The Great Pool Party Fiasco

Maya's first real job: lifeguard at the community pool. She'd practiced her serious face in the mirror for weeks, psyching herself up for the responsibility. What she hadn't prepared for was Tyler Evans—aka the bull of sophomore year—showing up with half the swim team.

"Hey, lifeguard lady!" Tyler called, splashing water way too close to the edge. "Think you could actually save someone, or just look good doing nothing?"

Her hair was already frizzing in the humidity. She'd spent twenty minutes this morning getting it perfect, but now it was becoming a disaster. Just like her summer.

But the real disaster happened when Mrs. Henderson's prize-winning cat decided the pool deck was its new kingdom. Orange tabby. Earrings of white fur. Completely uninterested in Maya's frantic whisper-shooing.

"Is that... a cat?" Tyler asked, pausing mid-dunk.

Then, as if summoned, the cat spotted something in the grass near the snack bar. A lone spinach leaf from someone's abandoned salad. The cat pounced.

Maya lunged to catch it before it fell into the pool—something in her head about cat hair in filters being terrible—and she tripped. Not graceful-fall tripped. Full-on, limbs-everywhere, face-plant tripped.

Silence. Then laughter. Not mean laughter, though—gen-uine, helplessly-is-this-actually-happening laughter. Even Tyler was cracking up, holding his sides.

Maya surfaced from her dignity's death, sputtering pool water, to find the cat sitting calmly on a lounge chair, spinach leaf pinned under one paw like it had conquered a dragon.

"You okay?" Tyler asked, actually sounding concerned.

Maya started laughing too. Couldn't stop. Suddenly Tyler Evans wasn't the bull anymore—just some guy who maybe wasn't so bad. And her frizzy hair? Whatever.

"Your cat," she told Mrs. Henderson later, "has excellent taste in vegetables."

By the end of summer, Maya still couldn't believe she got paid for this.