Vitamin D Dreams

Maya clutched her towel like a shield, standing at the edge of the Carter's massive inground **pool**. The June sun reflected off the blue water, making everything shimmer like she was trapped in some overexposed Instagram filter. Around her, the popular kids laughed and splashed, their perfect bodies glistening.

"You coming in or what?" called Jordan, the boy she'd had a crush on since seventh grade. He was treading water near the deep end, his wet hair plastered to his forehead in that annoyingly attractive way.

Maya's stomach did that thing it always did around him—like someone had set up a trampoline inside her gut. She adjusted the strap of her **orange** bikini top, the bright color she'd chosen because her mom said it "popped" against her skin, which was basically code for "you look pale as ghost, honey, get some sun."

"Yeah, just... gotta take my vitamins," Maya mumbled, fumbling in her beach bag for the bottle she'd stolen from her sister's bathroom. The label promised clear skin and hair growth in thirty days. She'd been taking them for two weeks and had nothing to show for it except maybe slightly shinier fingernails.

"Vitamins? At a pool party?" Jordan swam closer, resting his arms on the concrete edge. Water droplets ran down his shoulders. "That's random, Maya."

"They're, like, vitamin D," she lied smoothly, tossing two pills into her mouth and chasing them with the lukewarm **water** from her Hydro Flask. "Since I'm always inside studying. Gotta get that supplement game strong."

"Fair." Jordan pulled himself out of the pool in one smooth motion, water streaming off him like he was some kind of merman teleporting to land. Maya looked anywhere but at him. "Hey, you wanna play chicken fight? Sarah needs a partner."

Maya's brain short-circuited. Jordan Carter wanted her to be his partner for chicken fights. Jordan Carter, who had somehow transformed from a quiet eighth grader into the most sought-after guy in tenth grade while she'd been busy failing biology and overthinking every social interaction.

"Sure," she heard herself say. "But I'm terrible at this. Like, embarrassingly bad."

"That's the point." He grinned, and Maya noticed the small gap between his front teeth she'd never seen from across the classroom. "It's chicken fights, not the Olympics. Nobody actually cares who wins."

And then she was on his shoulders, her thighs against his neck, his hands holding her calves, and everything was ridiculous and wonderful and she was laughing so hard she could barely breathe as they toppled backward into the **water**, coming up spluttering and gasping while everyone cheered.

Later, when the sun began to set and parents started arriving for pickup, Jordan found her by the snack table, where she was contemplating an orange slice that had fallen on the ground.

"Hey," he said, "you should come to the lake next weekend. Me and some people are going. You could bring your vitamins again."

Maya felt something warm bloom in her chest, something that had nothing to do with the June heat or the stolen pills in her bag. "Maybe," she said, smiling. "But honestly? I think I got enough vitamin D for one day."