Poolside Fox

The chlorine stung my eyes as I surfaced, gasping.龙湖 High's annual back-to-school pool party raged around me—Becky and her squad dominating the shallow end with their waterproof phones, Jake doing cannonballs that splashed everyone within a ten-foot radius. I stuck to the deep end where I could disappear beneath the surface.

"Hey, Vitamin D!" someone yelled. My friends had started calling me that after I got sent home for actual sun poisoning during freshman orientation. Two years later, it still stuck like the summer humidity.

I waved it off and sank deeper. The truth was, I hadn't been sleeping. Between college applications and the unspoken understanding that this was our last summer together, everything felt heavier. Even the water pressure at the pool's bottom seemed lighter than the expectations waiting on land.

That's when I saw it—a fox, padding along the chain-link fence that separated the aquatic center from the woods. A real one. Bright orange, impossibly wild, watching us with eyes that held zero percent concern for high school social hierarchy.

I hauled myself out of the pool, dripping onto the concrete, and crept toward the fence. The fox didn't run. It just sat there, tail wrapped neatly around its paws, completely unbothered.

"What are you looking at?"

I jumped. Sophia, who I'd been best friends with since seventh grade but barely spoken to since she transferred to the IB program last year, stood behind me. Her hair was dry—she'd been sitting on the sidelines the whole time.

"A fox," I whispered, pointing. "Can you believe that?"

Sophia's face lit up. "No way. That's actually insane."

We stood there watching it together, two wet misfits at the edge of the party, neither of us wanting to go back to the noise. The fox yawned, stretched, and melted back into the woods like it had never existed.

"Hey," Sophia said, pulling a bottle from her bag. "You want a gummy vitamin? I literally have like fifty."

I laughed. It was the kind of too-loud laugh that happens when you haven't talked to someone in forever but you used to tell them everything. "Sure, Vitamin D. Why not."

We sat on the pool's edge, feet in the water, eating overpriced gummies shaped like cartoon animals and talking about nothing and everything until the sky turned purple. The party raged behind us, but for the first time all summer, I didn't feel like I was drowning.