Palm Reader's Warning

The day started normal enough — me, sixteen and clueless, sitting behind the dugout watching Isaac pitch. The baseball field was practically glowing, palm trees swaying like they knew something I didn't.

Maya, my best friend since sixth grade, plopped down beside me and grabbed my hand. "Your palm says you're gonna meet someone special today."

I yanked my hand back. "You're not psychic. You just want an excuse to talk about Isaac."

"He's been looking at you," she insisted. "During third period? Total eye contact."

My face burned. Isaac Reyes, pitcher with the ridiculous eyelashes and actual confidence, looking at ME? The girl who once accidentally called her teacher 'mom'?

A papaya-colored sunset painted the sky as the game continued. Isaac wound up for a pitch and my breath caught. He was poetry in motion, all lean muscle and focus, like something out of a movie I'd never be cast in.

Then came the lightning — not actual weather, but that moment when everything shifts. Isaac's wild pitch sent the ball flying toward the fence where a stray cat had been watching from atop the dugout.

The cat didn't move. The ball missed her by inches.

Isaac muttered something I couldn't hear, shook his head, and then — THEN — he looked right at me.

His eyes locked with mine across the field. The air between us felt electric, like the whole world had narrowed down to this one moment. My palms were sweating, my heart doing somersaults.

"Your palm was right," Maya whispered, grinning like she'd just won the lottery.

Isaac didn't smile back at me — he didn't even wave. But for three seconds, I was the only person in the universe worth noticing. And as I walked home later, my hand tingling where Maya had traced my palm lines, I realized something: sometimes the universe hits you with a lightning bolt when you least expect it.

And sometimes, just sometimes, you're brave enough not to look away.