Poolside Curveball

Maya's mom called it her 'lake phase' — that terrible month freshman year when she'd stopped brushing her hair and let it mat into a brown tangle down her back. Two years later, she still obsessively checked her reflection in every window she passed, smoothing down the sleek bob she'd gotten in a desperate bid for reinvention.

Now she stood at the edge of Jessica Hart's pool, the one everyone said was heated to bathwater temperature even though Jessica's dad worked in insurance and nobody knew why they needed that kind of luxury. The backyard was already packed with juniors Maya barely recognized from the halls, all of them moving in that effortless social orbit she'd spent years trying to crack.

'You coming in or what?'

She jumped. Ethan Reyes stood behind her, baseball cap backward, holding a solo cup with that casual confidence she'd envied since they'd been assigned as lab partners in September. He was on the varsity team, had been since sophomore year. The kind of guy who could wear his jersey to school on game days and not look like a complete tool.

'I'm good,' she said, too quickly. 'Forgot my suit.' The lie tasted like pennies.

Ethan's gaze flicked to her towel-draped shoulder, then back to her face. A slow grin spread across his face, and something in her stomach did that awful flip it always did when he looked at her too long.

'You know,' he said, 'we need a fourth for baseball. Out back.' He gestured toward the patch of grass beyond the cabana where a game was forming. 'Unless you're scared.'

Maya felt her ears burn. 'I don't even play.'

'Neither does half the team out there.' Ethan set down his cup. 'C'mon. Don't make me play with Jessica's cousin again. He throws like a toddler.'

She looked at the pool — sparkling, chlorinated, full of people who'd known each other since kindergarten — and then at Ethan, waiting. Her hair was perfect. Her makeup was perfect. But suddenly the water looked like something else entirely: a line she was too afraid to cross.

'Maya?'

'Yeah,' she said, and something in her chest loosened. 'Yeah, I'm in.'

She dropped her towel on a lounge chair and followed him toward the grass, toward the game, toward whatever happened next. Her hair could wait. She had bigger things to worry about now.