The Night We Didn't Drown

The first thing you should know about Josh's lake house party: nobody actually went swimming. Not really. We stood waist-deep in water that smelled like algae and teenage desperation, clutching red Solo cups like they were life rafts.

I'd been crushing on Maya since seventh period English, when she'd analyzed "The Catcher in the Rye" like she actually understood Holden's trauma. Now she stood by the dock in this fox-orange bikini that matched the sunset, laughing at something Tyler said. Tyler, who played varsity everything and had never once looked in my direction during lunch.

My golden retriever, Buster, was back at home probably sleeping on my bed, completely unaware that his human was having a full-blown existential crisis in someone else's backyard. Sometimes I wished I could be a dog — just naps and snacks and zero overthinking.

"You gonna get in or what?" Corey yelled from the porch. Corey was my oldest friend, the one person who knew I'd been practicing my cannonball in our above-ground pool like I was training for the Olympics.

I waded deeper. The water hit my chest — cold, shocking, honest. Maya glanced over, and for three seconds, our eyes locked across the darkening water.

Then something moved at the tree line.

A fox — actually, genuinely, a freaking fox — trotted out like it owned the place. Its coat burned brighter than Maya's bikini. It paused, ears swiveling, then vanished into the shadows.

"Did you guys see that—" I started.

"BEAR!" someone screamed.

And that's how the lake house party ended. Not with hookups or heartfelt conversations or whatever coming-of-age montage I'd mentally scripted, but with sixteen wet, half-dressed teenagers sprinting toward the house because someone's older brother's friend's cousin claimed they'd seen a bear that one time.

Later, wrapped in a towel that smelled like someone else's fabric softener, I found Maya on the back porch alone.

"That fox was real, right?" she asked.

"Yeah," I said. "The bear, though..."

She laughed, and something in my chest that had been tight all evening finally unspooled. "Corey told me you've been practicing your cannonball all summer."

Heat rushed to my face. "He said that?"

"Show me tomorrow," she said. "If we come back."

"We're coming back?"

"Obviously." She smiled, and it wasn't Tyler's smile or anyone else's. It was something new. "That fox was basically an omen."

An omen. Of what, I didn't know. But standing there, damp and ridiculous and possibly in love, I felt like I was finally learning how to swim.