Riddles at the Deep End

The pool party was supposed to be chill, but Maya's phone had been blowing up for twenty minutes. When I finally found her behind the garage, she was sitting on a milk crate, fully dry in her swimsuit, staring at the **water** like it personally offended her.

"You coming in or what?" I asked, flicking water at her knee. "Tyler's doing cannonballs and you know he's only doing it to impress you."

Maya didn't even flinch. That was the thing about my best **friend** lately—ever since she transferred to Northwood, she'd been weirdly distant, like she was holding back something huge. I'd catch her looking at me sometimes with this unreadable expression, totally sphinx-like and ancient.

"Hey." I waved my hand in her face. "Earth to Maya. You good?"

She finally looked up, and her eyes were weirdly intense. "What would you do if you couldn't swim?"

I laughed, assuming she was kidding. "I'd literally never go to a pool party again, for one."

The air between us suddenly felt charged, thick with something I couldn't name. Maya's hands twisted together in her lap, her knuckles going white.

"I'm not joking, Elena."

Oh.

Oh wow.

All those times she'd bailed on beach trips. All those pool parties she'd mysteriously "forgotten" about. The way she'd nearly hyperventilated when we'd walked past the community center pool last week.

"Since when?" I whispered, dropping down beside her.

"Always." Her voice cracked. "I was hoping if I avoided it long enough, it would just... not be a thing anymore. But then Tyler invited me and I didn't want to look lame in front of everyone and—"

"So you decided to come and just sit behind a garage instead?" I finished for her, trying to keep my face straight.

Maya groaned, dropping her head into her hands. "I know, okay? It's pathetic."

"It's not pathetic." I bumped her shoulder with mine. "You know what's pathetic? Tyler thinking he can swim but actually doing this weird frantic doggy-paddle thing that looks like he's fighting invisible demons."

A tiny smile escaped her.

"I can teach you," I said. "Like, actually teach you. Not that fake stuff where you splash around and call it swimming. My cousin's a lifeguard, she showed me this method that's actually not scary."

Maya turned to me, her eyes wide with something like hope. "Really?"

"Duh. We'll come back tomorrow when no one's here. It'll be our thing." I stood up and held out my hand. "But first, we're going back there and you're going to watch Tyler's cannonball attempt and laugh at it with me. Deal?"

"Deal." She took my hand and let me pull her up, and for the first time all night, she didn't look like she was carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders.

The water could wait until tomorrow. Some things were bigger than fear, and finding out your best friend trusted you enough to admit hers? That was everything.