Orange Hair, Truth Palms

Maya's palms were sweating. Literally dripping, which was humiliating because she was literally about to touch someone's hand.

The beach party was everything she usually avoided: too loud, too many people from school she barely knew, and yet here she was, standing before Leo, whose bright orange hair caught the last light of the sunset like something on fire. He was laughing at something his friend said, head thrown back, and Maya's stomach did that embarrassing flip thing.

"Hey!" Leo noticed her. "You're Maya, right? From English?"

She nodded, suddenly incapable of human speech.

"Chloe says you read palms," he said, holding out his hand. "Tell me my future."

His palm was warm, calloused from running track — everyone knew Leo was the fastest runner on the cross country team, the one who'd placed third at regionals last spring. But here, now, his hand was just a hand in hers. Her sweating palms didn't matter anymore.

"You're going to run somewhere," she said, improvising wildly. "Somewhere important."

"That's vague," but he was grinning.

"And," she continued, feeling bold, "you're going to meet someone. Soon. Someone who sees you."

His amber eyes held hers. The party noise faded to ocean static. Behind him, palm trees stood black against a sky that burned orange, pink, gold — the exact color of his hair, actually, which she pointed out because apparently her brain had stopped filtering.

Leo laughed, but it was soft. "Yeah? Does she have a name?"

"I'm bad with names," Maya said, though she suddenly wished she wasn't.

"I'm good with faces," he said, still holding her hand. "I know yours."

Later, Maya would run all the way home, past streetlights and sleeping houses, her orange sneakers hitting pavement in a rhythm that felt like possibility. Her palms stopped sweating eventually, but the warmth lingered.

The future, she decided, wasn't written in anyone's hands. Sometimes you just had to grab it.