Poolside Lightning and Leon

The pool glittered like someone had spilled a galaxy into the backyard, and I was absolutely not getting in. Not with Jordan watching from the diving board like some kind of Instagram deity.

"Yo Maya, you good?" Lisa called from the water, her neon floatie bobbing. "You've been clutching that solo cup for twenty minutes."

I forced a laugh. "Just vibing, you know how it is."

I did not know how it was. I didn't know how anything was. This was supposed to be the party of the summer and I was standing by the snack table feeling like a fraud in my two-piece that I'd spent three weeks psyching myself up to wear.

Then lightning cracked across the sky — actual purple-white lightning that turned everyone's faces ghost-white for one solid second.

"Alright, out of the pool!" Jordan's mom shouted from the patio. "Storm's coming in fast."

Everyone scrambled out, water dripping everywhere, towels flying, chaos in the best way. I started helping Lisa gather the floating cups when I heard it — this tiny, pathetic mewling from the bushes near the fence.

A cat. A soaking wet, absolutely furious calico cat who looked like she'd personally been offended by the storm.

I dropped to my knees in the grass (ruining my sandals, whatever) and reached out slowly. "Hey there, disaster girl."

She hissed, then immediately collapsed into my lap like I'd been her human all along.

"You find a friend?" Jordan appeared beside me, and I could feel my face doing that thing where it betrayed everything.

"Her name's Leon now," I said definitively.

"Leon's a girl's name?"

"Gender is a spectrum, Jordan."

He laughed — actually laughed, not his Instagram pose laugh — and sat down in the wet grass beside me. Lightning flashed again, closer this time, the thunder rolling through the ground under us. And suddenly it was just me and Jordan and this furious cat in the rain-sweet air, everyone else inside, and I realized I was having the most honest moment of the entire summer.

"Leon can sleep in my room tonight," Jordan said. "My mom's weirdly chill about animals."

"Like, how chill?"

"She once let a raccoon stay in the garage for a week."

"Deal."

We sat there as the storm opened up, Leon purring like a tiny engine, and I thought maybe the pool could wait. Maybe the perfect moment wasn't about being perfect at all.