Disconnected

Maya's palms were sweating so much she felt like she'd dip-dyed them in the fountain punch bowl. First real high school party. First time wearing her brother's snapback backwards because someone online said it looked cool. First time feeling completely out of her depth.

The basement was packed, bodies moving like silt in river water. Cable TV droned in the background - some baseball game nobody was watching. Maya pressed herself against the wall, clutching her red plastic cup like a lifeline.

Then she saw him.

Ethan Torres. sophomore, varsity baseball, the kind of guy who existed in a different stratosphere. He was wearing a fitted hat, same style as hers but actually fitting his head properly. He caught her eye across the room and smiled. Something behind his front teeth caught the light - a tongue piercing? Since when did Ethan Torres have a tongue piercing?

Then he was weaving through the crowd toward her, and Maya's heart started doing that thing where it forgot how to rhythm properly.

"Hey," he said. "You're in my English lit, right? We're doing Gatsby."

"Yeah," she managed, trying to look chill and failing spectacularly. "The green light symbolism stuff?"

"Exactly." He leaned against the wall beside her, close enough that she could smell his cologne - something expensive and citrusy. "So random question. You believe in palm reading? My cousin's doing readings upstairs, says she predicted her breakup three weeks before it happened."

Maya almost laughed. "You? Baseball star Ethan Torres? Into palm reading?"

"Hey, don't judge." He held up his hands, palms out. "Desperate times. Hannah's ghosting me, I need answers."

And just like that, the version of Ethan she'd built up in her head cracked open. He wasn't some untouchable god. He was just a guy, standing in a basement, wondering why his crush wasn't texting back.

"I'll go with you," she heard herself say. "But only so you don't get scammed."

He grinned, and it was the most genuine thing she'd seen all night.

They ended up on the roof, four people crowded around a tiny table while someone's cousin traced lines on Ethan's palm with dramatic concentration. Maya's hat fell off, revealing the frizzy hair she'd spent forty minutes trying to tame. But when Ethan caught her eye and winked, she didn't even care.

Later, walking home alone, she realized her palms weren't sweating anymore. Sometimes the scariest parties were the ones where you finally let yourself be seen, hat hair and all.