Palm Springs Detox

The air conditioning in my mom's Honda crapped out somewhere past Barstow, turning the dashboard into a **lightning** rod of heat. My cousin Mateo sat shotgun, blasting reggaeton with the windows down, while I sweated through my seatbelt in the back.

"Stop stressing," Mateo yelled over the music. "Coach is totally gonna put you in varsity lineup. You're killing it at camp."

I rolled my eyes so hard I saw my own brain. Mateo meant well, but he didn't get it. This wasn't just about lacrosse — it was about everything. My friends posting their perfect summer breaks on Insta. My brother's acceptance letter to Berkeley framed on the mantel like a shrine. The way my mom constantly pushed her holistic wellness crap on me, like the **vitamin** D supplements she swore would fix my existential dread.

"That's such **bull**," I muttered, because saying what I actually meant — that I felt like a fraud, that I was drowning, that everyone else had life figured out and I was just flailing — was too heavy for a Tuesday afternoon.

We pulled up to my tía's house in Palm Springs, where palm trees lined the street like sentinels guarding against my anxiety. My tía Rosa met us at the door, immediately grabbing my hand and studying my **palm** like she was reading tea leaves.

"Ay, mijo," she said, her voice dropping to that serious tía-whisper. "You got too many lines in your hand. That's worry. That's pressure." She squeezed my fingers. "You know what your abuelo always said? 'Nobody's watching as close as you think.'"

Something in my chest unlocked. Later that night, I sat on the porch with Mateo, both of us sagging in plastic chairs under the stars. I told him everything — about feeling like I was faking it through high school, about the panic attacks I'd been hiding, about how I thought everyone else had received some secret instruction manual for life that I'd missed.

"Bro," Mateo said, cracking open a soda. "You think I'm not scared? I'm failing pre-calc and my parents think I'm at tutoring right now." He laughed. "We're all just making it up, man. Literally everyone."

The sky cracked open, heat **lightning** spiderwebging across the desert horizon. I thought about tía Rosa reading my palm, about the way my mom's **vitamin** lectures were just her trying to help, about how much energy I'd spent worrying what everyone thought.

"That's **bull**," I said, but for the first time, I actually believed it.

We sat there as the storm rolled in, and I realized nobody was watching me as closely as I watched myself. That was enough.