The Bear in the Blue Bikini

Maya's thumbs flew across her iPhone screen, doomscrolling through Instagram while pretending to lounge by the pool. Jenna's summer rager was supposed to be epic, but Maya felt like a fraud in her mis-matched bikini from last year's clearance rack.

"Yo, Maya! Get in here!" Jake called from the deep end. He was The Bear—six-foot-two of varsity quarterback energy who'd somehow become her pseudo-stepbrother when her mom started dating his dad.

She hesitated, thumb hovering over her phone. What if she posted something and got zero likes? What if—

Her phone slipped from her grip and made the most devastating sound ever heard by teenage ears: splash.

"NO!" Maya launched herself into the pool, fully clothed, searching blindly through the chlorinated depths. Her fingers brushed something furry instead of sleek glass. A cat? There was a cat at the pool party?

She surfaced, gasping, clutching a soaking wet orange kitten that looked personally offended by its bath.

"Bro, you just rescued that cat from drowning," Jake said, paddling over. "That's actually kinda iconic."

The kitten—Jenna's cat, apparently—shook itself off like a tiny, furious sprinkle ornament. Maya's iPhone glowed at the bottom of the pool, its screen still visible through four feet of water.

"My life is over," she groaned, but something in her cracked. The absurdity of it all—her, drowning a phone to save a cat she didn't even know existed, while The Bear looked at her with something like respect.

"Here." Jake stripped off his jersey. "You need this more than I do."

Maya caught it, and for the first time all summer, she didn't feel like a fraud. She felt like someone who'd done something completely, wonderfully stupid. The cat purred against her chest, and she realized she hadn't checked her notifications in exactly three minutes.