Storm Warning

The night of Jordan's pool party, I was vibrating with the kind of nervous energy that makes you check your reflection in every shiny surface. My curls were frizzing in the humidity, and I'd spent twenty minutes convincing myself that my swimsuit wasn't too basic, not too extra, just... normal enough to blend in.

"You coming in or what?" Jordan called from the pool, surrounded by the kind of effortlessly cool people who naturally formed constellations of social gravity. I'd been orbiting their group all year, never quite close enough to be pulled in.

I dipped my toes in the water. "Yeah, just... warming up?" Lame. So lame.

Then Sarah—the girl I'd been lowkey crushing on since September—draped herself over the pool edge next to me. "You know what they say about swimming right after eating."

"Wait, isn't that a myth?" I said, and she laughed, and I felt that terrifying warmth spreading through my chest like I'd swallowed something dangerous.

"Totally a myth." She splashed water at me. "But I'm not above exploiting ancient wisdom if it means more company."

The air pressure changed before anything else. That heavy, electric feeling that makes the hair on your arms stand up. Someone pointed upward—"storm's rolling in"—and sure enough, lightning fractured the sky purple-white, a crack of thunder chasing it like it was late for something important.

"Everyone out!" Jordan's mom yelled from the back door, and suddenly we were all grabbing towels and running toward the covered patio, laughing because adrenaline makes everything funny, even the way Marcus slipped and nearly face-planted into a lounge chair.

We huddled under the patio, watching the rain sheet down in that sudden, violent downpour way. Sarah ended up next to me on the outdoor sofa, our shoulders touching, and I stopped caring about my frizzy hair or whether my swimsuit was basic enough.

"This is way better than actually swimming," she said, and I nodded, dumb with happiness, understanding that sometimes the best moments aren't the ones you plan for—they're the ones that find you when the sky opens up and everything changes.