Poolside Riddles at Midnight

Maya hovered at the edge of the pool, clutching her red Solo cup like a lifeline. The senior house party raged around her—laughter spilling out of sliding glass doors, bass vibrating through the concrete. She'd only come because Chloe swore Lucas would be here.

Maya had been low-key spy-ing on Lucas from AP Bio since September. She knew he sat third row, chewed his pencil during tests, and always had AIRPODS in even when they weren't playing music. Creepy? Maybe a little. But Maya was fifteen and catastrophic crushes came with the territory.

She slid behind a palm tree in the corner of the yard—the fake kind with peeling fronds that somehow made everything feel more awkward. Through the leaves, she spotted Lucas by the deep end, gesturing dramatically at something.

A girl stood beside him. Riley, from varsity volleyball. Riley with perfect hair and a sun-kissed glow that made Maya's year-round pale feel like a personal failure.

They were leaning over the pool edge, pointing at something floating in the water.

"It's like a sphinx riddle," Maya heard Lucas say. "What kind of loser throws a speaker into a pool?"

Maya inched closer. The blue waterproof speaker bobbed near the filter system, still pulsing with muffled lofi beats.

She could walk away. Let Lucas and Riley have their moment. But something—maybe the embarrassment of hiding behind a decorative plant for twenty minutes—propelled her forward.

"Actually," Maya said, stepping into the light, "it's probably just drunk people being drunk people."

Lucas jumped. Riley laughed, but not meanly.

"No way," Lucas said, grinning. "Maya? From AP Bio?"

"The one and only."

"Thank GOD," Riley said. "We've been trying to fish that thing out for like ten minutes and neither of us wants to get wet."

"I'll do it," Maya said, already kicking off her flip-flops. "The speaker, I mean. Not—I'm not getting in. Just leaning."

She knelt at the pool's edge, arm extended, palm flat against the water's surface. The speaker drifted closer. Behind her, Lucas and Riley started speculating about who'd thrown it, their conversation flowing easy and ridiculous and nothing like Maya had imagined.

The speaker slipped into her grasp. She pulled it dripping from the water, droplets streaming down her arm like she'd touched something magic.

"You're literally a hero," Lucas said. "I'm not even being dramatic."

Riley slung an arm around Maya's shoulders. "We need snacks to celebrate this hero moment. You coming?"

Maya looked between them—really looked. Not through the lens of her imagination or behind the safety of a palm tree's camouflage. They were just two people at a party, being weird in the most regular way possible.

"Yeah," Maya said. "I'm coming."

And for the first time all night, she wasn't watching from the edges anymore.