Poolside Apocalypse

The chlorine hit Maya's nose before she even saw the water. Taylor's End-of-Summer Pool Party. The Instagram stories had been flexing all week—cannonballs, aesthetic floats, Taylor's dad grilling burgers. Maya adjusted her cover-up, feeling like a total imposter.

She spotted Connor by the snack table, looking like a straight-up **zombie** from three days of band camp. His hair was doing something questionable and his eyes had that glazed I-haven't-slept-since-Thursday vibe.

"Dude," he said, spotting her. "You survived.”

"Barely." Maya grabbed a soda. "Where's everyone else?"

"In the pool. Obviously. Taylor's being extra.”

And there he was—Taylor,shirtless, doing laps like he was training for the Olympics. Meanwhile, Jenna sat on the edge in that fox-print bikini she'd bought specifically to get Ethan's attention. The whole situation felt orchestrated, like everyone was playing 4D chess while Maya was still figuring out how to move her pieces.

"You gonna swim or what?” Connor asked.

"I don't know. Maybe.”

Maya dipped her foot in. Cold. Suddenly it was middle school all over again, that time she'd bailed on the class pool party because her period had arrived unexpectedly and she'd been too embarrassed to explain why she couldn't swim. She'd carried that shame for years.

**Bull**. That's what her older sister Jordan would call it. All of it—the anxiety, the overthinking, the caring what people thought. Jordan was out there living her best life while Maya was still holding her breath.

"Maya!” Taylor called from the deep end. "Get in here!”

She looked at Connor, who gave her this tiny nod. Like he knew. Like he got it.

She dropped the cover-up.

The water hit her like shock therapy. She pushed off the bottom, **swimming** toward the deeper end, past Jenna and her calculated fox-print strategy, past Taylor and his athletic performance art. She surfaced near the diving board, gasping.

"Better?” Connor called from the edge.

"Yeah,” she said, and realized she meant it.

Her phone buzzed on the patio table. Jordan: "Call you later. Got stories."

Maya treaded water, watching the afternoon light ripple across the pool's surface. For the first time all summer, she wasn't watching from the sidelines. She was in it. The **bear** inside her chest—that heavy, anxious weight she'd been carrying around forever—had finally learned to float.