Flash Point

We hadn't been real friends in months. Just people who used to be close, now reduced to liking each other's Instagram posts from opposite ends of the cafeteria.

"Your aura's clashing with your aesthetic again," Maya said, barely looking up from her iPhone as she scrolled through what looked like a sepia-toned feed of someone else's life.

"Your chakras are probably misaligned," I shot back, but without any real heat.

Then the power cut out.

Pitch black hit the library like a physical thing. Outside, rain slashed against the windows in horizontal sheets, and the first real bolt of lightning cracked the sky open — purple-white veins illuminating everything for a split second before plunging us back into dark.

"No signal," Maya said, her voice weirdly small.

I held up my iPhone, the flashlight cutting a cone through the darkness.

"Social suicide is complete. We're literally stuck in here until someone opens the doors."

Lightning flashed again. In that brief, strobe-like instant, I saw Maya's face differently. Not as the girl who'd ditched me for the popular crowd freshman year. Not as the stranger sharing a table. Just a girl whose mascara was smudging, who looked surprisingly scared.

"My ride isn't coming," she said.

Something shifted.

"You can crash at my place," I heard myself say. "My mom won't care."

The lightning showed me her skeptical expression.

"We used to braid each other's hair at sleepovers," I added, because it was true and it mattered. "Remember that time you tried to teach me French and I kept pronouncing 'friend' like 'fry-end'?"

Maya laughed. Actually laughed.

"God, your accent was tragic."

Another lightning strike. This time, in the flash, I saw her smile.

We talked for hours in the iPhone's dying light. About everything we'd been too performative to say with an audience. About how much we'd missed each other, stupidly, without ever admitting it.

By the time the janitor found us, my phone was at 3%. But something else had charged to 100%.

"You coming over?" she asked as we walked into the storm-fresh air.

"Yeah. Friend."

Lightning flashed one last time as we headed toward my house, both of us finally bright enough to see what had been there all along.