Eliza walked to the middle of the pool, which I took to mean that I could doggy paddle over. She crouched and dipped her palm in the water.

“If you get the part, let me know. I would pay so much to see you in a giant orange fish costume.”

“I’m trying out for the shark.” I played with my wet hair, spiking it up to look cool. “Are you coming in or not?”

Eliza shook off her flip-flops, splashing the water as she dangled her legs off the edge.

“I’ll count it,” I joked. She wouldn’t meet my eyes.

“Um.” Her face flushed.

Goosebumps sprouted on my exposed chest.

I tried to get there first.

“I’m sorry about our date that didn’t happen,” I said, “I know it’s weird with Carter—”

“It’s not that,” she said. “Yeah, the date was awkward, but what first date isn’t?” She paused, her fingers making smooth ripples in the pool. She had such beautiful hands. “What I want the most from you, as a friend or whatever else, is respect. And what you said this morning, when you guys go around the school saying stuff like that, people listen, and it catches on. And it doesn’t feel good.”

What? I felt like the world’s greatest idiot for not being able to follow that.

“Bros before hoes?” she said. “It’s offensive. It generalizes all women as hoes, and it generalizes putting women second.”

Oh, boy. “If you want more attention—” I started.

“It’s not about attention,” she said. Her long braid scratched her shoulders as she shook her head. It’s about respect, it said.

“Of course I respect you,” I said. “It’s just an expression, Eliza.”

“That toxic masculinity stuff that Hoover was going over this morning,” she said. “Bros before hoes feeds into that. And it makes guys act in a way that’s actually super scary for me.”

“What do you mean?”

“Like boys will be boys.”

My throat was scratchy as I swallowed. “What do you mean?”

The air ventilation took that moment to pause, which left a haunted silence for Eliza to fill.

“One time, at a house party in Australia, one of my friends disappeared in the middle with her boyfriend. Everyone thought that was normal, but he came back after a while and she didn’t. The guys cheered for him when he sat with them, like he’d scored the winning home run. You know, all rowdy and high-fiving each other. I found her when I was going home, sobbing in the sand. She’d said he’d wanted to touch her in some new places, and she was uncomfortable with it, but she was drunker than he was, and he did it anyway.

“The next few weeks, she was super torn over what to do. Some of our other friends told her that he was her boyfriend, like if she cared about him why was it a big deal? She eventually broke up with him and couldn’t be in the same room as him for the rest of the trip. Meanwhile he continued to be treated like a hero.”