Orange Swimsuit Summer

The orange swimsuit had seemed like a good idea at Target, but standing here at Tyler's pool party, I felt like a construction cone among the pastel-clad girls floofing their hair. The fabric bit into my shoulders, the color too bright, too much, like I was trying to scream "look at me" without actually saying anything.

"You gonna swim or what?" Maya called from the pool edge, dripping water, effortless in her navy bikini. She and the others had formed this impenetrable cluster of laughter and inside jokes, and I'd been hovering near the snack table for twenty-seven minutes.

"Yeah, just gotta—" I gestured vaguely at the fruit bowl, where slices of papaya sat uneaten, exotic and alien among the expected watermelon and grapes. Why had someone's mom bought papaya? It felt like trying too hard.

"That stuff's gross," Maya said. "Nobody's gonna judge you if you just get in."

But she would judge me. They all would. I'd spent three years cultivating the right kind of invisibility—present enough to be friendly, invisible enough to avoid scrutiny. Swimming meant being seen. Swimming meant the orange swimsuit, my pale winter legs, the way I couldn't dive without looking like a startled sparrow.

Then I noticed the goldfish bowl on the patio table, its lone inhabitant glubbing in frustrated circles. Someone had won it at the carnival last night and forgotten it. Poor little guy, swimming in the same endless loop, going nowhere.

The realization hit me like a physical thing: I was the goldfish.

I'd been circling my own anxiety for years, terrified of jumping into something real. While I stood here calculating social risks, summer was bleeding away. Junior year loomed. Everything was about to change anyway.

The papaya sat there, uneaten and unapologetic.

I took a running start and cannonballed into the deep end.

The shock of cold, the chaos of water, the way my orange swimsuit billowed around me like a sea creature—it was perfect. I came up sputtering while Maya and the others whooped. "Finally!" someone yelled. "Where have you BEEN?"

"Here," I said, treading water, heart hammering with something that felt almost like courage. "I've been here the whole time."

The goldfish kept swimming its circles, but for the first time, I didn't feel like I was swimming alongside it.