Citrus and Second Place

Maya's palms were sweating. Again. She wiped them on her shorts for the third time, standing behind the juice bar at her cousin's quinceañera where someone had decided orange rosé was a cute aesthetic choice. It wasn't.

"You good, M?" Jayden leaned against the counter, that effortless cool he'd been rocking since seventh grade when he'd somehow become the first guy in their grade to grow a legit mustache.

"Running on pure adrenaline and existential dread," Maya said, because honesty made everything less weird, or maybe more weird. She couldn't tell anymore.

"You're up next," Jayden gestured to the karaoke setup where someone was absolutely murdering a Sebastián Yatra song. "Your abuela's been talking about your voice since Christmas."

Maya's stomach did that thing where it felt like she'd swallowed an entire orange—peel and all. Her family expected this. The cousins who'd heard her singing in the shower when she was twelve and decided she was going to be the next big thing. The tías who posted about her "natural talent" on Facebook like she was some exotic flower they'd cultivated.

What they didn't know: Maya hadn't sung in front of anyone since the school talent show in freshman year, when she'd forgotten the words to "Hallelujah" and someone in the front row had filmed it. The video had gotten like forty-two views before she'd begged them to take it down, but those forty-two views felt like four million.

She'd been running from that moment ever since.

"I can't do this," she whispered.

"You're literally already doing it," Jayden said, which was technically true because she was already standing there, so...

Her grandma caught her eye from across the room and gave her that look. The one that said, *I believe in you, but also I will climb over these people if I have to.*

Maya's palms were still sweating, but she grabbed the microphone anyway. Because sometimes you stop running not because you're ready, but because you're too tired to keep going. And maybe that was okay too.

She opened her mouth and somehow, the words came out.