Fox Fire in the Rain

The **hair** situation was officially a crisis. Maya stared in the bathroom mirror, watching another chunk of curls break off in her brush. Stress shedding, her mom called it. Handing her yet another bottle of those neon-orange **vitamin** gummies that tasted like artificial sunshine and regret.

"They'll help, sweetie," her mom had said. But they wouldn't fix what happened at lunch yesterday.

Her **friend** group had shifted without her. One day she was part of the squad, the next she was sitting alone while Chloe showed everyone her new bracelet. The one Maya had gotten her for her birthday last month. The irony wasn't lost on her.

Now she was walking home in the middle of a thunderstorm because she couldn't stomach the bus ride. **Lightning** cracked overhead, illuminating the alleyway between buildings. And then she saw it.

A **fox**. Real, actual, rust-colored with white-tipped tail. It stood there watching her, eyes bright like it knew something she didn't. The fox didn't run. Just tilted its head, almost judgmentally.

"What?" Maya whispered. "You got something to say?"

A car backfired down the street. The fox didn't flinch. It turned and trotted toward a hole in the fence, pausing once like it wanted her to follow.

Maya did.

She squeezed through the fence into someone's overgrown backyard, where the fox led her to a cluster of wild blackberry bushes. The fox plucked a berry with its teeth, dropped it at her feet.

"Seriously?"

But then she was eating them, purple-stained fingers and all, squatting in the rain with a wild animal that had more social grace than her entire friend group combined. The fox sat nearby, occasionally shaking water from its fur like it had better places to be but was giving her a moment.

"Thanks," Maya said. "For the berries. And for not making me feel like a loser."

The fox's ear twitched. Maya laughed, actual genuine laughter, and something in her chest loosened.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket. Probably Chloe asking where she was. Probably wanting the notes for math again.

Maya didn't check it. Instead she sat there with the fox, eating blackberries in the rain, while the storm raged overhead and **lightning** painted the sky in electric blues. For the first time in weeks, her **hair** was the last thing on her mind.

The **fox** had better things to do, and honestly, so did she.