Poolside Paranoia

The pool water rippled with that artificial blue glow that only cheap above-ground pools achieve. I stood by the snack table, clutching a warm soda like it was my lifeline. Carter's End-of-Summer Bash was supposed to be legendary, but mostly I'd spent forty-five minutes dodging the same three people I'd been avoiding since freshman year.

"Yo, Marcus!" Jackson materialized beside me, dripping wet and holding what remained of a bag of Hot Cheetos. "You gonna swim or what?"

"Maybe later," I lied, already mentally rehearsing my exit strategy.

I started running through the usual excuses in my head—homework, early practice, my mom needed me home. None of them would work. Jackson knew I didn't have practice on Fridays, and my mom had stopped setting curfews since I turned sixteen last month. That was supposed to feel freeing, but mostly it just meant I had nobody to blame for my own awkwardness.

That's when I saw her: Lena from my AP Lit class, sitting alone on the pool deck, scrolling through her phone with that concentrated expression she always had when she was reading. I'd been kind of low-key spying on her all semester—not in a creepy way, just observing. Like how she highlighted everything in three different colors, or how she chewed on her pen when she was thinking.

Jackson leaned in. "You gonna talk to her or keep being weird about it?"

"I'm not being weird," I protested. "I'm... strategizing."

"Bruh, you've been strategizing since August. At some point you gotta actually shoot your shot." He shoved a Cheeto in his mouth. "Or I can do it for you. I bet I can get her to come over here in thirty seconds."

"Don't you dare—"

But he was already walking toward her, leaving me frozen by the pretzel bowl. My heart started doing that weird fluttery thing that happened whenever Lena so much as looked in my direction. I watched them talk. She laughed at something Jackson said. Then she looked over at me, and instead of looking away like I normally would, I forced myself to hold her gaze.

She waved.

I waved back, feeling like the biggest dork on planet Earth.

But then she stood up and started walking toward me, and suddenly I wasn't thinking about running anymore. I was just standing there, holding my warm soda, waiting to see what happened next.