The Fox by the Pool

Maya's stomach did actual backflips as she stood at the edge of the pool, clutching her orange towel like a lifeline. This was it—the party of the year, and she was barely keeping it together.

"You coming in or what?" Jake called from the water, droplets flying everywhere as he flipped his wet hair. THE Jake. The one she'd been lowkey obsessed with since seventh grade Spanish.

"Yeah, just, uh, warming up," Maya lied smoothly. Meanwhile, she was hyper-aware of the spinach stuck between her front teeth from lunch. She'd been obsessively checking her phone camera for twenty minutes, but no luck.

Her best friend Zoe rolled her eyes from a pool chair. "Maya, literally nobody cares. Just swim."

Easy for her to say. Zoe was wearing a vintage band tee and looked effortlessly cool. Meanwhile, Maya's bright orange swimsuit felt like a spotlight on everything wrong with her body.

Then she saw it—a flash of rusty red near the edge of the backyard.

A fox.

An actual, real-life fox was staring at her from behind the bushes, like it understood everything. Like it knew she was being weird about spinach and crushes and orange swimsuits.

"Yo, is that a fox?" someone shouted.

Suddenly, everybody was looking. The fox bolted, but in the chaos, Maya realized nobody was watching her anymore. Jake was laughing, pointing, totally distracted. Zoe was already filming it for her story.

Maya's fingers found the spinach. Gone. She slipped into the pool, cool water washing away the sticky feeling of embarrassment.

"Did you see that?" Jake swam over, grinning. "That was insane."

"Yeah," Maya said, actually smiling now. "Pretty wild."

Sometimes the universe sent you a fox to save you from yourself. And sometimes, you just had to jump in the pool anyway.