Drowning in Likes

Maya's lungs burned as she kept running, the track blurring beneath her sneakers. Coach Rodriguez's voice echoed in her head: "You're not just racing them, you're racing yourself."

But the real race was happening in her pocket. Her iPhone buzzed again—her third attempt at a aesthetic post about practice, already racking up likes. Between intervals, between breaths, between sips from her water bottle, she was curating a version of herself that didn't exist.

"You good, M?" Jamal asked, passing her his water. "You've been checking your phone like it's a bomb timer."

"Just waiting on something," she lied. She wasn't waiting. She was obsessing. Her post about "grind never stops" had seventeen likes. Seventeen. Her stomach twisted.

That's when it happened. Her fumble at the water fountain. The gasp. The splash.

Her iPhone hit the water-filled trough with a terrifying plop. For three seconds, Maya just stared. Then she was running again—not on the track, but to the bench, scrambling to fish it out, water dripping everywhere, screen glitching like a dying heart.

"It's gone," she whispered. "My life is literally gone."

Jamal sat beside her. "Your phone died or you died? Because you're still breathing."

She laughed despite herself. A real laugh, not the one she used in her Instagram stories. "I had a caption ready and everything. 'New personal best, blessed journey.'"

"You PR'd by three seconds," Jamal said. "That's literally fire. But you're stress-crying over a caption?"

The sun reflected off the water in the trough, making little rainbows against the bench. Maya watched them shimmer and fade.

"I don't even know who I'm posting for anymore," she admitted. "Like, half these people I haven't talked to since middle school. Why do I care what they think?"

"Maybe," Jamal said, "you're running so hard to impress people who don't even show up to watch."

The words hit harder than any interval. Maya looked at her blank screen, then at the track where she'd just run her fastest time ever. No one had filmed it. No filter needed. Just her, the pavement, and three seconds that belonged only to her.

"You know what?" She stood up, grabbed her water bottle, and tossed the dead phone into her bag. "Let's run another 400. No phones. Just us."

"Bet," Jamal grinned. "Winner gets dinner at Tacos El Gordo."

"You're on."

And as she took off, Maya finally felt what she'd been chasing all along—not likes, not follows, not validation from strangers. Just the rhythm of her own feet, the burn in her legs, and the feeling of being exactly, unapologetically herself. The water trough glimmered behind her, holding a dead phone and a beginning.