Stainless Steel Summer

My summer transformation plan started with a $47 bottle of biotin gummies. Maya, the girl whose Instagram looked like a curated museum exhibit, swore they made her hair grow three inches in a month. I bought them on the way home from the padel courts, where I'd spent three hours embarrassing myself in front of everyone who mattered. The ball hit the wire fence. Again.

'You're gripping it too tight,' said Dylan, barely looking up from his iPhone. He'd been scrolling through TikToks between serves, effortlessly smashing balls while I chased phantom shots. 'You need to relax.' The irony wasn't lost on me. I was trying so hard to be casual that my actual self was somehow evaporating.

My dad's vitamin collection stared at me from the kitchen counter. He had everything—calcium, vitamin D, fish oil that made the whole house smell like a harbor. I added my gummy bottle to the lineup, a little pyramid of self-improvement. Maybe if I consumed enough things, I'd eventually become someone worth knowing.

Three weeks into the summer, the transformation wasn't going great. My hair hadn't grown. My padel game had somehow gotten worse. And Maya had posted a photo at a party I wasn't invited to, captioned 'summer nights 🌩️' with actual lightning in the background, because apparently the weather itself coordinated with her aesthetic.

Then came the storm that knocked out power across the neighborhood. No WiFi meant no Instagram, no TikTok, no endless comparison. Just me, Dylan, and his sister stranded on the porch with nothing but a lukewarm soda and three hours of twilight.

'You know those gummies you're taking?' Dylan said, gesturing to my purse where the bottle poked out. 'They're literally just candy. Maya's hair is extensions.' He laughed. 'We're all just pretending to know what we're doing.'

Lightning flashed somewhere beyond the trees, purple and sudden. For a second, everything was bright. I saw Dylan's sister roll her eyes. I saw Dylan shrug, unbothered. I saw myself—really saw myself—sitting on a stranger's porch, clutching a bottle of overpriced candy, waiting to become a different person.

The power came back around midnight. iPhones everywhere lit up like they'd been holding their breath. But I stayed on the porch a little longer, watching the rain, feeling something like real for the first time all summer.