Palm Reader's Secret

Maya's palms were sweating so hard she could practically water plants with them. She clutched the crumpled note from Jayden—the senior with the perfect swoop hair and vintage leather jacket who'd actually noticed her existence at lunch today.

"You're like, literally vibrating," Chloe whispered, adjusting her dad's old fedora **hat** that she'd claimed was vintage irony. "Chill. He's just a guy."

"Just a guy?" Maya hissed. "He's the guy. The one who sits by the window in AP Bio and draws **zombie** apocalypses in his notebook instead of taking notes."

Chloe rolled her eyes so hard Maya almost felt it. "You've been **spy**ing on him since September. We get it. But you can't just stand here staring at his locker like a creep."

The hallway was already thinning out—everyone else had actual plans on Friday. Everyone except Maya and Chloe, who'd somehow volunteered for the fall festival cleanup committee because it would look good on college applications. (Spoiler: it wouldn't.)

Suddenly, a **cat**—the school's unofficial mascot, a scrappy orange tabby someone had dubbed Colonel Mustard—darted past Maya's legs, making her jump and drop the note.

"No no no no—"

A beat-up Vans plantar foot stepped on it. Jayden.

"This yours?" He held up the note, grinning. His grin was lopsided, kind of perfect, kind of not. Maya's stomach did that thing where it felt like it was trying to escape her body.

"Um. Yeah. I mean—"

"Cool," Jayden said. "I was gonna write you one anyway." He pulled a Sharpie from his pocket and scrawled something on his **palm** before holding it up: PARTY TONIGHT. 7PM. BRING FRIENDS.

"Your friend too," he added, nodding at Chloe. "And the hat's sick, by the way."

Chloe whispered, "I TOLD YOU it was vintage irony," while Maya's face basically combusted.

The real surprise came at 7 PM, when they showed up at Jayden's house and discovered the "party" was actually six people watching horror movies and eating way too much pizza while his weirdly cool mom took pictures of them "for the scrapbook."

Maya sat next to Jayden on the couch. Their elbows touched. She didn't die.

"You know," he said, passing her a slice, "I've seen you looking at me in Bio. I thought you were judging my zombie drawings."

"I wasn't—"

"I know," Jayden said. "I was just too nervous to say hi until today."

Maya's palms stopped sweating. Maybe high school wasn't so terrible after all.