The Summer I Broke Everything

The problem with working at your uncle's pool supply slash cable installation business isn't the chlorine. It's not even the weird customers who ask if you can hook up their "friend's" TV for cash.

It's the sweating.

My palms were basically waterfalls by second period, and today—July 15th, approximately 97 degrees in the shade—wasn't helping. Neither was the fact that Maya Rodriguez was walking toward the counter, wearing that same cutoff tank top from the last day of school, the one I'd spent three weeks trying to forget.

"Hey," she said. "My parents finally upgraded from that ancient box TV. Apparently we need someone to, like, install the cable situation?"

"Yeah," I said, sounding approximately like a drowning duck. "I mean, yeah. I can do that. Cable. Definitely."

My uncle chose that exact moment to yell from the back room: "MARCUS, STOP SWIMMING IN THE SUPPLY TANK!" (I wasn't. I had literally never once considered swimming in the chemical storage tank, but okay.)

Maya laughed, and I felt my face achieve nuclear fusion levels of heat.

"So," I continued, desperately attempting to regain functioning human status, "I can come by later. If that works. Or not. Whatever's chill."

She lived in that neighborhood with the houses that were definitely too nice for me to be casually entering, which was fine, it was totally fine, except that when she opened the door, I tripped over her actual actual welcome mat and dropped my entire toolkit. The screwdriver rolled under her couch. I knelt to retrieve it and discovered, wedged deep in the dust bunny kingdom, the most embarrassing thing in existence: a teddy bear wearing a swimsuit.

Her childhood toy. A tiny bear in beach gear.

She saw me see it.

"That's," she started, then stopped. "That's Captain Splash. From when I was seven. He's... he's very secure in his identity."

"Cool," I said, holding the screwdriver like it was a sacred artifact. "I respect a bear who knows himself."

We stared at each other for three thousand years.

Then she started laughing. Not mean laughing. Real laughing, doubled over, holding her stomach.

"I can't believe I just showed a boy my swimsuit bear," she said, wiping her eyes. "This is officially the worst moment of my life."

"Want to know mine?" I asked, surprising myself. "I told everyone in sixth grade that I moved here from London because I thought it sounded cool. I'd literally never left the state."

"No way." She sat on the floor next to me, our shoulders almost touching. "The accent? You faked the ACCENT?"

"It was terrible. Everyone knew. They just didn't say anything because they thought I was going through something."

"Oh my god, Marcus." She was still grinning. "I've been carrying around CRIPPLING anxiety about showing you Captain Splash for like, thirty seconds, and you're out here living with a British accent lie from THREE YEARS AGO."

"Fair point."

We ended up not installing the cable for another hour. We sat on her living room floor instead, trading embarrassing stories. She told me about accidentally waving at someone who wasn't waving at her. I told her about calling my teacher "mom" twice in one semester. It was the most authentic I'd felt around anyone since, like, forever.

When I finally got to the cable installation, my hands were only sort of sweaty. Progress.

"Hey," Maya said as I was packing up. "You should come to the pool tomorrow. Me and some people are going. It's chill."

"Yeah," I said, and for the first time all summer, I didn't feel like I needed to add anything else. "Yeah, I'd like that."

Walking home, I realized something: I was still the same sweaty-palmed overthinking weirdo who worked at a sketchy pool supply place. But maybe—just maybe—that was actually fine. Sometimes the best moments aren't the ones you plan. They're the ones that happen when you're busy being a mess, and someone decides to be a mess right back at you.

Captain Splash would be proud.