Lightning in the USB Port

Maya pressed her back against the bathroom wall, iPhone clutched like a lifeline. The party outside thumped with bass that vibrated through the tiles. Her best friend Sierra had ditched her twenty minutes ago to play beer pong with some juniors, leaving Maya stranded in a sea of hoodie-clad strangers she'd never bothered to learn the names of.

"You good in there?" a voice called. Not Sierra. Some random girl.

"Fine!" Maya squeaked, then immediately felt stupid. She wasn't fine. She was fully, catastrophically not fine. The battery icon had turned red three minutes ago.

The bathroom door creaked open. A guy she'd seen earlier — Liam, from AP Bio — stood there looking awkwardly concerned. "Sierra said you were having a panic attack."

"I'm not—" The lie died on her tongue. Who was she kidding? Her chest was tight, her hands shook, and she could feel the approaching social doom like a physical weight. "Yeah. Maybe."

He blinked, then stepped back. "I'll... leave you to it?"

"Wait." The word escaped before she could think twice. "Can you just... stay? Like, by the door?"

Something flickered across his face — recognition, maybe. "Running low on social battery too?"

"Literally." Maya held up her phone. "And actual battery. This thing's about to die and I left my cable at home."

"I got a portable charger in my car," he offered. "My sister's always forgetting hers, so I keep an emergency one."

They ended up sitting on his front bumper, sharing the charger and watching the storm roll in. Maya couldn't remember the last time she'd just... existed without performing for an audience. No Instagram story to curate, no TikTok to scroll, just lightning painting purple across the sky and the distant rumble of thunder.

"You know what's messed up?" she said, as the battery finally hit 100%. "I was literally running away from a party to have the most real conversation I've had in months."

Liam laughed, and something in her chest unknoted. "The cable saved us both, then."

"Yeah." She handed back his charger, then made herself ask: "You doing anything next weekend?"

The grin he gave her was better than any notification she'd ever received. "Now I am."

Maya walked home with her phone in her pocket, undisturbed. For once, she didn't need to capture the moment to prove it was real.