Poolside Prophecy

The last text I'd sent said maybe—so casual, so chill, so totally not how my insides felt. Now my **iPhone** was dead at the worst possible moment.

Emma's pool party was in full swing. Bodies splashed in the **pool**, music thumped from somewhere, and I was stranded on a lounge chair like a loser, frantically searching my bag for a **cable**. My palms were slick with sweat, and not from the heat.

"Need a charge?"

I looked up. It was Sofia, reading her **palm** like she did in homeroom when she was bored. She tilted her head, all mysterious energy. "Your lifeline's crazy long. You're gonna do something huge this summer."

"Just need my phone," I mumbled, but something stopped me from grabbing the cable from her outstretched hand.

"You know what my abuela says?" Sofia squinted at my hand. "Sometimes the universe cuts your power on purpose. Like, fate's way of making you actually live instead of just watching through a screen."

She reached into her pocket and pulled out a neon orange gummy. "Here. Take this **vitamin** for courage instead."

It was just a gummy bear. But something in her eyes made me pause.

I looked at the pool, at Jake laughing with his friends, at the text I'd been obsessing over all week. Maybe dead phone wasn't the problem. Maybe I was.

I left the cable on the table. Popped the gummy in my mouth. And walked straight toward the pool, toward Jake, toward whatever happened next.

My palms were still sweaty. But for the first time all summer, I was actually, terrifyingly, alive.