Orange Crushed

Maya's locker was the graveyard of her social life. Third week of sophomore year, and she'd successfully mastered the art of the bathroom stall lunch break.

"Hey, Vitamin Girl."

Maya jumped, dropping her orange soda. It exploded across the hallway floor like a radioactive disaster. Great. Now she'd be the girl who vandalized school property with Fanta.

"Sorry, I didn't mean—" The boy crouched down, grabbing napkins from the dispenser. "I'm Liam. We have bio together."

Maya stared. He was wearing a thrifted sweater with actual elbow patches. The opposite of everyone at Northwood High, where the uniform was subtly expensive athleisure.

"I'm Maya. And I'm not Vitamin Girl."

"Could've fooled me. I see those orange chewables every morning before first period." Liam grinned. "My grandma made me take the same ones. Said they'd help me grow tall."

Maya's face burned. Her mom insisted the vitamins were "packed with essential nutrients" but they tasted like chalky desperation.

"My mom thinks I'm going to get scurvy," Maya muttered, wiping up sticky orange liquid.

"Mine thinks I'm going to develop rickets." Liam sat back on his heels. "Want to know a secret? I've been swallowing them dry for two years. Never touch water."

"Why?"

"Because," he lowered his voice, "if I treat them like punishment, they become punishment. But if I pretend they're my weird little ritual..." He shrugged. "It's almost meditative."

Someone knocked into Maya's backpack. Her secret stash of orange sodas clanked loudly.

Liam's eyes widened. "Wait. You collect those?"

"It's not collecting," Maya said defensively. "It's stocking up."

"For the apocalypse?"

"For whenever I need to feel like myself again."

The words hung between them. Honest. Too honest.

Liam didn't laugh. Instead, he reached into his messenger bag and pulled out a glass bottle of orange soda. The fancy kind with real sugar, sold at the co-op downtown.

"Trade you," he said. "One fancy soda for your location. I've been eating lunch in the library and pretending to read."

Maya looked at this strange, elbow-patched boy who'd just seen her at her most embarrassing and didn't run.

"Third stall from the end," she said. "But there's no room for two."

"Then we'll eat in the courtyard," Liam said. "Where people can see us."

Maya's heart did something terrifying and hopeful. Maybe tomorrow she'd actually eat lunch somewhere other than a bathroom stall.

"Deal," she said.

And for the first time in three weeks, Maya didn't check her phone for texts that would never come. She had a soda, a potential friend, and the strangest feeling that everything was about to change.

Her mom would be so proud she'd made a friend. But Maya would never admit it started with an orange soda disaster and vitamin gossip.

Some things were better left mysterious.