughed. Because somehow, in one night, I'd gone from feeling like a trapped goldfish to someone who could make the guy I liked laugh without even trying.

Sometimes the best way to survive the deep end isn't swimming perfectly. It's just jumping in anyway.