Green Teeth & Pool Parties

Maya felt like a actual zombie. Four hours of scrolling TikTok on her iPhone until 3 AM will do that to you. Now here she was at Tyler's pool party, brain foggy, social battery at 2%, wearing a swimsuit she'd bought online that was somehow smaller than the pictures. Classic.

"You good?" whispered Jordan, her best friend since seventh grade, who'd somehow shown up looking like a Pinterest board.

Maya nodded, trying to look chill. But then she caught it — her reflection in the sliding glass door. A giant, unmistakable piece of spinach wedged between her front teeth. From the smoothie she'd literally just grabbed to look healthy. She wanted to evaporate.

The pool was chaos. People doing cannonballs, couples being gross, Tyler showing off his lame diving skills like he was training for the Olympics. Maya was supposed to be swimming — she'd even brought her goggles — but now she was frozen by the snack table, trapped by the green monster in her smile.

Her phone buzzed. Instagram notif. Someone posted a story from the party. What if she was in the background, looking like a mouth-breathing spinach-faced creature? She considered faking a stomach bug and bolting.

Jordan appeared beside her, eyeing her phone. "Stop doomscrolling. You're literally missing everything."

Then Jordan noticed. Her eyes went wide. And instead of dying of secondhand embarrassment or announcing it to the whole party, she simply said, "Check your teeth, fam," and handed her a napkin.

Maya scraped it off, grateful for friends who don't let you walk around looking ridiculous. "You're a real one," she said, finally laughing. The spinach was gone, but the zombie feeling remained.

"Let's just swim," Jordan said, grabbing her hand.

And as they jumped into the pool together, screaming at the cold water, Maya realized: this was what actually mattered. Not the perfect Instagram story, not the flawless aesthetic, not exhausting herself trying to perform happiness for people who didn't care. Just floating in a chlorinated pool with the one friend who'd save her from public humiliation. The spinach trauma would be hilarious later. Probably.