Fox Creek Friday

Maya sat on the edge of the old dock, legs dangling above the **water**, watching the ripples distort her reflection. The party raged behind her — someone's speakers blasting that new Drake track, laughter spiraling upward like released balloons. But out here, everything slowed.

Her **iPhone** buzzed again. *u coming back?* — the text from Jenna glowed in the dusk. Maya had left her best friend mid-conversation, mid-sentence, mid-everything, because suddenly the air had felt too thick, too loud, too everything.

Then she saw it.

A **fox** — copper-red and impossibly bright against the dying grass — crept along the shoreline, head low, hunting. It moved like liquid, each step deliberate, sensing something she couldn't. Maya held her breath. The fox stopped, lifted its head, and their eyes locked across fifteen feet of twilight.

In that suspended moment, the world felt enormous and quiet and real.

"Maya?"

She jumped. The fox vanished like smoke.

Jenna stood at the end of the dock, phone in hand but face tilted upward, actual concern carved into her features. "You okay? You just... disappeared."

Maya looked at her **friend** — really looked at her. The way Jenna's eyeliner was slightly smudged from laughing, how she'd rolled her jeans because she hated them long, how she'd tracked Maya down instead of just sending another text.

"Yeah," Maya said, and it wasn't a lie. "Just needed a second."

Jenna sat beside her, dangling her own legs over the water. "The party's kinda mid anyway. Tyler spilled Fanta on the speakers and now they're making this weird buzzing sound."

Maya laughed. A real one.

"Stay here with me?" Jenna asked quietly.

"Yeah," Maya said. "Yeah, let's stay."

They sat there as darkness settled, somewhere between the party behind them and the endless **water** ahead, both phones tucked away in pockets like secrets they'd outgrown.