The Pool Party

I'm standing at the edge of the pool, toes curled against the concrete, while everyone else is already in the water. Maya's laughing at something Jake said, her hair slicked back like a mermaid from a Disney movie. Even the geeks from chemistry look somehow cool swimming laps.

"You coming in or what?" Jake calls, splashing water my way.

My stomach does that thing where it feels like I swallowed a whole bottle of those chewy vitamin C tablets my mom's always pushing on me. "Yeah, just—gotta take my vitamins first," I mumble, pulling a bottle from my bag like it's the most normal thing in the world to take supplements at a pool party.

Nobody buys it. Maya's still watching me, and I can feel the heat rising to my cheeks.

Here's the thing: I don't know how to swim. Not really. I can doggy-paddle across the shallow end, but that's about it. And apparently, everyone else at fifteen has been swimming since they were in diapers.

"Dude, just jump!" Jake yells.

I take a deep breath and prepare for the most embarrassing moment of my life.

But then Maya's beside me, water dripping from her elbows. "Hey."

"Hey."

"You okay?"

I shrug, suddenly tired of pretending. "I'm not great at swimming."

She looks at me for a second, then gestures toward the pool's edge where the water's shallowest. "The shallow end's not that deep. We can walk.

So we do. And it's not graceful or cool or anything like that, but somehow, wading through the waist-deep water while Maya talks about her disastrous attempt at baking cookies last weekend, I realize nobody's watching me anymore. Nobody cares that I'm not doing laps or diving or whatever.

Later, when we're sitting on the pool edge eating pizza that tastes like chlorine and victory, Jake tosses me a gummy bear. "Vitamin for the soul," he says.

I laugh. And maybe it's the pool water still in my ears, but everything sounds a little bit like the beginning of something good.