Poolside Fox

The texts started at 2 AM — screenshots of me staring across the cafeteria, captions calling me a creep, a total weirdo. Someone was definitely cyber-spying on me, but the joke was on them because I was only watching Leo. Leo with the jawline that could cut glass and the way he leaned back in his chair like gravity was optional.

Saturday arrived with the humidity turned up to eleven, and my best friend Priya dragged me to Jordan's pool party. The invitation said seven, but everyone knows you show up fashionably late. We walked in at seven-thirty, the scent of chlorine and expensive sunscreen hitting us like a wall.

I positioned myself strategically — not too close to the action, not far enough to look like I was hiding. The perfect middle ground. That's when I saw it: a fox. An actual fox, standing at the edge of the woods behind the pool house, watching us like we were the entertainment. Its eyes caught the pool lights, glowing amber and wild.

Leo was in the water, laughing at something someone said, droplets clinging to his shoulders like he'd been dipped in starlight. He looked up. Our eyes met.

"You're that girl from lunch," he said, swimming over to the edge. "You're always watching me."

My face burned. I opened my mouth to explain, to say I wasn't a freak, but the words got stuck somewhere between my brain and my throat.

"I," I started, then stopped. Then, because my body had officially given up on dignity, I tripped over my own flip-flop and straight-up face-planted into the pool.

The water rushed into my nose, my ears, my dignity. When I surfaced, gasping and spluttering, half the party was watching. Leo was laughing — but not mean laughing. He was leaning his head back, all the way back, exposing the long line of his throat, and I saw it: he wasn't laughing at me. He was laughing with me, somehow, like I'd just done the most hilarious thing in the world.

"That was epic," he said, reaching out a hand to pull me to the pool's edge. "I'm Leo, by the way. I've been trying to figure out how to talk to you for weeks, but you always look so serious."

I blinked. Chlorone dripped from my eyelashes. "You've been trying to talk to me?"

"Yeah." He grinned. "I was going to ask if you wanted to hang out, but then you fell into my pool, so I guess we're hanging out."

Behind us, something moved in the woods. The fox was gone. But the weird thing about the water wasn't that I'd fallen into it — it was that I didn't want to get out. My phone buzzed in my pocket, probably more screenshots, probably more drama. I ignored it.

"I'm Maya," I said.

"Nice to almost meet you, Maya," Leo said. "Want to see who can hold their breath longer?"

I took a deep breath and dove back under, thinking about how sometimes the things you think are watching you are actually waiting for you to notice them back.