The Riddle at Miller's Pond
Maya's stomach did backflips as she stared at the group chat. *Pool party at 7. Bring swimsuit. Don't be weird.*
Great. Just great. Maya had been avoiding the pool all summer because she still wasn't confident with her swimming, and now she had to face the varsity squad in a bikini. This was exactly the kind of situation where her anxiety went from zero to sphinx-level riddle: *What happens when the girl who always stays dry has to make a splash?*
She'd spent the last month working at her dad's cable installation company, crawling through attics and basements, getting comfortable with being invisible. Now she had to be seen.
The party was at Tyler's house—Tyler who was cute, Tyler who was varsity, Tyler whose dad was the football coach. The house backed up to Miller's Pond, where the school mascot, a papier-mâché bear from homecoming, had been mysteriously abandoned on the small island in the middle.
When Maya arrived, everyone was already in the water. She stood at the edge in her one-piece (practical, her mom said), watching them laugh and splash. Then Tyler swam over.
"Hey, you coming in?"
"I'm not great at swimming," she admitted, feeling her face heat up.
Tyler shrugged. "Neither am I. I'm terrible. That's why I stay in the shallow end."
Maya blinked. The varsity star couldn't swim well?
"Seriously?" someone called from deeper water. "Tyler once swam across the whole pond!"
"With help," Tyler said. "I was holding onto a cable. That old power cable that used to connect the island? Yeah, I cheated."
Maya looked at the island. The abandoned bear stared back, one papier-mâché eye falling off.
"I dare you," Tyler said, "to swim out there with me. We can practice. No cables."
The sphinx in her mind finally had an answer: Sometimes the scariest thing isn't looking foolish—it's missing out.
Maya waded in. "Race you."
They never made it to the island. They spent the rest of the summer teaching each other to swim, both terrible, both laughing, and eventually, both not caring who saw.