Fox on the Fence Line

Maya's palms were sweating. Like, actually sweating-through-her-favorite-distressed-jeans sweating, which she didn't even know was possible until now.

"You good?" Chloe asked, side-eyeing her from across the cafeteria table. "You look like you're about to throw up."

"Fine," Maya lied, stabbing at the spinach on her tray with unnecessary aggression. Her mom had started packing actual vegetables in her lunch since the incident — aka, when Maya passed out during cheer tryouts from "dehydration" (actually, she'd forgotten to eat for two days because Trevor had finally noticed her).

The spinach sat there, judging her. Green and leafy and mocking her entire existence.

"You're not fine," Chloe pressed. "You're doing that thing where your eye twitches."

Outside the cafeteria windows, the fenced-in backyard that butted up against the school property rustled. A streak of orange caught Maya's peripheral vision. She turned.

A fox — sleek and brazen, tail flicking like it owned the place — trotted along the fence line like it was walking a red carpet. It paused, looked right at Maya through the glass, amber eyes unbothered, then kept moving.

"Whoa," someone breathed. "Did you see that?"

"A fox," Maya whispered. "It's just... out here."

The fox moved with this careless confidence, like it knew exactly where it was going and didn't care who was watching. Meanwhile, Maya couldn't even sit at a table without performing seventeen mental calculations about who was sitting where and what it meant about her social capital.

She looked down at her spinach. Then back at the fox, now disappearing into the woods beyond the school.

"You know what?" Maya said, shoving her tray back. "Screw it."

She stood up and walked toward Trevor's table, palms still sweating but suddenly okay with that. The fox didn't care about appearances. The fox didn't overthink everything.

Maybe it was time to stop overthinking everything.

"Hey," she said, sliding into the empty seat beside him.

Trevor looked up, surprised. "Hey."

Behind her, the spinach sat untouched on her tray. Whatever. She'd eat it tomorrow. Today, she was busy learning to be a little more fox.