The Chlorine Cure

I walked into third period looking like a literal zombie. Thanks to my mom's friend who's "learning to cut hair" and offered me a free trim, I now had bangs that started at my hairline and ended somewhere around my nostrils. Three uneven, choppy nostrils.

"What happened to your face?" Jake asked, and I wanted to dissolve into my chair.

"Nothing," I mumbled, pulling my baseball cap lower. The same baseball cap I'd been wearing for three days straight.

The real problem wasn't school. It was Saturday—Tyler's pool party. THE Tyler. The one whose eyes lingered on me during bio lab, who'd somehow ended up in my DMs at 11 PM last week asking if I was going. Now I had to choose: show up looking like I lost a fight with a lawnmower, or stay home and lose my chance at something that might actually be good.

"You're still going, right?" Maya demanded at lunch. "Everyone's gonna be there."

"Look at me, Maya. I can't go swimming like THIS."

She studied my face for a second. "So don't swim. Just wear your hat in the pool."

"That's worse. That's so much worse."

Saturday came anyway. I spent forty minutes staring at my reflection, debating whether Instagram filters were transferable to real life. My room smelled like hair gel and anxiety.

When I got to Tyler's house, music was already thumping. Kids were everywhere, splashing, laughing, existing without caring about their hair or their noses or whether the person they liked was watching them too closely.

I found a spot in the shade and kept my hat on. Tyler appeared with two sodas, shirtless, with chlorine still clinging to his shoulders.

"You okay?" he asked. "You seem... tense."

"Fine," I said, like a liar.

Someone screamed. "CANNONBALL!" A wave of water hit me square in the face. My hat flew off. My bangs sprang forward like they'd been waiting their entire life for this moment.

I froze. Waiting for the laugh. The comment. The thing that would make me wish I'd never been born.

"Dude," Tyler said, looking at me. "Your hair is sick."

"What?"

"Yeah, it's giving. Like, actually edgy." He grinned. "Now get in here, the water's perfect."

I jumped in wearing all my clothes because that felt easier than taking them off. The chlorine burned my eyes and someone splashed me immediately and Maya yelled "ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE" for some reason and Tyler laughed so hard he got water up his nose.

Underwater, everything was muffled and blue and simple. My hair floated up around me like it was supposed to look that way all along. Sometimes the things you think will ruin you are just things that happen, and then you keep going anyway.