Poolside Pyramids

The first time I saw her, she was standing on the diving board like she owned the entire world. Casa's pool party was supposed to be the social event of the summer, and I'd spent three hours psyching myself up to actually show up.

Now I was regretting everything.

The pool was packed—bodies everywhere, music thumping, someone doing that stupid viral pyramid challenge where three people form a human pyramid in the shallow end while everyone filmed it for TikTok. I'd been running from my social anxiety all summer, and somehow I'd ended up exactly where I didn't want to be.

"You're not gonna get in the water?"

I looked up. She'd jumped off the diving board and was now shaking water from her hair like some kind of Disney Channel mermaid. Maya. The Maya who'd sat behind me in AP World History and never spoken a word.

"I'm good," I mumbled. Because of course I did. That was my thing—good, boring, invisible. The perfect spot in the social pyramid: safely in the middle, never risking anything, never getting hurt.

Her grin was trouble. "You sure about that? Because Tyler and his crew are about to start their third baseball game of chicken-fight championships, and I need a partner who won't drop me."

"Baseball?" I asked, confused.

"Baseball chicken fights. They hit a whiffle ball at us while we're on people's shoulders. It's chaos. It's terrible. I love it." She held out her hand. "Come on. I've seen you in gym class. You've got arms."

I stared at her hand. At the pool. At Tyler's crew screaming something about "swag" and "no cap" and trying to drown each other. This was exactly the kind of situation I'd been running from all year—the kind where you either stepped up or faded into the background forever.

Maya's grin didn't waver. "Unless you're scared?"

"I'm not scared," I said, even though I absolutely was.

"Then get in the pool, Cory."

So I did. And for the first time all summer, I stopped running. The pyramid of social expectations could wait. There were chicken fights to lose, and maybe, just maybe, a moment worth remembering.