The Fox at the Deep End

Maya's hair had cost three hours and exactly forty-seven dollars to perfect — electric blue curls that said I don't care what you think, even though she cared entirely too much. Now she stood at the edge of the **pool**, clutching her **iPhone** like it was a lifeline, watching everyone else splash around like they'd been born knowing how to be this unselfconscious.

"You coming in?" Leo called from the water. He was **swimming** backward, laughing at something someone said, water droplets clinging to his eyelashes.

"Yeah," Maya lied. "Just checking something."

She wasn't checking anything. She was seven kinds of terrified because she'd never learned to swim properly, and isn't that embarrassing at sixteen? The fake it till you make it philosophy had carried her through algebra and lunchroom seating charts, but there was no faking not drowning.

That's when she saw it — a real, actual **fox** standing at the fence beyond the pool deck, watching them with these uncanny human eyes. Its reddish coat gleamed under the string lights like it had just wandered out of a dream.

Maya almost dropped her phone. The fox tilted its head, then slipped through a gap in the fence and padded toward the pool like it owned the place. Someone screamed. Leo shouted something. The fox didn't care. It walked straight to the edge, looked at Maya like they shared a secret, and then —.

It jumped in.

Foxes can swim. Who knew?

The fox doggy-paddled with surprising grace, completely unbothered by three dozen teenagers losing their minds, filming with iPhones, someone yelling "IS THAT A DOG?" It swam to the shallow end and shook itself off, spraying water everywhere, and Maya found herself laughing so hard she nearly fell in.

"That fox has more confidence than all of us," Leo said, swimming over to where she stood.

Maya looked at her phone, at the chaos, at Leo's grin. At the fox, now elegantly grooming itself by the lounge chairs like it had just attended a perfectly normal pool party.

"Yeah," she said, and put her phone down on the table. "Yeah, it does."

She jumped in before she could think about it. The water was cold and shocking and perfect.