Digital Detox in Palm Springs

Maya's iphone buzzed for the eighth time in ten minutes. Another group chat blowing up about something that would feel trivial in three hours but felt like life-or-death right now.

"You're missing it," Zara said, barely looking up from her own phone. "Tyler just posted that pic of you from lunch."

Maya's palm went slick with sweat. She knew exactly which photo — the one where her smile looked weirdly crooked and her hair was doing that frizzy thing it always did when the desert wind picked up. 47 likes already. Probably counting down the comments about her "resting face" or how much better she looked sophomore year.

She shoved her phone deep in her pocket, right next to the crumpled vitamin D packet her mom had made her take that morning. 'You're always inside,' her mom had said, pressing the supplement into her hand like it was some kind of magic cure for teenage misery. 'You need sunshine.'

Irony was, Maya had plenty of sunshine. She just spent it all through a screen, watching everyone else live their best fake-filter lives.

"Earth to Maya?" Zara waved a hand. "You good?"

Maya looked at her best friend — really looked at her — for the first time all day. Zara had those tiny wrinkles around her eyes from squinting at screens too much. They both did.

"Actually," Maya said, "no. Like, not at all."

Zara finally put down her phone. "What's up?"

"Everything." Maya gestured at the pool, at the teens scrolling in loungers, at the whole curated Instagram existence they'd been living since spring break started. "We're literally in paradise and I'm stressing about a photo Tyler posted without asking. That's actually deranged behavior."

Zara blinked, then cracked up. "Okay, same though."

"No but seriously." Maya pulled out her phone, thumb hovering over the screen. "Remember when we used to actually talk? Like about real stuff?"

"Yeah, before we started communicating exclusively through memes and reactive emojis."

Maya's palm didn't feel sweaty anymore. She made a decision. "Bet you can't go phone-free until dinner."

"You're on."

They sat by the pool for three hours. Talked about college anxiety, that weird thing that happened with Jordan last month, how neither of them actually liked kombucha but pretended to. Zara complained about her mom's new obsession with wellness influencers. Maya admitted she still slept with a stuffed animal sometimes.

By dinner, Maya's phone had 47 unread notifications and honestly? She didn't care. The vitamin D from actually sitting in the sun felt way more real than anything in her feed.

"Same time tomorrow?" Zara asked.

"Bet." Maya grinned. "But first, I need to see what Tyler actually posted."