Poolside Surveillance State

I felt like a **zombie** dragging myself to Tyler's pool party—third night this week I'd stayed up until 3 AM doomscrolling through everyone's highlight reels while mine collected dust in the draft folder. My mom kept going on about my **vitamin** D deficiency, how I needed more sunlight, more fresh air, more "living life instead of watching it through a screen." So here I was, externally participating while internally dissociating.

The real reason I'd come? I'd been essentially **spy**-ing on Maya's Instagram stories for weeks. The algorithm knew my weakness—Maya in a swimsuit, Maya laughing with her new friends, Maya living her best post-me life. Each post was a little paper cut, and I was bleeding out by inches. We'd dated for seven months last year before she decided she needed to "find herself" at summer camp. She came back different. Or maybe I was just the same, which was somehow worse.

"Yo, Marcus!" Tyler's voice cut through my spiral. "Get in the **pool** or get out of the headspace, man! You look like you're attending a funeral!"

I forced a laugh that sounded like gravel in a blender. Then I saw her. Maya. Standing by the deep end in this electric blue bikini that made my brain short-circuit. She caught me staring and actually waved. A genuine wave. My stomach did that thing where it forgets how to organ function.

"Hey stranger," she said, sliding onto the lounge chair beside mine. Up close, I noticed she wasn't wearing makeup. There was a tiny constellation of freckles across her nose I'd somehow never appreciated before. "You look... tired. Everything okay?"

And just like that, the careful architecture of my cool indifference collapsed. "Honestly? No. I've been stalking your stories and feeling like garbage about it, and I think I'm allergic to sunscreen, and my mom says I need more vitamins, and—"

Maya laughed. Not the performative Instagram-story-laugh, but real laughter that crinkled her eyes. "Marcus. I've been stalking YOUR stories too. I thought you moved on. I thought you were happy."

We sat there for an hour while the party raged around us, two pale zombies overdosing on vitamin D and honesty for the first time in forever. Sometimes the most revolutionary thing you can do is stop spying from the shadows and just... exist in the light.