Electric Palm Sunday

Maya's vintage bucket **hat** had seen her through everything — first heartbreak, failed chem tests, and now this. The house party rumbled around her, bass vibrating through the floorboards. She felt like a **zombie**, three hours of sleep and finals week turning her limbs into lead.

Then she saw him across the room. Ryan from AP Calc, wearing that **orange** hoodie she'd complimented once. Of course he'd remember.

Her palms went sweaty. Great. Now if she actually talked to him, she'd have to hide her hands. Why did social interaction have to feel like defusing a bomb?

She grabbed a soda, trying to look casual. Everything about this was a calculated disaster.

"Hey." Ryan was suddenly beside her, and her brain short-circuited like **lightning** striking too close. "You look like you could use this more than I could." He offered her his phone — a completely beaten-up Candy Crush level she'd been complaining about in math.

"Wait, you actually remember that?"

"I remember everything you say," he said, then froze. The silence stretched, charged and impossible.

Maya's heart hammered somewhere between her throat and stomach. She adjusted her hat, buying time.

"That's — "

"Also, you're really good at calculus," he added quickly. "Could maybe help me with the homework? Tomorrow?"

The clumsy save was somehow perfect.

"Yeah," she said, and smiled for real. "Yeah, I can do that."

Her phone buzzed later: his contact request. Profile picture: him wearing her hat from the party, captioned "borrowed for luck."

Some nights, she decided, weren't disasters. They were beginnings.