Sink or Swim at Miller's Pool

Maya's palms were already sweating before she even got to Miller's backyard. The annual end-of-school pool party. The social event of the season that everyone would be talking about on Monday.

She'd spent two hours straightening her hair that morning, only for the humidity to frizz it into something resembling a poodle explosion. Her mom had packed a "healthy" lunch featuring a spinach salad that Maya had reluctantly eaten, and now she was paranoid about having green stuff in her teeth.

"Maya! You came!" Chloe shouted from the pool edge, bouncing on her tiptoes. Chloe was everything Maya wasn't: confident, popular, and currently sporting perfect beach waves that had somehow defied the weather.

Maya forced a smile and made her way to the patio table where everyone had dumped their stuff. She immediately grabbed her iPhone, thumbing through Instagram stories she'd already seen three times. Anything to avoid making eye contact with Jake, who was currently emerging from the pool like some Greek god, water dripping from hair that looked good wet. How was that fair?

"You gonna swim or just stand there looking cute?" Jake asked, flicking water at her.

Maya's stomach did that thing where it tried to exit through her throat. "I, uh—"

"She's scared!" someone called out. But not mean. Just... stating facts.

Maya's face burned. She wasn't scared, exactly. She just... well, she'd never really learned. Growing up, her mom had been weird about public pools, something about chemicals and infections, so Maya had just... never. And now she was fifteen and it was apparently weird to not know how to swim.

"It's okay if you don't want to," Ryan said from beside her. He was quiet, the kind of guy who blended into the background at school, but his voice was steady. "I can stay up here with you."

Something about his non-judgmental tone made Maya's chest loosen. "I just... never learned."

"No big deal. I sink like a rock myself. That's why I stay in the shallow end like a loser."

Maya laughed, surprised. "You're not a loser."

"Yeah, right." But he was smiling. "Hey, you have a little—" He gestured to his own teeth.

Maya's eyes went wide. The spinach. She'd had spinach stuck in her teeth this whole time while she was stress-smiling at everyone.

"Oh my GOD," she whispered.

"It's gone now," Ryan said. "I was gonna tell you, but you seemed nervous, and I didn't want to make it worse."

Maya stared at him, then burst out laughing. Not fake polite laughter, but actual laughter. "I've been walking around with spinach in my teeth for two hours."

"Honestly? It made you more relatable." Ryan shrugged. "Nobody here is perfect. They're all just better at pretending."

He waded into the shallow end, gesturing for her to follow. "Come on. We can be shallow-end losers together."

Maya stepped in, cool water rising around her legs, then her waist. She slid under, surfacing with wet hair plastered to her face, and for the first time all day, she didn't care what anyone thought. Jake was doing cannonballs with his friends. Chloe was taking selfies. Ryan was floating beside her, looking perfectly content.

Maybe that's what growing up really meant—not becoming perfect, but finding people who didn't care that you weren't.