Lightning in Her Palm

Maya's palms were sweating. Like, actually dripping — gross — and she kept wiping them on her favorite cargo shorts which she'd spent forty-five minutes picking out because Carlos was definitely going to be at Jordan's party tonight.

"You're doing it again," said Renee, grabbing Maya's wrist. "You only get this stressed when Carlos is within a fifty-mile radius."

"Shut up," Maya hissed, though Renee wasn't exactly wrong. Carlos with his stupid perfect hair and his stupid perfect laugh and his stupid ability to make Maya forget how to form coherent sentences whenever he looked at her.

She grabbed an orange soda from the cooler — like, aggressively orange, the kind that stained your tongue for three days — and chugged half of it in one go. Liquid confidence. Sort of.

Outside, thunder rumbled. Someone had left the back door open, and Maya could see storm clouds gathering beyond the pool, dark and swollen like they were holding something back.

"Ooh, storm's coming," said Jordan, appearing out of nowhere with that manic energy she always got when her parents weren't home. "Perfect atmosphere for what I'm about to show you guys."

Jordan dragged them all to the sunroom where her weird aunt had left a fortune-telling table complete with a crystal ball and velvet drapes that Maya was pretty sure were from Halloween City.

"My aunt taught me palm reading," Jordan announced, grabbing Maya's hand before she could escape. "Let me see your future."

Maya's heart did that thing where it felt like **lightning** had struck directly in her chest — bright and terrifying and impossible to look away from. Jordan traced the lines on Maya's **palm** with exaggerated seriousness.

"Ooh, this line means you're going to meet someone..." Jordan squinted dramatically "...very soon. Someone who's been around you for a while but you haven't really NOTICED them yet."

She looked up, wiggling her eyebrows suggestively at Carlos, who was standing across the room holding his own orange soda and actually looking at Maya like he might want to talk to her.

"Also," Jordan added, "this line means you're going to stop overthinking everything and actually live a little. Starting approximately... now."

She shoved Maya toward Carlos just as actual lightning cracked outside, illuminating the whole room in this flash of white-gold brilliance.

"Hey," said Carlos. "I like your shorts."

And Maya didn't even stutter. Not even a little bit.

The storm outside? Whatever. The real lightning had been waiting in her palm the whole time.