The Orange Trunks Incident

Marcus stood at the edge of the Jenkins' pool, clutching his towel like a safety net. The water glittered with that perfect blue that only existed in Instagram posts and movies on cable TV—neither of which his life resembled.

"You coming in or what?" Tyler called from the deep end, splashing water everywhere like he owned the place. Tyler always owned every place. The back of his neck was already turning pink from the June sun.

Marcus forced a laugh. "Yeah, just warming up."

Truth was, he wasn't warming up. He was spiraling. Because underneath his towel, Marcus was wearing the orange trunks his mom had bought on clearance. Not cool orange. Construction-worker-vest orange. Stop-sign-orange. The kind of orange that announced your presence before you even walked into the room.

He'd planned to swim before everyone else got there, before the popular kids showed up with their perfectly muted swimwear and effortless confidence. But then his dad's car had broken down, and now here he was, fashionably late to his own humiliation.

"Marcus!" Maya waved from the shallow end, her braces glinting. She was wearing a simple black bikini that looked somehow expensive. "Pool's heated!"

Yeah. He knew. The Jenkins' pool was always heated. Their cable package had every channel. Their garage contained two cars instead of one rusty Honda.

He dropped the towel.

For three seconds, nothing happened. Then Tyler surfaced, wiped water from his eyes, and said, "Whoa. Those are fresh."

The words hung there like cartoon speech bubbles, waiting for a laugh track.

"My mom got them on sale," Marcus said, his voice doing that cracking thing it still did sometimes when he was nervous.

Maya swam over. "They're actually kinda sick. Super bold. Like, confidence orange."

"Confidence orange," Tyler repeated, grinning. "I'm gonna steal that."

Something in Marcus's chest loosened. He jumped in.

The water was perfect, and his orange trunks floated around his legs like a ridiculous, bright flag. And when he surfaced, splashing water right back at Tyler, Maya was right—nobody was actually looking at his swimsuit. They were too busy being teenagers who all secretly worried about what everyone else was thinking.

Later, they'd order pizza and binge whatever was on cable, and Marcus would realize that the thing he'd spent all summer dreading had taken exactly twelve minutes to stop mattering. But that was later. Right now, he was just swimming.