Vitamin D and Deep Ends

Maya stood at the edge of the pool party, clutching her phone like a lifeline. The inflatable **palm** tree dipped in the corner, its plastic fronds drooping in the July heat. Everyone else was already in the water, laughing and splashing like they'd been born in it.

"You coming in or what?" Jordan called from the pool, grinning that annoyingly perfect grin. He'd gotten cute over the summer. Like, annoyingly cute. Maya's stomach did that little flip thing she refused to examine too closely.

"I'm good," she lied, even though she'd literally practiced her **swimming** strokes in her bathtub the night before. What? She hadn't been in a pool since the incident of 2021, when she'd belly-flopped in front of everyone at Jacob's birthday.

Her best friend Priya surfaced beside Jordan, slicking back her dark hair. "Maya, I literally brought your favorite." She held up a slice of **papaya** from the fruit platter. "Your mom said you need your **vitamin** C."

Maya rolled her eyes. "My mom says I need a lot of things."

"Come on." Priya paddled to the edge. "Nobody's looking at you. They're all too busy trying to impress Jordan."

That was true. Jordan, who'd somehow transformed from the kid who sat behind her in math and made terrible puns into someone who now had abs and a confidence that made Maya's throat feel tight.

She looked around. The pool was packed with people from school—friend groups shifted and reformed like tectonic plates, nobody admitting that everything was different now. Freshman year had changed everyone. Maya had spent the whole year watching from the edges, perfecting the art of being

present but not

really there.

"Fine," she said, dropping her phone on a chair. "But if I drown, you're explaining to my mom why her daughter's last meal was papaya."

"Deal," Priya said.

Maya slid into the water. It felt better than she expected—cool and familiar, like her body remembered what her brain had forgotten. She kicked off from the wall, gliding through the water, and for a second, she wasn't the girl who always stood at the edge watching everyone else live.

She surfaced near Jordan. He smiled. "Took you long enough."

"Shut up," she said, but she was smiling too.

"Hey," he said, casual, like this was just a normal Tuesday. "You want to get boba after this? Like, just us?"

Her heart hammered against her ribs. "Yeah," she said. "Yeah, I'd like that."

The inflatable palm tree bobbed in the corner, and the party kept going around them, but for the first time in a year, Maya felt like she was actually in it.