Orange Soda Courage

The first party of freshman year. Maya's stomach did backflips as she stood outside the gate, the bass from some rap song she didn't know thumping against her chest. She'd spent forty-five minutes on her hair and another thirty picking between three swimsuits. This wasn't really her scene—pool parties were for the popular kids, the ones whose Instagrams looked like curated magazines. Not girls who spent Friday nights reading fanfic and rewatching the same anime for the fourth time.

"You coming in or what?"

Maya jumped. Alex, the cute track star from her English class, stood by the gate holding an orange soda. His hair was wet, droplet catching the sunset.

"Yeah! Just... admiring the landscaping." Smooth. Real smooth, Maya.

Alex laughed. Not mean-laughed. Actually laughed. "The landscaping is straight fire. You should see the pool though. There's literally a cat walking around the edge like it owns the place."

"A cat?"

"Some stray from the neighborhood. Chase calls him The General." He held out the orange soda. "Want this? I grabbed like five because I'm nervous as hell and now I'm vibrating."

"Same," Maya admitted, taking the can. "I've been running through scenarios in my head all week. What if nobody talks to me? What if I do something awkward? What if—"

"What if you actually have fun?" Alex raised an eyebrow. "Revolutionary concept, I know."

She smiled. Maybe he was right. They walked through the gate together. The pool area was packed—people cannonballing into the water, some girl blasting music from a portable speaker, Chase himself holding court on a lounge chair like royalty. The cat, a sleek black thing with yellow eyes, was indeed pacing around the pool's edge, tail twitching like it was judging everyone's splash technique.

"Maya! You made it!" Keisha waved from the shallow end. "Come in, the water's perfect!"

Before Maya could answer, someone screamed "KOBE!" and a basketball came flying out of nowhere—straight at her face.

Instinct took over. She caught it. One-handed.

The whole deck went silent.

Then Alex whooped. "Did you SEE that? Freshman's got hands!"

"Let me see," said Chase, suddenly interested. "Show me that form again."

Maya tossed the ball back. Perfect arc. Nothing but... well, nothing but the middle of some guy's chest.

"My bad!" she called out, but everyone was already laughing. Good laughing. The kind where you're in on the joke, not the punchline.

"Alright, alright," Chase said, grinning. "New rule. First to sink a shot from the diving board gets first dibs on pizza. Freshman, you're up."

Maya looked at Alex. He shrugged like, why not?

She climbed onto the diving board. The water sparkled below. Someone turned up the music. For the first time all night, her stomach wasn't doing backflips anymore.

"Watch this," she said, and for three seconds, Maya didn't overthink anything. She jumped. She shot. She splash-landed spectacularly.

The ball bounced off the rim.

"Ooooooh!" the crowd roared anyway.

Maya surfaced, sputtering water, grinning like an idiot.

"Close!" Alex called from the deck. "But your form was straight-up professional."

"Need to work on my aim," she called back.

"We've got all summer," Alex said. And that—that right there—made something in Maya's chest feel lighter than air.

The cat finally deigned to notice them, flicked its tail once, and padded away to find a quieter sunbathing spot.

"Solidarity, little dude," Maya murmured, and dove back under the water, where everything was muffled and peaceful and nobody could see her smiling through her goggles.