Foxfire and Filtered Screens

The vitamin D supplements sat on Maya's nightstand, a promised cure for the perpetual exhaustion of sophomore year. Another late night, another DOOM scroll through Instagram until 3 AM, her iPhone glowing like a radioactive ember against her pillow.

She'd become something she hated—a spy in her own social circle. Every morning before school, she'd check who'd posted what, who'd hung out without her, whose stories showed laughter she hadn't been part of. The FOMO was physical now, a constant low-grade fever in her chest.

Her cat, Bean, jumped onto the bed and headbutted her chin. Bean didn't care about follower counts or who sat with whom at lunch. Bean just wanted treats and belly rubs and occasionally brought Maya "gifts" from the backyard—usually decapitated moths, once a very confused lizard.

"You're the only one who gets me," Maya whispered, burying her face in soft orange fur.

Her phone chimed. A notification from Fin—that fox. Finley, the girl who'd transferred mid-semester and immediately occupied the table Maya used to claim. The one with the effortless style and the laugh that made cafeteria noise hush around her. The one Maya had been privately monitoring since October, analyzing every caption like it contained nuclear codes.

The message wasn't what she expected: *Hey, I see your posts about photography. Do you want to check out this gallery show downtown on Saturday?*

Maya sat up. Bean mewed indignantly at being displaced.

She'd spent months constructing an entire narrative about Fin—she was a threat, she was competition, she was everything Maya wasn't. She'd spy rather than speak. Assume rather than ask.

Her thumb hovered over the keyboard. The维生素 bottle caught the morning light through the window—she'd been taking them for energy she didn't have, for a version of herself she couldn't quite reach.

*Yes,* she typed. *I'd love to.*

Later that week, she watched a fox dart across the school field during lacrosse practice—sleek and solitary and impossibly fast. The creature paused, ears swiveling, then vanished into the woods beyond. Something about it made her chest loosen. Nobody was watching the fox perform. It just was.

Bean curled beside her that night, purring like a tiny engine. For the first time in months, Maya set her phone across the room before sleep. No spying. No performing.

Just being.