Lightning in a Bottle

The gummy **vitamin** sat on my tongue like a tiny, gelatinous confession. I'd stolen it from Maya's backpack because she said they made her skin glow, and my skin currently resembled a potato that had seen better days.

"You good, Alex?" Leo asked. He was dripping **water** onto the pool deck, fresh from a cannonball that had somehow made him look cool and me feel like a moist cardboard cutout.

"Never been better," I lied. My heart was doing that thing where it felt like **lightning** was striking my chest repeatedly, which happened every time Leo looked at me for more than three seconds.

Maya appeared behind him, wearing those sunglasses that made her look like a bug. "Alex, did you eat my vitamin? The one that costs forty dollars because it's 'organic and spiritually blessed'?"

"What? No."

"You're glowing, though."

"That's sweat."

"That's definitely not sweat, babe."

Leo laughed, and I decided right then that the universe had it out for me. But then—because the world is weird—Sam Watkins showed up in that ridiculous **bear** costume from last year's mascot incident. The head was tilted, the fake fur matted with questionable substances.

"Who let the bear out of timeout?" Maya asked.

"The real question," Sam said, voice muffled by polyester, "is who's going to help me smuggle this monstrosity into the cafeteria before the principal realizes I never returned it?"

Leo looked at me. "Wanna help?"

And just like that, the lightning in my chest settled into something steadier. "Yes," I said. "Absolutely."

We spent the next hour hiding a bear costume in random lockers and strategically placing gummy vitamins in teachers' mailboxes. My skin didn't glow, and I definitely wasn't cool. But walking home with Leo and Maya, I felt like I'd finally found my people—awkward, weird, and entirely unwilling to take anything seriously.

Sometimes you don't need to glow. You just need friends who'll help you hide the evidence.