Digital Ghost Protocol

Maya clutched her **iPhone** until her knuckles turned white, thumbs hovering over the send button. The cafeteria noise swirled around her—laughter, trays clattering, the unspoken social hierarchy that defined junior year like invisible borders.

Two tables over, Kai sat with the popular crowd, his laugh carrying across the room. Maya's **palm** grew sweaty against the phone case. She'd drafted the text twelve times: *Hey, can I borrow your Bio notes?* Too casual. *I noticed you drawing in class.* Too creepy. *I think you're really cool.* Pathetic.

Her golden retriever, Buster, had more game than her. The **dog** would just trot up to anyone, tail wagging, zero self-consciousness. Maya envied him constantly.

What she didn't know: Kai was sweating this too. He'd been **spy**-ing on her Instagram stories for weeks, timing his own posts to overlap with hers. He noticed how she doodled in the margins of her notebook during math—little dragons and trees, intricate and weird and perfect. He'd been plotting ways to talk to her since October, but every attempt felt embarrassingly staged.

Maya finally typed: *Nice drawing today.* And hit send before she could overthink it.

Across the cafeteria, Kai's phone buzzed. He froze.

*Thanks,* he texted back. *I saw your notebook last week. You're insane at dragons.*

Maya's stomach did that weird flip thing. She looked up. Kai was already watching her, actually watching, not pretending to. He raised his phone slightly.

They'd spent months circling each other like awkward satellites, both convinced the other was out of their league, both wrong. The social borders weren't borders at all—just space waiting to be crossed.

Maya smiled. Kai smiled back. And somewhere at home, Buster probably dreamed of squirrels, completely unaware he'd been the cool one all along.