Saltwater Screens

Maya clutched her iphone like a lifeline, the screen glowing with notifications she'd already checked twelve times. Around her, the pool party erupted in chaos—cannonball splashes, laughter that felt too loud, and Jake from chem class doing something that definitely wasn't a real dive.

"You coming in or what?" called Chloe, the girl who somehow made everything look effortless. Maya's stomach did that thing where it forgot how to exist.

"Yeah, just... yeah."

She set her phone on the patio table, carefully positioning it away from splash zones. The device had become her armor—scrolling, liking, DMing her way through summer without actually having to be present. But something about today felt different. Maybe it was the way her mom had raised her eyebrows that morning, saying "you're sixteen, Maya, not sixty."

The water was colder than expected, shocking her into the moment. She swam toward the deep end, away from the splashing chaos, where the water grew quiet and everything sounded muffled and peaceful. This she could handle. This was the kind of swimming she actually liked—the kind where you could just... disappear for a while.

When she surfaced, gasping, Chloe was sitting on the pool's edge holding something orange and alien-looking.

"Ever tried papaya?" Chloe asked, slicing through the fruit with unexpected precision. "My dad's obsessed. It's literally the weirdest thing but also... not terrible?"

Maya blinked. "No. That's a thing people eat?"

"Only the adventurous ones." Chloe's grin was genuine, not performative. "Your phone's been blowing up, by the way. You know, in case you were worried about missing something important."

The reminder hit harder than it should have. Maya glanced at her phone, still glowing on the patio table. Then back at the papaya. At Chloe, who wasn't looking at her phone at all.

"You know what?" Maya pulled herself up, water streaming from her hair. "Let me try that weird fruit thing."

The first bite was... unexpected. Not bad. Different. Like summer might actually be about to start happening for real, not just through a screen.

"See?" Chloe said, already slicing another piece. "Told you. Not terrible."

Maya's phone buzzed again on the table. She didn't check it.