The Bull in the Blue

Marco stood at the edge of the swimming pool, clutching his iPhone like it was his only lifeline. The water sparkled with that fake-blue chemical brightness, and somewhere inside him, something curled up tight. He'd been working out all summer—okay, fine, two weeks—but still, the idea of taking off his shirt made him want to evaporate.

"Yo Marco! You coming in or what?" Jenna called from the pool, water dripping from her hair like she was in a commercial. She was the kind of pretty that made his brain short-circuit.

"Yeah, just, uh—checking something."

He wasn't checking anything. He was panicking.

Then he saw it: Chad's massive inflatable bull float, parked like a ridiculous throne by the deep end. Chad—the actual human bull of sophomore year, all muscle and zero chill—was currently doing a cannonball that sent a tsunami toward Jenna.

Marco's phone buzzed. GROUP CHAT: pool party saturday!!!

His thumb slipped. Gravity took over. His iPhone did a slow-motion nosedive—straight toward the pool.

"No no no—"

He lunged. Time stretched weird, like that moment before a test you forgot to study for. His fingers grazed the case. His body followed. Splash.

Underwater, everything was muffled and blue. He grabbed his phone—still dry, somehow—and pushed toward the surface. And there they were: Jenna, Chad, half the sophomore class, all staring.

Marco broke the surface, sputtering, holding his phone aloft like Excalibur. Water streamed down his face. He waited for the laughter.

"That was actually pretty sick," Chad said, nodding. "Dude took a bullet for his phone."

Jenna was smiling. "You literally dived headfirst into eight feet of water. That's unhinged."

"My phone," Marco said lamely.

"Your phone lives to see another day," she said, splashing him. "You coming back in or what?"

Marco looked down at his bare chest. No one was looking. Or if they were, they weren't looking away.

He grinned. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm coming in."

Somewhere behind him, Chad's inflatable bull drifted into the deep end like a ridiculous rubber oracle. Marco kicked toward it, and for the first time all summer, the water didn't feel like something to fear. It just felt like water, and he was just some kid who'd done something brave for something stupid, and sometimes that was enough. Sometimes that was everything.