Night Swim at the Social Pyramid

The pool lights turned everything underwater blue and electric. I was swimming laps at midnight because insomnia was better than scrolling through Instagram and seeing everyone at Chloe's party. Everyone except me.

Then I saw the cat. A massive orange tabby sitting on the diving board, tail twitching, judging my stroke technique. "You too, huh?" I said, surfacing. The cat just blinked slowly, like I was the weird one for being in a pool at 12 AM.

That's when Javi climbed out of the shadows near the fence. I hadn't seen him in three months—not since he got absorbed into the popular crowd and started acting like some total zombie, just nodding along with whatever Noah and his crew said. Javi used to be my person. Now he was literally following the crowd.

"You coming to the party?" he asked, not meeting my eyes.

"Nah. Not really my scene."

"Good choice," he said, surprising me. "It's like... toxic. Everyone just trying to climb the social pyramid. "He kicked at a deck chair. "I miss hanging out with you. It was—"

"Real?" I finished.

"Yeah. Exactly."

The orange cat stood up, stretched dramatically, and jumped into the pool with this perfectly executed splash. We both froze. Then we were laughing so hard I thought I'd choke.

"Your cat?" Javi asked eventually.

"Nope. Just showed up."

"Wanna swim?" he said, already pulling off his designer hoodie. "Like old times?"

"Yeah," I said, grinning. "Like old times."

We spent an hour doing stupid races and seeing who could hold their breath longest. The cat watched from the diving board like it was our personal lifeguard. For the first time in months, I didn't feel like I was swimming upstream against everything. Sometimes you have to lose the fake versions of your friends to find the real ones again—even if they were right there all along, just waiting to wake up from being zombies.