Operation Cable Knit

Maya felt like a total spy, crouched behind the library shelves, watching Ethan laugh at something Rachel said. She'd been "observing" him for three weeks now—basically stalking his Instagram, memorizing his schedule, and accidentally making eye contact that one time in the hallway. Major cringe.

"You good?" her best friend Jaz whispered, sliding over a bag of spinach chips. "Or are we still in your FBI phase?"

"Shhh," Maya hissed, accepting a handful. "I'm not stalking. I'm... gathering intel."

"That's literally what stalking is."

The problem wasn't just that Ethan was cute and funny and played guitar. It was that Maya had zero game. Her flirting skills were nonexistent, and the closest she'd come to a romantic moment was when she'd gotten spinach stuck in her braces during spring photos. Eighth grade trauma still haunted her.

Then came the cable knit incident.

Maya's grandmother had sent her a vintage cable knit sweater—ugly as sin, but apparently "vintage aesthetic" now. She wore it to school, prepared for maximum humiliation, but Ethan actually noticed.

"Hey, nice sweater," he said, dropping into the seat beside her in chem. "My sister collects vintage stuff. That's legit 70s, right?"

Maya's brain short-circuited. All her spy intel, all her observation, and she'd never prepared for this. "Uh, yeah? My grandma... knit... it?" Why did everything sound like a question?

"That's actually sick," Ethan said. "She made that cable pattern? That's complicated."

And just like that, they were talking. About knitting, about his sister, about how Maya had tried to learn crochet from YouTube and ended up with a square that looked like a "sad potato."

Later, Jaz demanded details. "So? Did you finally stop being a weird spy person?"

Maya grinned, pulling a piece of spinach from her chips. "Maybe. But I'm keeping the surveillance active. Just in case."

"You're hopeless," Jaz laughed. "But at least you've got backup snacks."