The Lake and the Secret in My Pocket

The camp brochure promised 'life-changing experiences,' but so far, the only thing changing was my social standing—from invisible to awkwardly visible.

'You coming to the lake?' Maya asked, already halfway out the cabin door. She had that effortless cool thing going on, the kind where she could pull off a backwards baseball hat at 8 AM and make it look intentional instead of regrettable.

'Yeah,' I lied. 'Just gotta grab something.'

My secret: I couldn't swim. Not really. Not the kind of swimming where you don't panic when your feet can't touch bottom. My mom had signed me up for lessons when I was seven, but I'd faked a stomach ache every Saturday for three months until she gave up.

Now here I was, fifteen and at camp, and somehow my cat had better survival instincts than I did. I'd left Mr. Whiskers back home, probably sleeping in a sunbeam instead of staring down a lake that looked like it went straight to the center of the earth.

The camp counselor, a guy who introduced himself as Bear because of his 'intimidating presence' (he was five-foot-seven and wore tie-dye), was already in the water, splashing around like an overexcited golden retriever.

'Last one in's a rotten egg!' someone screamed. Naturally, this was followed by approximately thirty teenagers sprinting toward the dock like their lives depended on it.

Maya hung back, adjusting her hat. 'You okay? You look like you're about to puke.'

'I'm good,' I said, which was possibly the biggest lie I'd ever told. 'Just... gotta take my vitamin.' I pulled a random pill bottle from my pocket—my mom had packed them, convinced I'd get scurvy or rickets or something equally Victorian.

'Multivitamins?' Maya raised an eyebrow. 'At camp? You're weird.' But she was smiling, so maybe weird wasn't the worst thing to be.

We ended up sitting on the dock, legs dangling over the edge while everyone else pretended to be Olympic athletes. Bear eventually noticed and swam over, dripping wet and grinning like he'd just won the lottery.

'What's up, land lovers?' He waterlogged onto the dock beside us. 'Scared?'

'Strategic,' I corrected. 'Someone's gotta document your greatness for the camp newsletter.'

Maya laughed. An actual laugh, not the polite kind she gave everyone else. 'You're funny,' she said, and something in my chest did a little flip.

That night, lying in bed while the girl in the bunk above me snored like a chainsaw, I realized something: I'd spent the whole day terrified of the water, but the real fear had been that people would see through me. That they'd realize I was faking it—that I wasn't as brave or confident or interesting as I pretended to be.

But Maya had seen me sitting on a dock while everyone else swam, and she'd thought I was funny instead of pathetic.

I fell asleep thinking about bears and vitamins and the way Maya's laugh sounded, and for the first time in forever, I didn't hate the parts of myself that didn't quite fit.