Operation Goldfish

Maya pressed her back against the lockers, heart doing that weird flutter thing it always did when HE walked by. Jason. The guy who'd been her lab partner since seventh grade, the guy she'd been secretly spying on through her phone's reflected screen during lunch for three years.

"You're being such a bull," her best friend Chloe whispered, snapping Maya back to reality. "Just talk to him already."

Maya's face burned. "I'm not being a bull. I'm being... strategic. Like, gathering intel."

"Gathering intel?" Chloe raised an eyebrow. "You mean watching his Instagram stories while pretending to look at literally anything else? That's not spying, Maya. That's just having a crush."

The bell rang, saving Maya from having to defend her totally legitimate reconnaissance techniques. She headed to biology, where Mr. Henderson was droning on about something called "the goldfish effect"—how people's attention spans had shrunk to three seconds because of social media. Maya fought the urge to roll her eyes. She could pay attention to things for way longer than three seconds.

She'd prove it, too.

Jason dropped his pencil. It rolled toward her desk. This was it. The moment. Maya's brain immediately short-circuited, all her careful planning and strategy vaporizing like—well, like a goldfish's memory, apparently. She muttered something that sounded suspiciously like "bloop" and practically threw the pencil back at him.

"Thanks," Jason said, weird smile on his face. "You okay? You look kinda..."

Maya grabbed her backpack. "Totally fine. Just. Gotta go."

She practically sprinted out of the classroom, Chloe hot on her heels.

"WHAT was that?" Chloe demanded. "You had ONE JOB."

"I PANIC-ED, okay?" Maya groaned, burying her face in her hands. "I'm never talking to him again. I'll just transfer schools. Change my name. Move to Antarctica."

Her phone buzzed. Unknown number.

"Hey. This is Jason. From bio? You seemed kinda stressed today so I wanted to make sure you're good. Also, you dropped this after the bell—a folded paper fell out of your hoodie pocket. Anyway, hope you're okay."

Maya stared at her phone. Then at Chloe. Then at the message again.

"Well," Chloe said, grinning like she'd just won the lottery. "Look at that. Your spy mission finally paid off."

Maya's face did that burning thing again. But this time? She didn't hate it.