Goldfish Memory at the Party

The moment Maya's phone died at Tyler's pool party, she knew she was done for. No charging cable in sight, and suddenly she was stranded in social waters without her digital flotation device.

She stood near the edge of the pool, clutching her cold phone like it was a life raft. Across the yard, Tyler was laughing with Brooke—of course Brooke was wearing that perfect sun hat that looked effortless on her. Maya tugged self-consciously at her own hair, wishing she'd brought something to hide behind.

"Hey!" Someone splashed water toward her. Jason, Tyler's older brother, was waist-deep in the pool. "You gonna stand there all night looking like a goldfish that forgot how to swim?"

Maya rolled her eyes but felt herself smiling. "My phone died. I'm basically a cave person now."

"Join the club." Jason swam closer. "I haven't looked at my phone in two hours. It's revolutionary, actually."

She hesitated, then sat on the pool edge, dangling her feet in. The water felt perfect against her skin. "This is the longest I've gone without checking Instagram since seventh grade."

"Wow." He grinned. "How are you surviving? Do you need CPR?"

"Shut up." She laughed, and something shifted—the awkwardness she'd been carrying all night dissolved. "Actually, it's kind of nice not having to curate everything. Not having to find the perfect angle or whatever."

"Yeah." Jason floated onto his back, looking up at the string lights. "My little sister's obsessed with that stuff. She literally cried because she got seventeen likes instead of twenty on a post. Like, what are we doing?"

Maya leaned back on her palms, watching the party through new eyes. Everyone was performing—brooding by the snack table, staging candid laughs, pretending to be absorbed in deep conversations. Without her phone, she saw the performance for what it was.

"Your brother's been looking at you, you know," Jason said quietly.

"What? No way." But she glanced over, and Tyler's eyes darted away. "He's probably wondering why I'm not Insta-storying his party."

"Maybe." Jason splashed her lightly. "Or maybe he's just as awkward as you are."

Maya's stomach did that fluttery thing. "I'm not awkward."

"You're literally holding your dead phone like it's a weapon."

She dropped it on the towel. "Fine. So what do I do?"

"Talk to him? Like a normal person? Without an audience?"

Maya took a breath, stood up, and walked across the yard toward Tyler. Her palms were sweating, her heart was racing, and her phone stayed dead on the towel behind her.

"Hey," she said. And for once, she didn't wonder how it would look in a feed.