Glitch in the Feed

Maya's iPhone cracked against her locker door, but she didn't care. The screen still worked, still showed all the ways she wasn't enough compared to the filtered lives scrolling past her thumb. Three years ago, she'd dyed her hair fox orange to stand out, to be someone who couldn't be ignored. Now she was just the girl with the grown-out roots and the anxiety meds that looked like candy vitamin gummies.

"You good?" Liam asked, leaning against the neighboring locker. He had that effortless thing—like he'd never had a panic attack in the middle of AP Chem.

"Bearable," she said, because 'fine' was a lie and 'drowning myself in expectations' was too heavy for 7:23 AM.

He nodded like he understood. "Winter formal coming up."

"Yeah."

"People are talking."

They always were. The bear pit of high school social hierarchy—everyone waiting for someone to slip up so they could tweet about it.

Maya's phone buzzed. A notification from someone's story. She shouldn't look. She never should've looked.

It was her own face from freshman year, fox-bright and confident, posted by some anonymous account with the caption: Remember when she used to be interesting?

Her hands shook. The anxiety meds in her pocket felt suddenly insufficient. This was it. This was the moment she became a cautionary tale, a glitch in someone else's perfect feed.

Then Liam did something unexpected. He pulled out his own phone, opened his notes app, and started typing. Rapidly, like he was furious about something.

"What are you doing?"

"Reporting that account," he said, not looking up. "It's harassment. I've got screenshots from when they did this to Sarah last month."

Maya stared at him. "You—care?"

"Everyone's dealing with something." He showed her his screen—a note filled with bullet points about someone named 'Jordan' and what looked like meds, same as hers. "My brother. Depression. The vitamin gummies are for him, not me."

The fox-orange Maya from freshman year would've said something cool, something untouchable. Current Maya just said, "Oh."

"Yeah. Oh." He slid down to sit on the floor, patted the space beside him. "Wanna skip first period and bear witness to how terrible the cafeteria coffee is?"

Maya looked at her phone, at the hate, at the performance. Then she looked at Liam, who was somehow real in a way her feed could never be.

She sat down beside him. "Yeah. Actually, I really do."

Her phone stayed in her pocket, unopened, for the next forty-seven minutes. The screen stayed dark, but for the first time in years, Maya didn't feel like she was missing anything.