The Riddle by the Pool

The pool shimmered like liquid glass under the afternoon sun, but Maya stood frozen at the edge in her bright orange tankini that screamed "look at me" when all she wanted was to disappear. This was supposed to be the party of the summer, the one everyone would be talking about on Monday, but Maya felt like she was watching it all through a thick wall of social anxiety.

"Yo Maya! You gonna stand there all day or actually get in?" Jason called from the water, droplets cascading down his perfectly-toned abs. He was the reason she'd even come, the reason she'd spent forty-five minutes fixing her hair that just frizzed anyway.

Maya dipped a toe in. "I'm thinking."

"About what?" Chelsea drifted past on an inflatable flamingo, her makeup somehow still flawless after three hours of chlorinated water.

"Life. The universe. Why my brother always leaves empty juice boxes everywhere." That last part was true — her kitchen counter looked like a graveyard of orange juice cartons.

But the real reason she hesitated wasn't the water temperature or her hair or her brother's annoying habits. It was the sphinx pose. Last summer, she'd tried to impress everyone by showing off this yoga move she'd learned from her mom's YouTube videos, and she'd faceplanted so hard that her nose still had a tiny bump from hitting the pool deck.

"Watch this!" Someone yelled, and suddenly Jason was doing something ridiculous by the diving board — something that looked suspiciously like her sphinx pose from last year, but somehow he made it look cool instead of catastrophic.

Maya realized then that everyone was just pretending to know what they were doing. The popular kids, the jocks, even Chelsea with her perfect eyeliner — they were all just winging it.

She jumped in.

The water swallowed her in a rush of cold and blue, and when she surfaced, sputtering and chlorine-scented, Jason was there, offering her a high-five.

"Finally. Took you long enough."

"Shut up," Maya said, but she was grinning. "And your form on that sphinx thing? Needs work."

"Teach me?" He asked, and for the first time all summer, Maya felt like the one holding all the answers.