Poolside Confidential

Maya's curls had already started frizzing five minutes into the pool party, which was exactly why she'd spent twenty minutes perfecting them that morning. The humidity was absolutely not her friend.

"You're literally doing it again," whispered Jordan, nudging her with an elbow. "Staring at him like you're conducting some sort of covert operation."

"I am not spying," Maya hissed back, though her palm was totally sweating against her plastic cup. "I'm merely... observing."

She'd been crushing on Liam since geometry started last semester, and apparently, that made her the world's least subtle secret agent.

The party was everything awful about freshman year amplified: seniors lounging like royalty, juniors pretending not to care, sophomores trying way too hard. And there she was, squeezed between a potted palm tree and the snack table, convinced her hair had declared independence from the carefully styled spirals she'd started with.

"He's looking over here," Jordan announced dramatically.

Maya's heart did this stupid flutter thing. "No he's not."

"He is. And unless you want to spend another three months writing 'Mrs. Maya Something-Or-Other' in your notebook margins—"

"I don't do that!"

"—then you should go talk to him."

Before Maya could process a single logical reason why this was a terrible idea, Jordan gave her a shove. Not a hard one, but enough that Maya stumbled forward, directly into Liam's path.

He laughed, and it was weirdly perfect—not mean, just genuinely amused. "Hey, you're Maya from geometry, right? The one who got that A on the final while I was barely passing?"

She stood there, hair probably defying gravity in eight directions, palm sweating like she'd just run a marathon, and somehow managed: "That's me. Geometry enthusiast."

"Cool," Liam said. "Want to join the chicken fight tournament? We need a fourth."

Jordan appeared behind Liam, gave Maya a thumbs-up, and Maya realized something absolutely revolutionary: sometimes the worst spy missions were the ones where you accidentally got exactly what you wanted.