Poolside Protocol

Maya's hands shook as she clutched her iPhone against her chest, watching the chlorine-blue water ripple below the diving board. The neighborhood pool party already felt like a social minefield, and she'd only been here ten minutes.

"You gonna swim or what?" called Jordan, the swim team captain whose perfect dives were basically Instagram famous. Maya's stomach did that awful twisty thing it always did when people noticed her existing.

"Yeah," she lied, adjusting her vitamin D deficiency bracelet like it gave her courage. She'd forgotten to take her actual vitamins that morning, which explained why her limbs felt like jelly.

Her phone buzzed. A notification from someone who'd posted an embarrassing swim fail video. Great. Maya slipped the phone into her towel bag, screens-down, because out of sight meant out of mind, right?

Then she saw it—Ash's cat, Mochi, prowling along the pool fence like the feline queen of judgment. Ash, the cute junior who'd transferred in last month, was chasing after the cat in board shorts that were unfairly distracting.

"Mochi, NO," Ash groaned, grabbing the cat before it could investigate someone's open soda can. Their eyes met, and Maya forgot how to human. "Hey, you're Maya from English, right?"

She managed something resembling a nod.

"Wanna help me get this menace away from the deep end?" Ash grinned, and Maya's brain short-circuited.

Suddenly Jordan appeared. "Taking the bull by the horns, huh?" He gestured at the cat. "That's awesome."

Maya froze. Wait. Was Jordan... impressed?

"Actually," Ash said, "Maya was about to show us her diving form. Weren't you?"

Maya's eyes widened. But Ash winked—barely noticeable, but definitely a wink.

"Uh, yeah," Maya said, surprising herself. "Watch this."

She climbed onto the diving board, heart pounding. No filming. No perfection. Just her, gravity, and a cute boy who'd just given her an opening. She didn't stick the landing perfectly, but as she surfaced to applause and Ash's thumbs-up, Maya realized she'd finally learned something more important than how to impress people.

Sometimes you just had to jump.