Friday Night Resurrection

I stood in the corner of Taylor's basement, my sweaty palms pressed against my jeans like I was trying to fuse them to my legs. The air smelled like cheap body spray and desperate teenage hormones, and somewhere in the crowd, my former best friend Jules was living her best life without me.

Three months ago, she'd dropped me like I was nothing. No explanation. No dramatic fight. Just... silence. And now here I was, at her party because my mom said I needed to "get out there," watching everyone else have the time of their lives while I felt like a **zombie** haunting my own social existence.

"Hey, Maya, right?"

I turned to see Liam—Taylor's older brother's friend—holding out a red cup. "You look like you'd rather be anywhere but here."

"Is it that obvious?" I accepted the cup, grateful for something to do with my hands.

"You've been staring at the same spot on the wall for twenty minutes," he said. "Also, you have **spinach** in your teeth from the pizza earlier."

I wanted to die. Instead, I covered my mouth with my palm and mumbled something unintelligible.

"I'm messing with you," Liam laughed, and something about his grin made me feel less like crawling out of my skin. "Want to get out of here? My **cat** just had kittens, and I promised my sister I'd send her pictures."

We ended up sitting on his front porch for two hours while his cat, Mochi, aggressively showed off her five kittens. Liam told me about how he used to be homeschooled and didn't know how to talk to anyone until last year, and I found myself admitting that I felt like everyone had received some social manual I'd missed out on.

"Jules didn't drop you because you're weird," he said suddenly, while Mochi climbed onto his lap like she owned him. "She dropped you because you stopped pretending to be someone you're not. That's actually pretty cool."

My phone buzzed—Jules had finally noticed I was gone. But instead of the familiar knot in my stomach, I felt... light. "Hey," I said to Liam, "would you want to grab food tomorrow? Somewhere with absolutely no spinach?"

"Only if you're okay with hanging out with someone who still doesn't know how to talk to people."

"Perfect," I said. "Because I'm basically still learning too."

For the first time in months, my palms were dry. And for the first time ever, that was enough.