Palm Readings & Lightning Storms

Maya's palms were sweating. Again. She wiped them on her jeans, leaving dark streaks on the denim.

"You're doing it," said Chloe, flopping onto Maya's bed. "The palm reading thing. At Jordan's party. Tonight."

"I can't really read palms, Chloe. I watched like three YouTube videos."

"So? It's all just confidence anyway. Tell people what they want to hear. That's how the world works."

That was such bull. Chloe said everything with this certainty that made Maya feel like she was always three steps behind, missing some crucial manual on how to be fifteen.

But Maya said, "Fine. Whatever."

At Jordan's, someone had raided their parents' liquor cabinet. The kitchen smelled like coconut rum and desperation. Maya ended up on the balcony with Leo, the quiet one from AP Bio, nursing a lukewurn soda.

"Chloe says you can read palms," he said, not quite meeting her eyes. He held out his hand. Calloused. Fingernails bitten to the quick.

Maya traced the lines on his palm with her index finger. Her heart was going lightning-fast. She didn't know what she was doing.

"This line here," she invented, "it means you're waiting for something."

Leo laughed, surprising them both. "You're just making this up."

"Yeah," Maya admitted. "Pretty bad, huh?"

"No," he said, looking at her then, really looking. "It's kind of nice that someone's trying to figure me out."

Then his phone buzzed. The bull notification from his ex girlfriend's thread, still blowing up his screen after three weeks. His expression shifted.

"You should probably block her," Maya said softly.

He did it right then. Click. Gone.

"Thanks," he said. Then, "My palms are sweating too."

They stood there for a long moment. Neither of them said anything else. Behind them, through the sliding glass door, someone started laughing that too-loud laugh that meant the night was tilting toward something real.

Maya thought that sometimes the fake stuff became real if you pretended long enough. Or maybe it had been real all along, and she was just catching up to it.

She wrapped her fingers around Leo's hand. Their palms stuck together in the humidity, summer pressing in on all sides, lightning flashing somewhere beyond the treeline. For once, she wasn't waiting for something to happen. She was already in it.