Lines We Draw

The party thumped with bass that vibrated through the floorboards of Jordan's older brother's house. Maya clutched her iphone so hard her knuckles turned white, the device a shield between her and the swirling chaos of teenagers she barely knew.

"You're hiding behind that thing like it's the last helicopter out of Vietnam," Jordan yelled over the music, appearing beside her with two red cups.

Maya tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear, then immediately regretted it—she'd spent twenty minutes perfecting the messy-but-intentional look, and now she probably looked like she'd been attacked by a wind machine. "I'm not hiding. I'm... strategically positioned."

Jordan snorted. "You've been strategically positioned near the bathroom door for forty-five minutes."

Before Maya could defend her excellent bathroom-door positioning, Jordan grabbed her hand and pressed it flat against her own palm. "Read my fortune, fortune teller."

The room spun slightly from whatever was in those red cups. Maya stared at Jordan's hand—soft skin, a tiny scar across the lifeline, chipped blue nail polish. Her own palm felt suddenly enormous against it.

"You're going to meet a tall dark stranger," Maya deadpanned, trying to pull away.

"Deeper. Give me the REAL stuff." Jordan's voice dropped, suddenly serious. "Like, are we gonna stay friends after you move?"

The question hit harder than Maya expected. She was leaving for college in August, three hours away, while Jordan was staying behind for community college. They'd been inseparable since seventh grade, but lately the conversations had felt like walking through familiar rooms with the furniture rearranged—everything was the same, but you kept stubbing your toe on differences you'd never noticed before.

Maya looked down at their joined hands. "Your lifeline's long," she said, making something up because that's what you do when you're seventeen and nobody actually knows anything. "But it forks here, see? Like you're gonna have to choose between two paths."

Jordan's phone buzzed against the table—some group chat blowing up about drama Maya wasn't part of. The iphone screen illuminated their faces in the dim light, catching the sheen of sweat on their foreheads, the careful nonchalance they both wore like armor.

"What if I choose wrong?" Jordan whispered.

Maya squeezed her friend's palm. "Then you call me. I'm literally three hours away. Not Mars."

"Yeah." Jordan's smile returned, easier this time. "But you better answer this time, not that strategic positioning bullshit."

"Deal."

They stood there for a moment, palm to palm in the middle of a party full of people performing versions of themselves, just two seventeen-year-olds holding hands like they used to do when they were seven and scared of thunderstorms. The bass thumped, someone spilled something, and somewhere in the other room, a phone notification chimed. But for a second, it was just the two of them, and the lines they'd drawn on each other's hands, and the terrible beautiful knowledge that everything was about to change, and somehow, not at all.