Electric Orange

The neon **orange** hoodie was supposed to be my armor. Stand out, be bold, that's what Maya said. But standing in Jake's basement at 11 PM, I felt more like a traffic cone than a mysterious artist. Everyone else wore black, of course. They always did.

Then **Fox** walked in.

Okay, his real name was Felix, but everyone called him Fox because he was clever and impossible to pin down. He had this way of looking at you like you were a puzzle he wanted to solve, which was exactly why I'd been crushing on him since September.

"Hey, Vitamin Girl," he said, dropping onto the couch beside me. My face burned. Apparently my emergency gummy **vitamin** stash had fallen out of my pocket earlier. "What flavor you got? Strawberry?"

"Actually, they're mixed berry," I said, then immediately wanted to die. Who says that?

But Fox just grinned, all crooked teeth and easy confidence. He grabbed a handful from my open pack. "These are basically candy. Adults are so weird about making vitamins fun."

We spent the next hour like that — him talking, me trying to be a normal human being instead of an anxious bundle of impulses. The TV was on, but the HDMI **cable** was loose, so the screen kept flickering between a movie and static. Neither of us moved to fix it.

"So are you gonna perform?" he asked suddenly. "At the talent show next week?"

"How did you know I play?"

"I hear things," Fox said, with that look again. "You're gonna be good."

**Lightning** struck outside — actual **lightning**, close enough that the whole house shook. The power died. The basement plunged into darkness.

Fox's hand brushed mine in the dark. He didn't pull away.

"Scared of storms?" he asked quietly.

"Only when they hit this close," I admitted.

"Me too," he said, and for once, the clever Fox sounded real. "But you know what my little sister says? That lightning is just the sky taking pictures of us. So we better look cool."

I laughed. He squeezed my hand.

When the lights came back on, my orange hoodie didn't feel like armor anymore. It didn't need to be.

Fox was still looking at me, and I was finally looking back.