Bad Connection

Maya's hair was supposed to be sunset purple. Instead, it looked like a grape exploded on her head.

"This is fine," she lied to her reflection, yanking her beanie down. "Totally fine."

It wasn't fine. Her mom had practically hyperventilated when she'd walked through the door. Her phone was gone. Her laptop was confiscated. And now she was sitting in her best friend Chloe's basement at 11 PM on a Tuesday, staring at a tangle of ethernet cables like they held the answers to the universe.

"Your parents are actually gonna ground you until college," Chloe said, tossing a bag of Takis her way. "Like, forever, forever."

"They can't ground me from life." Maya shoved a chip in her mouth. "Besides, I'm technically running away right now."

"You're literally sitting on my couch."

"It's the principle of the thing."

Chloe snorted. "Whatever, rebel." She pointed at the cables with a Taki-crumb-dusted finger. "Can we please just finish setting this up before someone realizes we pirated internet from the neighbor's router?"

They'd spent the last hour trying to figure out why the cable wouldn't reach from Chloe's window to the neighbor's outside jack. Something about needing better WiFi for gaming, which was honestly just code for needing better WiFi for everything—homework help, Spotify, and doom-scrolling through people who seemed to have their lives figured out.

Maya's hands shook as she connected the cable. Her hair—this ridiculous, impulsive, panic-induced hair decision—kept falling in her face. A purple reminder that she'd messed up. Again.

"Hey." Chloe's voice softened. "It's not that bad."

"My hair?" Maya tugged her beanie off. The purple was blotchy, way too dark at the roots, basically a disaster. "Chloe, it looks like I tried to dye it with grape soda."

"I was gonna say... it's giving. Like, you're going through something."

"Going through something?" Maya laughed bitterly. "I'm failing math. My mom thinks I'm gonna end up homeless. And now I look like a middle-aged crisis having a breakdown."

"Okay, first, middle-aged men wish they could pull this off." Chloe sat up, cross-legged. "And second—you're not failing math. You got a C+. That's basically a B in some countries."

"Countries that don't exist."

"You know what I mean." Chloe's phone buzzed. She glanced at it, then back at Maya. "You can stay here tonight, by the way. My parents think you're studying."

"You're the worst liar ever."

"And yet they believed me." Chloe grinned. "Because we're 'such good influences' on each other."

The cable finally clicked into place. Chloe's laptop screen flickered to life.

"No way," Chloe whispered. "It actually worked."

They sat there for a moment, two 16-year-olds who'd technically committed a misdemeanor just to watch Netflix and complain about their lives. The purple hair still looked terrible. The math grade was still garbage. Her mom was probably losing her mind right now.

But Chloe hadn't asked her to leave. Chloe had helped her steal internet from the Petersons' house, hair disaster and all.

"So," Chloe said, already scrolling through Netflix. "What are we watching?"

Maya leaned back against the couch and didn't pull her beanie back on. "Something with purple. For solidarity."