Flash Point

My life was basically one giant performance. Every morning, I'd stare at myself in the bathroom mirror, popping this neon orange **vitamin** gummy that Emma swore would fix my skin, my energy, my entire existential crisis. Spoiler: it didn't. But I still took it because that's what you do when you're sixteen and convinced everyone else has figured out the secret to being, like, actually normal.

Then came the storm. The kind that makes your windows shake and your chest feel weird. I grabbed Barnaby – my sister's emotional support **dog**, which basically meant he was a fluffy golden retriever who existed to be petted and judge me with his eyes – and bolted outside because I needed to not be inside with my parents asking about college applications and GPAs and future plans.

We're halfway down the block when everything goes white. Not like, oh that's pretty white. Like, someone turned on the sun directly in my face white. A **lightning** strike hit the old oak tree three houses down, and I swear I could feel it in my teeth. Barnaby lost it. Full panic mode, tangling his leash around my legs, and suddenly I'm on the ground, staring up at this shredded sky while rain soaks through my favorite hoodie.

And then I started laughing. Like, actually crying laughing. Because something about lying on wet concrete in the middle of a thunderstorm with a dog who's definitely judging my life choices felt more real than three months of carefully curated Instagram posts and vitamin gummies and pretending to have everything figured out.

Emma found us like that. She'd followed me because apparently she's not completely terrible. She didn't ask what was wrong. She just sat down in her rain-soaked jeans and let Barnaby lick her face while the sky threw another temper tantrum overhead.

"You know those vitamins are basically just expensive candy, right?" she said.

I laughed. "I know."

"Cool," she said. "Just checking."

We sat there until the rain slowed down. I don't know if anything changed, exactly. But the next morning, I skipped the vitamin gummy. And I think that's something.