The Pool Party Protocol
Jayden stood at the edge of the concrete pool deck, clutching his phone like a lifeline. The cable knotted around his ankle—literally, the coaxial cable his dad had made him drag from the basement to test the new internet router—wasn't helping his cool factor.
"You coming in or what?" Marcus called from the water, splashing water toward the edge. The rest of the squad was already swimming, laughing, being effortlessly comfortable in their own skin.
Jayden's stomach did backflips. He hadn't even brought swim trunks. Who gets invited to a pool party and forgets swim trunks? The same person who'd had spinach stuck in their braces during sixth period, apparently. His brand was strong.
"Yo, Jayden!" Maya surfaced near the edge, wiping water from her eyes. "Marcus is challenging you to chicken fight. You in?"
The universe was testing him. He could pretend to check his phone, claim his mom needed him, bail like he always did when things got awkward. But Maya was looking at him with those eyes that made his chest feel weird, and Marcus was grinning like he knew exactly how much Jayden wanted to say yes but couldn't.
"Nah," Jayden said, surprising himself. "I got something better."
He grabbed the baseball that had been sitting on the patio table—someone had brought it earlier for who knows what reason—and fake-pitched it toward Marcus. "First one to catch it five times doesn't have to do Maya's chemistry homework next week."
"You're on," Marcus said, swimming toward the edge.
Jayden's phone buzzed in his pocket. The cable finally connected to the router. A notification lit up his screen: Maya had tagged him in a story from five minutes ago. #cannonballchampion.
He wasn't swimming. He wasn't smooth. He was still the guy who'd tripped over his own feet during gym class yesterday, the guy who'd tried to be casual about the spinach incident while his entire lab table silently lost it.
But Maya had tagged him. Marcus was waiting. And for once, Jayden didn't bail.
"Game on," he said, and jumped in.