The Bear on My Shoulder

I caught myself spying on Maya's Instagram again. Third time tonight. Her story showed her at Jake's pool party—everyone laughing, cannonballing, living their best lives while I sat in my room feeling like a total loser.

That's when Leo FaceTimed. My best friend since kindergarten, the one person who never made me feel like I was performing for an audience.

"Dude, you coming?" he asked. His room was dark behind him. "Maya literally just asked about you."

"I can't. I'm... busy."

"You're not busy. You're in your head again. Look, I know you're stressed about the move, but—"

"It's not the move."

"Then what? Because you've been acting like a zombie all week. You barely talked at lunch yesterday."

He wasn't wrong. Between my parents' divorce and the upcoming cross-country move, I'd been running on autopilot. Everything felt distant, like I was watching my own life through someone else's eyes. The bear tattoo on my shoulder—my eighteenth birthday impulse decision, a promise to myself to be brave—felt like a joke now. Some brave soul. I couldn't even show up to a pool party.

"Just come," Leo said. "Swimming. Chips. Jake's mom ordered way too much pizza. It's low stakes."

So I went.

When I walked in, Maya was climbing out of the pool, water dripping from her hair. Our eyes met and she smiled—actually smiled—and something in my chest loosened.

"I was hoping you'd show," she said, grabbing a towel. "Leo said you might not."

The night unfolded like something out of a movie I'd actually want to watch. We swam until our fingers pruned, ordered takeout at midnight, sat on the roof watching satellites drift across the sky. Maya told me about her anxiety about college applications. Leo confessed he'd failed his driving test for the third time. I told them about the move, about the fear that everything would change.

"It won't," Maya said, her shoulder pressing against mine. "Not everything."

The bear on my shoulder didn't feel like a joke anymore. It felt like a reminder—some things you choose, some things you don't, but you keep swimming either way.