The Chlorine Diaries

I spent forty-five minutes on my hair before Maya's pool party. Forty-five. Only to have it ruined the second I hit the water.

"You good, Riley?" Liam asked, floating nearby with that effortless grace that made my stomach do weird little flips.

"Fine," I lied, smoothing down my frizz. "Just adjusting."

The pool was chaos—Maya's annual start-of-summer blowout. Someone had brought a Bluetooth speaker. freshmen were trying too hard to impress seniors. And somewhere, a cat was meowing from Maya's bedroom window like it was auditioning for a horror movie.

"You're not swimming," Liam observed, paddling closer.

"I'm acclimating."

"You've been acclimating for twenty minutes."

He had me there. But there was no way I was getting in that water with my hair looking like this. The chlorine would turn my fresh balayage into straw. My mom had already spent a small fortune on hair vitamins that supposedly made it "stronger and shinier" but mostly just made me burp strawberry weirdness.

"Riley!" Maya screamed from the diving board. "Stop being such a cat and get in here!"

"I'm being cautious," I called back.

Everyone was watching. Jackson, the senior I'd been lowkey crushing on since forever, was looking. Great.

Then I saw it—through the gap in the fence, an actual fox. Just standing there, orange and unreal, watching us like we were the strangest thing it had ever seen. For a second, time stopped. The fox tilted its head, ears twitching, and I swear it was judging us.

"Did you guys see that?" I whispered.

Liam followed my gaze. "No way. That's actually sick."

The fox vanished as quickly as it appeared, but something shifted. This magnificent creature didn't care about perfect hair or social hierarchies or whether freshmen looked ridiculous attempting cannonballs. It just *was*.

"Race you to the deep end," I said suddenly.

Liam grinned. "You're going down, Torres."

I dove in, chlorine burning my eyes, hair immediately wrecked beyond repair. Jackson probably wasn't watching anymore. But as I surfaced, spluttering and laughing while Liam claimed victory he definitely didn't earn, I realized something.

The fox had the right idea.

Sometimes you just gotta dive in anyway.