Palm Sweat and Papaya Kings

My palms were sweating. Like, actually dripping. I gripped the red solo cup tighter and tried to look casual, which definitely meant I looked like I was holding onto something for dear life at Tyler's end-of-school-year rager.

"You good, bro?" Marcus asked, already halfway through his second papaya mango LaCroix mixed with whatever cheap vodka someone's older brother bought.

"Yeah. Just vibing," I lied, wiping my right **palm** on my jeans. My crush was across the room, laughing at something that wasn't even funny, because Maya could make anything look good. Even her laugh was pretty, which felt unfair to everyone else's laugh.

I needed to talk to her. Tonight. We'd been AP Chem partners all year and I still hadn't made a move. At this rate, I'd have more romantic chemistry with the classroom **goldfish**.

The plan was simple: go over there, say something cool and funny, definitely not mention how I'd memorized her Starbucks order, and get her number before graduation next week.

Then I heard it. A screeching yowl from the backyard.

Everyone rushed to the sliding glass doors. Some random **cat** had climbed forty feet up a tree and was now having a very loud existential crisis about being up there.

"Someone should get it down," Maya said, actually looking concerned.

"I'll do it," I heard myself say, because my brain and mouth were not on speaking terms.

"You sure?" Tyler squinted. "That's pretty high."

"I got this."

I shucked off my shoes and my favorite bucket **hat** (a mistake in retrospect) and started climbing. The first ten feet were easy. The next twenty involved a lot of slipping and reassessing my life choices. The cat watched me with judgment in its eyes.

Branch snap. Gravity is real. I caught myself three feet from the ground, scraping my arms all to hell, while the cat hissed and actually climbed higher like it was personally offended by my rescue attempt.

When I finally dropped to the grass, half the party was watching. Maya was watching. I'd never felt more uncool in my entire life.

But then she started laughing. Not at me, with me. And she walked over and offered me a hand up.

"That was literally so dumb," she said, smiling. "Also, your hat's gone forever."

"Worth it," I said, and we both started laughing harder.

Sometimes the coolest moments happen when you're not trying to be cool at all. Also, the cat came down on its own like twenty minutes later, so. Worth it.