Green Between the Teeth

The pool party at Tyler's house was supposed to be my comeback moment. Freshman year had been a series of awkward invisibility, but this summer, this was gonna be different. I'd spent weeks curating the perfect aesthetic — vintage swimsuit, carefully messy hair, iPhone playlist synchronized to the exact vibe of effortless cool.

I was leaning against the fence, watching Jordan laugh at something Tyler said, my stomach doing that pathetic flutter thing it always did around them. This was it. Time to make my move.

"Hey Jordan," I called out, channeling chill energy I definitely didn't feel. "You gonna swim or what?"

They turned, grinning. "Maybs! Yeah, in a bit. Your mom's spinach dip is actually fire though, you should try it."

My brain processed this slowly. Spinach dip. The thing I'd been eating nervously for the past twenty minutes. The thing that was almost certainly currently decorating my teeth like some kind of biological Christmas ornament.

"Yeah," I managed, already turning away. "Love spinach."

I could feel it before I even checked my reflection in the darkened kitchen window — a vibrant green apocalypse spread across my front teeth. I'd been walking around like this for twenty minutes. Twenty minutes of hanging out by the pool, smiling awkwardly, trying to look cute while basically advertising to everyone that I was a spinach-disaster zone.

My iPhone buzzed in my hand. A notification from Maya: *check tyler's story 😭*

There it was. A photo of me mid-laugh, green teeth front and center, captioned "maybs living her best life." The dots of people viewing it stacked up like evidence at a crime scene.

I wanted to dissolve. To literally evaporate and reconstitute as someone else, someone who didn't get spinach stuck in their teeth at the most important social event of the summer.

Then Jordan appeared beside me at the window, their reflection overlapping mine.

"Busted," they said, gesturing at my mouth. But they were smiling. "Honestly? I had some too. We match now."

They pointed to their own teeth — a tiny green fleck in the corner.

"We look ridiculous," I said, feeling weirdly light.

"We really do." Jordan pulled out their iPhone. "Proof?"

We took the most unflattering selfie in existence — two teens grinning with spinach everywhere, eyes squinted against the glare, pool behind us blurring into summer noise. I posted it immediately, captioning it "spinach club 💪"

The likes started coming in. But for once, I didn't care. Some moments weren't about looking perfect. They were about being real, and messy, and maybe a little bit green between the teeth.