Poolside Performance

The **pool** shimmered like liquid diamonds under the July sun, but Marcus's stomach churned like a washing machine. He'd spent three weeks sucking down those horse-pill **vitamin** supplements his cousin swore would give him "cut definition" by summer. The only thing they'd given him was green pee and thirty bucks poorer.

"Yo Marcus, you jumping in or what?" Jason called from the diving board, already surrounded by half the junior class. Last week's transfer student with the perfect smile and the varsity jacket he'd somehow earned before school even started.

Marcus tugged at his t-shirt. The locker room mirror had shown him the same lanky frame he'd always had—shoulders that hunched when they should broaden, abs that played hide-and-seek under a layer of baby fat.

"That's total **bull**," some girl laughed from a lounge chair. "Tyler said he got those abs doing crunches during commercials."

Her friend rolled her eyes. "Everything Tyler says is bull. His dad owns a gym, that's how."

Marcus froze. Tyler. The human golden retriever who'd managed to turn casual hallway nods into an invitation to Samantha's pool party. The same Tyler currently doing cannonballs with the grace of a dolphin, while Marcus stood there clutching his towel like a lifeline.

"Marcus!" Samantha waved from the shallow end, her wet hair slicked back. "Come on! The water's perfect!"

This was it. The moment. He could play it off—"forgot my swimsuit," "not feeling well," the classic Catholic sign of the cross to the nearest bathroom. Or...

He dropped his towel.

The vitamin bottle in his bathroom mocked him. All those promises, all that cash, all for nothing. His legs carried him to the pool's edge before his brain could finish overthinking it.

The water hit him like shock therapy. Cool and perfect and completely indifferent to his abs-or-lack-thereof. Jason splashed him. Samantha grinned. Tyler—Tyler was just some guy in the water, not a benchmark.

"Finally!" Jason shoved a wet clump of hair from his eyes. "Thought you were gonna chicken out."

Marcus laughed so hard he snorted water. "Me? Never."

Later, drying off in the sun, he realized something: nobody had been looking at his stomach. They'd been waiting for him to jump in.

That night, he dumped the remaining vitamins in the trash. Some gains couldn't be swallowed.