Lightning at the Pool

Maya stood at the edge of the pool, clutching her towel like a shield. The humidity had already turned her carefully straightened hair into a frizzy halo around her head. Three hours with a flat iron, wasted.

"Maya! Come in!" Jordan shouted from the deep end, water dripping from his perfect, messy curls. The guy she'd been crushing on since September.

She shook her head. "I'm good."

Her older sister Kayla appeared at her elbow, holding a paper plate. "You've been hovering for twenty minutes. Either get in or stop blocking the stairs."

Maya sighed. She didn't want to explain about her period starting two days ago, or how the one-piece swimsuit she'd chosen to hide it made her feel like a toddler compared to everyone's bikinis. She didn't want to talk about how her mom had made her eat creamed spinach before the party because "you need iron," and she was paranoid she had spinach in her teeth.

"You're overthinking again," Kayla said, reading her mind. "Nobody's looking at you."

But someone was. Jordan was paddling toward the edge, his expression unreadable through the rippling water.

Then it happened—actual lightning cracked across the sky, so close everyone screamed. The pool cleared in seconds, a mass of wet bodies grabbing towels and running for the covered patio.

Everyone except Maya. She couldn't move, couldn't breathe. The storm felt like it was inside her chest, something finally breaking loose.

Jordan reappeared, shaking water from his hair, holding her towel. "You okay?"

She looked at him, really looked at him, and realized something that hit harder than the storm. She'd been so worried about her hair and spinach and swimsuits and what everyone thought that she'd forgotten how to just exist. How to be real.

Maya took her towel back. "Yeah. Actually, I am."

The rain started, gentle at first then pouring down, and she didn't run for cover. She let it plaster her hair to her face, wash away the careful straightening, the anxious overthinking. Jordan stood beside her in the downpour, not saying anything, just present.

"Your hair," he said finally, touching a wet curl near her face. "It looks better like this."

Maya laughed, really laughed, and something in her chest finally settled. She'd spent months trying to be someone else, but the real her—the frizzy-haired, spinach-mouthed, storm-loving her—was actually kind of awesome.