The Pool Party Disaster

Maya stood at the edge of the pool, her phone clutched in sweaty palms. Jordan was there, laughing with his friends, his wet hair plastered to his forehead. She'd been waiting for this moment all summer.

"Hey Maya!" Jordan called, waving her over. "You coming in or what?"

Her heart did that thing where it forgot how to beat properly. She checked her iPhone one last time—3% battery. Perfect. The universe had a terrible sense of timing.

"Yeah!" she managed, kicking off her flip-flops. She'd practiced this cool entry in her mirror approximately fifty times. Confident. Casual. Not desperate.

Her phone slipped from her grip and plopped into the water with a tiny splash.

No. No, no, no.

Maya stared at the sinking device like it was a drowning kitten. Jordan was already swimming toward her. This was fine. Everything was fine. She could just...

"You okay?" Jordan asked, treading water near the edge.

"My phone," Maya said, her voice cracking. "It's... uh... at the bottom."

Without hesitation, Jordan dove under. The pool surface rippled. Maya stood there, realizing two things simultaneously: first, that Jordan was actually a decent human being, and second, that she'd had spinach stuck in her teeth for approximately three hours.

She'd eaten a spinach dip at lunch. Alone. In her car. Because she was too nervous to actually talk to people at the party.

Jordan surfaced, phone in hand, shaking water from his dark hair. "Here. Hope it's not fried."

Maya took it with hands that were somehow even sweatier than before. "Thanks. You're like, actually my hero right now."

"No problem." He grinned, and then—because the universe was not done with her yet—he added, "By the way, you have a little something in your teeth."

Maya wanted to dissolve into the chlorine.

"Oh my god," she whispered. "How long?"

"Since I got here?" Jordan shrugged. "It's not that bad. Kind of funny, actually."

"Funny," Maya repeated weakly.

"Hey, my phone's dead too. You have a charging cable?"

They ended up sitting on the pool deck, two dead phones between them, watching the party swirl around them. Maya learned that Jordan got nervous before parties too, that he once walked around school with toilet paper on his shoe for an entire day, that his palms sweated when he liked someone.

"So," Jordan said, as the sky turned purple. "Want to hang out next weekend? Like, without any pools. Or spinach."

Maya smiled. "I think I can manage that."