Static Summer

The summer before sophomore year, I worked at the community pool handing out towels and pretending I wasn't absolutely terrified of everything. The job was Maya's idea — she said I needed to get out of my comfort zone before I became a certified hermit.

"You're literally wasting your youth," she'd said, scrolling through her phone while I sat on her bed trying to memorize the vitamin supplement routine my mom had printed out for me. Because apparently fourteen-year-olds needed to optimize their bone density or whatever.

The first time I saw him, the sky went that weird orange color right before a storm. He was doing laps, cutting through the water like he'd been born there. I stood behind the snack counter feeling like the world's biggest loser while Maya practically hyperventilated beside me.

"That's Ethan," she whispered. "He's a junior. His older brother got a full ride to State for swimming."

Great. Another person who had their life figured out while I was still trying to remember to take my vitamin D gummies.

A week later, I was closing up alone when the storm finally broke. Lightning turned the sky purple-white, and the pool's emergency lights flickered on, casting everything in this eerie underwater glow. Ethan was still there, sitting on the edge with his feet in the water.

"Creepy, right?" he said, like we talked all the time.

I nodded, my palms sweating so bad I thought I might literally dissolve right there on the pool deck.

He patted the space beside him. "Come here. I want to show you something."

I sat. The storm was so close I could taste the electricity in the air, that metallic ozone smell.

"Watch," he said.

Another lightning strike, closer this time. For a split second, the whole pool lit up electric blue, and beneath the surface, dozens of coins glittered back at us — people's pocket change, lost during diving contests and cannonballs and lazy afternoons.

"That's literally hundreds of dollars," I whispered.

"Or it's just people's memories," he said. "Things they left behind without noticing."

We sat there as the storm moved through, talking about everything and nothing, and for the first time all summer, I didn't feel like I was swimming upstream against my own awkwardness. I didn't mention the vitamins. He didn't mention being a junior. We just watched the lightning.

The next day, Maya asked why I was smiling like an idiot. I couldn't explain it — how some moments are just static electricity between two people, how sometimes the universe gives you exactly what you need before you even know to ask for it.

I never did dive for those coins. Some things are better left at the bottom of the pool, where the light can still find them.