Ghost Signal

The group chat was blowing up. AGAIN.

"u coming???" "party starts in 20" "don't be lame"

I stared at my iPhone screen, thumb hovering over the keyboard. My parents had cut the cable last week—some "digital detox" experiment that meant NO streaming, NO wifi, NO anything after 9pm. Meanwhile, everyone at school was living their best lives on TikTok, and I was missing it.

FOMO hit different when you were fifteen and your parents were actively sabotaging your social life.

But Maya had texted me the wifi password from next door's party. Apparently, old Mrs. Henderson never changed it from "password123." So here I was, creeping through my backyard at 11pm in Converse and a hoodie, holding my phone like it was contraband, trying to catch a signal that kept ghosting me.

"You're being ridiculous," I told myself. "You're not even wearing actual pants."

That's when I saw it.

A fox.

Not like, a cute Disney fox. This thing was SCRAWNY, all mange and desperation, tail dragging through the dewy grass. It froze when it spotted me, eyes reflecting the dim porch light—two tiny moons.

We stared at each other. The fox looked like how I felt: hungry, out past curfew, surviving on scraps.

It let out this weird barking sound—like a cough that got stuck halfway up its throat.

My phone buzzed. ONE BAR.

The fox bolted toward the neighbor's fence, scrambled up and OVER their cable line—literally walking the tightrope between houses like it was nothing.

I watched it disappear into the darkness, wild and weirdly majestic.

My thumb finally moved.

"omw," I typed. "saw a fox. it was chiller than this party is probably gonna be lol"

Hit send.

Then I turned back toward my house, toward my cutoff internet and my parents who thought they could buffer my teenage rebellion.

Some signals you couldn't catch anyway.

The fox knew.