Cable Kisses and Orange Skies

The cable guy was supposed to come between noon and three. It was 4:47 PM, and I was currently perched on the edge of my best friend Chloe's rooftop, feeling like the world's worst **spy**.

"Any sign yet?" Chloe called from her bedroom window, her newly **orange**-dyed hair glowing in the sunset.

"Nope. Just your neighbor doing yoga again," I called back, squinting through my phone camera. I'd been recruited for this critical mission: determine whether Chloe's crush, Mateo, was at his own house across the street. Because obviously, the only way to confirm if he'd come to her party tonight was to surveil him from her roof. Teen girl intelligence work at its finest.

The cable for their TV had been out since Thursday, which meant no background noise to cover up the awkward silence when certain people arrived. No Netflix to pretend to watch instead of making eye contact. Just real conversation and the threat of confrontation.

I hopped down from the roof as the real cable van finally pulled up. My phone buzzed—Mateo had posted on his story. He was at the **water** park with friends, definitely not coming tonight.

"He's not coming," I told Chloe, stepping into her room where three other girls were sprawled across the bed, pretending to be absorbed in their phones.

Chloe's face fell. "Oh. Okay. Well, whatever. We'll still have—"

"Actually?" I said, something weird swelling in my chest. "That's kind of a relief."

The other girls looked up. For a second, nobody moved. Then someone laughed.

"Right?" breathed Jen, tossing her phone onto the pile. "I've been stress-sweating in this dress for two hours."

Chloe sank onto her bed, then grinned. "So... pizza and crying rom-coms?"

"But the cable's still out," someone pointed out.

I looked at these girls—my people, my witnesses to every embarrassing moment, my co-conspirators in this bizarre project called growing up. The orange light through the window made everything feel warm and possible and terrifying all at once.

"So we'll talk," I said. "Like, actually talk."

And as the cable guy worked outside and the orange sky deepened into purple, we did.