Poolside Fox

Maya's hair refused to cooperate. She'd spent forty-five minutes trying to perfect the effortless waves everyone at school seemed to have naturally, but now it hung limp and defeated against her neck. The humidity wasn't helping.

"You good?" Liam asked, swinging by her porch. He held up a tangled ethernet cable. "Your WiFi's dead again. I can fix it."

"In a minute," she said, though they both knew she was stalling. The neighborhood pool party had started an hour ago. Everyone would be there. Everyone would see her in a swimsuit. Everyone would judge.

Liam's cat, Barnaby, wound around her ankles, purring like a tiny motor. She bent to pet him, grateful for the excuse to delay leaving. Barnaby never judged her hair. Barnaby never made comments about how she used to be "so confident" in middle school.

"The cable's just loose," Liam said, already tinkering with the router. "Five minutes, max. Then we're walking over together."

Maya's stomach did that thing it always did before social events—a hollow plunge followed by a slow burn. Summer between sophomore and junior year was supposed to be fun. Everyone said so. Instagram said so. The group chat that kept blowing up with "pool party!!!" said so. But she'd spent the last three months avoiding her reflection, avoiding her friends, avoiding basically everything that required effort.

They arrived at the pool to find it already packed. Someone had brought a massive bluetooth speaker. A volleyball game was in full swing. Half the people from their grade were there, looking bronze and effortless and entirely too comfortable in their own skin.

"Maya!" called Sasha, waving from the deep end. "Finally! Get in here!"

And then she saw it. Written across the back of Sasha's swimsuit in sparkly letters: FOX. The mascot of their rival school.

"What?" Sasha laughed when Maya pointed. "It was half-off at Target! I'm not loyal to public school branding!"

Something in Maya's chest loosed. Sasha, the most put-together person she knew, was wearing a discount rival school swimsuit with zero shame.

Maya looked at the pool, at her friends, at Sasha's sparkly FOX. Then she looked at Liam, who was already toeing off his sneakers.

"Last one in pays for snacks," she said, and before she could think herself out of it, she jumped.

The water shocked her senses, cold and perfect. When she surfaced, sputtering and laughing, Sasha was grinning. "See? Was that so hard?"

Maya pushed her wet hair out of her face. It was messy now. It was perfect. "Nah," she said. "I've got this."