Poolside Goldfish

Maya gripped her pool bag like it contained state secrets. In a way, it kind of did—inside sat the bikini she'd spent forty-five minutes psyching herself up to wear. The Instagram invite to Jade's pool party had casually dropped "bring your swimsuit" like it was no big deal. But for Maya, whose idea of swimming involved childish one-pieces and staying in the shallow end while everyone else actually had fun, this was basically social suicide waiting to happen.

The backyard was already popping when she arrived. TikTok-worthy girls in coordinated sets. Boys trying way too hard to look effortless doing cannonballs. And there was Jade, radiant in the center of it all, holding court on a floatie shaped like a giant orange slice. Maya's stomach did that awful flip-flop thing it always did when she felt like the world's biggest outsider.

"Maya! You made it!" Jade called, waving her over. "We were just playing goldfish—you know, that game where someone's 'it' underwater and tries to tag people?"

Goldfish. Of course. The one pool game Maya sucked at because she held her breath like a panicked goldfish itself.

"Yeah, I'll watch from here," she said, clutching her towel. "Forgot my vitamin water inside."

"Maya." That was Tyler, suddenly there, dripping wet and grinning. He had this way of looking at her that made her forget to be nervous. "You coming in or what? The water's actually not terrible."

She hesitated. Then something shifted—maybe it was the way his hair curled when it was wet, or maybe she was just tired of being the girl who watched from the sidelines.

"Yeah," she said, surprised by how steady her voice sounded. "Yeah, I'm coming in."

She dropped the towel. She took the plunge. And somewhere between the shock of cool water and Tyler's high-five when she finally tagged someone during goldfish, Maya realized something: nobody was watching her as closely as she'd been watching herself.

Later, sun-drenched and waterlogged, she accepted an orange soda from Tyler. "You know," he said, "you're actually kind of fast when you're not overthinking it."

Maya smiled, really smiled. Maybe next time she'd even wear the two-piece. Baby steps.