Poolside Lies

The summer before sophomore year, I made two mistakes: agreeing to go to Jessica's pool party and telling everyone I could swim.

I couldn't swim. Not really. I could doggy paddle across a kiddie pool, maybe.

"You coming?" Marcus asked, already shirtless, his abs somehow more defined than last week. He'd been **running** track all summer, training for something he called "regionals" while I'd been perfecting the art of staying indoors and avoiding sunlight.

"Yeah," I said, because lying to Marcus was becoming my favorite hobby. "Just need to grab my stuff."

My mom was in her wellness phase, which meant our kitchen looked like a pharmacy. I grabbed her chalky **vitamin** D supplements—something about bone density—and shoved them in my pocket like contraband. Maybe they'd give me superpowers. Maybe they'd just make me sick.

Jessica's house was the kind of rich that made me instinctively check my shoes for grass stains. Her backyard featured an actual **pool**, not some above-ground abomination, and enough people to start a small cult.

"Aiden!" Jessica called, waving like she'd actually spoken to me before today. "Get in here!"

I spent twenty minutes pretending to adjust my swimsuit while everyone else splashed around like they'd been born in water. Marcus was doing laps, easy and smooth, making it look like breathing.

Then Tyler showed up.

Tyler was the kind of **bull** who didn't realize he was destroying everything in his path. He'd tripped me in the hallway last year, laughed like he'd done something clever, and somehow everyone had acted like it was just boys being boys.

"What's the matter, Aiden?" Tyler called from the diving board. "Scared of a little water?"

Marcus swam over. "Leave him alone, man."

"I'm just saying," Tyler grinned, and before I could process what was happening, he cannonballed three feet away from me.

The wave hit me like a truck. I went under, chlorine stinging my eyes, and suddenly I was thrashing, water everywhere, my arms flailing like I'd never seen a human move before.

Hands grabbed me. Hauled me up coughing and spluttering while half the party stared.

Marcus. Of course Marcus.

"You okay?" he asked, actually concerned.

I wiped my face, humiliation burning hotter than the sun. "I'm fine."

"You're shaking."

"Cold," I said. "Just cold."

He looked at me for a long second. "Want to get out of here? My grandma has this above-ground pool. You can learn. For real this time."

I laughed, half-choked on pool water. "You're asking me to swim in a grandma pool?"

"She makes cookies," he said. "And nobody will watch you drown."

"Okay," I said, because sometimes the truth hits you like cannonball waves, and sometimes you just need someone to help you back to the surface.

That afternoon, while Jessica's party continued without me, I learned to doggy paddle in a kiddie pool with chocolate chip cookies drying on the dashboard of Marcus's car, and realized that most things that feel like the end of the world are actually just the beginning of something else.