Pool Party Panic

Maya stared at her phone, the notification glowing like accusation. **Pool party** at Jake's house. 2 PM. Bring a swimsuit.

Her stomach did that thing — the fluttery, awful thing that happened whenever social events demanded more than sweatpants and a hoodie. Maya didn't do pools. She didn't do swimsuits. She definitely didn't do Jake from AP Chemistry, who had shoulders like a Greek statue and a smile that made her forget how to words.

"You're going, right?" Chloe asked, flopping onto Maya's bed. "Everyone's gonna be there."

"I don't know," Maya mumbled. "I might... come down with something. Mysterious, fatal illness."

"You're not dying. You're just overthinking." Chloe sat up. "Take your **vitamin** D or whatever. Just come. Please?"

Maya's mom had started her on a daily regimen after the winter of perpetual gloom. It hadn't fixed anything, but it gave her something to blame.

The pool party was exactly as nightmare-inducing as Maya had imagined. Sun glare off the **water**, everyone looking somehow simultaneously effortless and perfect, Jake shirtless by the diving board, and Maya fully clothed on a lawn chair clutching a soda like it was a flotation device.

Then Jake approached.

"Hey," he said. "You gonna swim?"

"Oh, um. I don't have—"

"You can borrow my extra suit," a voice cut in. It was Taylor, the senior with the half-sleeve tattoo of a **bear** on her forearm. "I brought two for some reason."

Taylor's bear tattoo was legendary. Someone had spread a rumor that she'd wrestled an actual bear once. (She hadn't. It was from a sketchbook.)

"I don't—" Maya started.

"Come on." Taylor's expression softened. "Water's not gonna bite. Unless you count Jake, who's been known to splash like a toddler."

Jake groaned. "That was ONE TIME."

Maya found herself in Taylor's borrowed swimsuit, toes curling against the concrete pool edge. The **water** reflected cloudless blue sky, deceptively calm. Like jumping would change everything. Like maybe her **vitamin** supplements had been magic courage pills all along.

She jumped.

The shock of cold, the rush of bubbles, the moment of weightlessness before breaking surface again. Taylor grinned from across the pool. Jake did a ridiculous cannonball beside her, sending up a splash that drenched everyone on deck.

"Sorry!" he called, not sounding sorry at all.

Maya wiped water from her eyes, heart hammering in that weird, electric way. Not fear anymore. Something better. Something that felt like the start of something.

"You coming in?" she heard herself ask Chloe, who was still fully dressed poolside.

Chloe blinked. Then grinned. "Maybe I will."

That summer, Maya learned that bravery wasn't a feeling you waited for. It was a jump you took even when your stomach was twisting itself into knots. That sometimes the scariest things — pools, parties, people — became the ones that made you feel most alive.

And that Jake from AP Chemistry? Still couldn't believe she'd actually jumped. But that was a story for September.