Off the Deep End

Maya's **hat**—a faded navy trucker with a curved brim that smelled like coconut shampoo and panic—was basically part of her skull at this point. She wore it to first period algebra. She wore it through family dinners. She'd probably wear it to prom if her mom didn't literally hide it sometimes.

But right now, staring at the Mercer High pool during sophomore swim unit, Maya wished the hat could actually make her invisible instead of just casting her eyes in permanent shade.

"You're up, Bishop," Coach Miller called, already looking annoyed. "Don't make me come in there after you."

The WHOLE problem was that Maya was NOT a water person. She was a **running** person—cross country, track, the kind of athlete whose lungs burned with righteous fire on hills, who lived for that moment when your legs felt like they might actually detach from your body but you kept pushing anyway. She owned thevarsity jacket. She had the calves. She did NOT own a swimsuit that didn't make her want to dissolve into pure awkwardness.

"Dude, just jump," someone whispered. Probably Tyler, who'd already done a perfect cannonball and was currently doing laps like he'd been born with gills.

Maya stood at the edge, toes curled against the slippery concrete. Her lifeguard certification—required for the summer camp job she desperately wanted because her crush Jake worked there too—was literally on the line here. But her brain was running through all the ways this could go wrong: belly flop. Drowning. Drowning AND belly flop. Everyone laughing.

Then she remembered what her Nana always said: courage isn't the absence of fear, it's being terrified and doing it anyway because otherwise you'll spend the rest of your life wondering "what if?"

She yanked off her hat and slapped it on the deck.

Then Maya jumped.

The shock of cold hit her like a physical blow, but then she was **swimming**—actual swimming, arms pulling, legs kicking, breaking the surface with a gasp that felt like her first real breath ever. Tyler wolf-whistled from somewhere behind her. Coach Miller nodded, actually impressed.

Maya treaded water, hair plastered to her face, feeling ridiculous and proud and somehow lighter than she'd felt in months. The hat sat on the pool deck like some old version of herself she didn't need anymore.

"Again?" she called out, already diving back under.