Poolside Secrets

Maya Chen pressed her back against the vending machine, heart hammering like she'd just finished a 200-yard freestyle sprint. Being a fake spy wasn't supposed to involve actual adrenaline.

Three weeks ago, she'd started hanging out by the community pool during swim practice, ostensibly to finish her homework. Really, she'd been trying to figure out how the popular girls made everything look so effortless. How Katie moved through the hallways like she owned them, how everyone seemed to orbit around her without effort. Maya had been observing, taking mental notes, feeling like the world's most awkward undercover operative.

Then she'd seen it: Katie ducking behind the locker room building every afternoon, swallowing a handful of pills from an unmarked bottle, wiping her eyes before heading back to practice.

Maya's brain had immediately supplied a narrative: eating disorder. Anxiety meds. Something dark behind the perfect façade.

"You can come out," Katie said, not turning around. "I know you're there."

Maya froze. Busted. Her spy career had lasted approximately forty-seven seconds.

Katie turned, holding up the bottle. "They're vitamins. My mom's this super intense nutritionist, and she's convinced I'm deficient in literally everything. I have to take, like, eighteen supplements a day." She laughed, but her eyes looked tired. "I hide back here because it's embarrassing, okay? Not because I'm doing drugs or something."

"Oh," Maya said. "I thought..."

"You thought I was popping pills?" Katie raised an eyebrow. "Wow. Thanks for the faith in me."

"No, I just—you always seem so... together."

Katie snorted. "Nobody's that together, Maya. Nobody."

Something in Maya's chest loosened. All this time she'd been spying on someone she thought had it all figured out, while Katie had been hiding behind buildings, feeling just as awkward and judged as she did.

"Want one?" Katie held out a fluorescent orange tablet. "Supposedly it helps with energy. Or maybe brain function. I can never remember."

Maya took it. "What's it actually do?"

"Honestly?" Katie grinned. "I think it just makes your pee turn yellow."

They were still laughing when Katie's friends came out of the locker room, calling her name. Katie hesitated, then jerked her head toward them.

"You coming?"

Maya thought about all the hours she'd spent watching from the sidelines. Then she thought about fluorescent vitamins and secret vulnerabilities and the fact that nobody—that NOBODY—had it figured out.

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