Poolside Undead

I felt like a zombie. Three hours of sleep after doom-scrolling TikTok until 3 AM will do that to you. But here I was, at Jessica's end-of-summer pool party, fake-smiling my way through clusters of people I barely knew from sophomore year.

The worst part? I couldn't swim. Like, at all. And everyone was already in the pool, laughing and splashing like this was some coming-of-age movie and they'd all received the script.

"Hey!"

I jumped. A girl in a neon yellow bikini had appeared beside me. Maya, from my English class. She sat on the edge, dangling her feet in the water. "You're not swimming?"

"Not feeling it," I mumbled, because admitting I couldn't swim at sixteen felt like admitting I still watched Bluey.

"Me neither." She pulled her knees to her chest. "I'm just here for the snacks. Also to avoid my stepdad's weekend lecture series about 'building character.'"

I laughed, and it actually sounded genuine. "Mine's been on my case about college applications since seventh grade."

"Same energy." She pulled a bag of Doritos from behind her back. "Want some? I liberated them from the chip bowl before the football team demolished everything."

We sat there for twenty minutes, eating chips and making fun of people's cannonballs. She told me about her obsession with horror movies and cryptids. I told her about my secret dream to write comics instead of becoming a doctor like my mom wanted.

"You know what?" she said, watching a group doing some weird coordinated dance in the shallow end. "Sometimes being a zombie is fine. Like, we're all just shambling through high school, trying not to fall into the pool of existential dread."

"That was awful."

"I know, right?" She grinned. "But seriously—" She splashed water at my legs. "You want to just get in and tread water? We don't have to swim. Just exist."

So I did. And for the first time all summer, I didn't feel like I was faking it.