Nine Lives Left

Maya's iphone 13 Pro Max, her third one this year, lay facedown on the cafeteria table like a dead fish. Her best friend Kai wasn't responding to her texts—again. The read receipt showed 11:47 AM, but it was now 12:03, and Maya had watched him laugh with the debate team kids across the room for ten straight minutes.

"You're spiraling," she muttered to herself, then froze when Mrs. Chen's cat, Barnaby, jumped onto the windowsill. The school's unofficial emotional support animal, this raggedy orange tabby had appeared outside every window Maya had sat near since seventh grade. Like he sensed her spiraling before she did.

Barnaby meowed. Maya meowed back.

Sophia, sitting two tables away, definitely heard her. Maya's face burned. Sophia was everything Maya wasn't: effortlessly popular, Instagram aesthetic on point, always surrounded by people who actually laughed at her jokes. Meanwhile, Maya was sixteen and still meowing at cats through cafeteria windows.

Her phone buzzed. Kai finally replied: *sorry debate prep got intense. u good?*

Maya typed and deleted three responses. She was tired of performing okayness for everyone. Instead, she grabbed her backpack and walked out, phone still clutched in her hand. The courtyard was empty except for Barnaby, who'd apparently decided to follow her.

"You're just a cat," she told him, sitting on a bench. "You don't have to worry about your followers-to-following ratio or whether your sneakers are cringe."

Barnaby headbutted her ankle. Maya's mom had started her on vitamin D supplements last month after a doctor's appointment, saying something about teenage girls and sunlight deficiency. But maybe the real deficiency wasn't vitamins—it was authenticity. She'd spent years curating versions of herself for different audiences: the Maya for her parents, the Maya for Kai, the Maya she wished Sophia would notice.

Her phone screen lit up with another notification. A comment on her post from earlier: *this slaps 😭*

From Sophia.

Maya stared at it, then at Barnaby, who was now aggressively demanding ear scratches. Something shifted. She opened her photos, found the screenshot of her terrible locked journal entry from last night—something about wanting to disappear but also wanting to be seen—and posted it. No filter. No aesthetic curation. Just the raw, messy truth.

*Sometimes I meow at cats through windows and I'm tired of pretending I don't,* she captioned it.

Her thumb hovered over delete. Then she pressed post instead.

Barnaby purred. The courtyard felt quieter, somehow. Less like a stage and more like just a place she existed in.

Her phone buzzed. Kai: *same tbh. also sophia just commented on my post too??*

Maya laughed, really laughed, and for the first time all day, she didn't check if anyone was watching.