Orange Peel Secrets

The lunchroom buzzed with that chaotic energy that makes your brain feel like it's glitching. I sat across from Mia, pretending to be deeply fascinated by my sandwich while actually executing the world's worst spy mission. I was trying to figure out if she'd noticed me literally staring at her for the past three days.

"You good?" Mia asked, peeling an orange with那种 casual precision that made everything look effortless. Citrus spray misted the air between us like tiny, fragrant confetti.

"Yeah," I managed, my voice cracking. "Just tired. Finals week got me moving like straight-up zombie mode."

She laughed, and it was that sound that makes your chest do this weird fluttery thing that definitely doesn't happen in real life, only in movies. But there it was.

Her cat, Pancake, was sprawled across her backpack – this fluffy orange tabby who looked like he owned the entire school and knew it. Mia had showed me photos. I'd pretended to care about cats while secretly caring about Mia.

"Pancake kept me up all night," she said, popping an orange slice into her mouth. "He was hunting invisible demons or whatever. I literally got zero hours of sleep."

"Solidarity in suffering," I said, trying to sound chill and not like I was storing every detail of her cat's nocturnal activities in my brain forever.

The bell rang, and lunch ended with that collective groan that means "this was good and now it's not." We walked out together, and I realized I'd been carrying this orange peel – this stupid reminder of a conversation that had actually gone okay – in my pocket the whole day.

Later, in the privacy of my room, I pulled it out. Still smelled like her. Still smelled like possibility. I wasn't a spy anymore, wasn't a zombie, just a person with an orange peel and maybe, just maybe, the start of something real.