Shark in the Shallows

I'm legit drowning in social anxiety, and the water's only four feet deep.

"Yo Marcus, you coming in or what?" Tyler yells from the diving board, doing something that looks attempted-suicidal but he probably thinks looks cool.

"Yeah, yeah," I call back, gripping the pool ladder like it's my only friend in this hostile aquatic ecosystem. I'm not much of a swimmer—which is exactly what happens when your parents think pool parties are optional but track is mandatory. I've been running cross country since seventh grade, my body conditioned for land, for momentum, for forward motion that actually obeys the laws of physics I understand.

Water is chaos. Water is betrayal.

I adjust my baseball hat—still perched on my head because I am THAT person at a pool party—when I notice her. Chelsea. The reason I'm even here. The reason I agreed to endure chlorine and judgment and the very real possibility of my trunks falling off in front of half the sophomore class.

She's sitting alone on one of those lounge chairs that always look comfortable but actually feel like lying on a plastic ribcage. She's reading. At a pool party. Which is weird, but also the most attractive thing I've ever seen.

For a solid twenty minutes, I become the world's worst spy. I swim with the grace of a wounded manatee, doing slow laps parallel to her chair, pretending I'm not basically stalking her with my eyes. I'm stealthy in the same way a giraffe is stealthy.

Then it happens. She looks up, catches me staring mid-crawl, and I panic. I do this weird half-flail thing that's supposed to be a turn but looks more like I'm fighting an invisible sea monster. Water up my nose. My hat floats away like a tiny boat abandoning ship.

She laughs. Not mean-laughing, but like, actual laughing.

"You good?" she calls out, sliding into the pool beside me.

"Totally," I say, retrieving my dignity (and my hat) from the deep end. "Just practicing my... tactical aquatic maneuvers."

"Tactical?" She raises an eyebrow, and I notice for the first time she's got these tiny freckles across her nose and I'm absolutely done for. "You in the military now, Marcus?"

"Only in my dreams," I say, and somehow we're talking, really talking, about cross country and how she hates swimming too and we're both just pretending to belong at this party that feels like everyone else got the script for and we're ad-libbing.

"I'm terrible at this," she admits, splashing water my way. "The whole social scene thing. I feel like I'm constantly swimming upstream."

"Same," I say. "But upstream is where the conditioning happens, right?"

She smiles, and I know two things with absolute certainty: (1) I'm going to survive this party, and (2) I am absolutely keeping this hat on for the rest of my life.