Palm Sweat & Vitamin Water

Maya's palm was sweating so much her iPhone nearly slipped from her grip. Not that it mattered — the screen was already cracked from last week's incident with Bryce's backpack. Senior year was supposed to be different. Better.

"You coming to Kira's party?" Chloe asked, not looking up from her own pristine phone. "Rumor is Tyler's gonna finally ask."

Maya's stomach did that thing — the same thing that happened when her mom started pushing those horse-pill vitamins on her, claiming they'd help with "stress and focus." Whatever that meant. Like a vitamin could fix being the only Latinx girl in AP Calc who still lived in the apartment complex everyone else called "the ghetto."

"Maybe?" Maya said, because maybe was safe. Maybe was everything.

Chloe finally looked up, eyes narrowing. "You know everyone's saying Bryce was just talking bull about you and Tyler."

Maya's breath caught. "What?"

"You know — that you hooked up with him at homecoming? Total BS. But Bryce's been spreading it since the football game."

Maya wanted to disappear. Instead, she gripped her phone tighter, the crack in the screen digging into her thumb. Bryce had been her lab partner since September, always making those jokes that landed somewhere between annoying and almost funny. She'd thought they were cool.

She'd thought wrong.

"It's bull," Chloe said, like Maya needed confirmation. "Nobody believes him. But you should probably... you know. Not let him get away with it."

Maya stared at her phone, at the text from Bryce sitting unread from ten minutes ago: u going 2 kira's?

Her palm stopped sweating. Something else took over — something sharp and hot and absolutely done.

She opened the text, hit record, and typed out a response: yeah. and we need to talk about your little story. want to do it in front of everyone?

Then she sent it.

The vitamin pills her mom shoved at her every morning didn't fix anything. But this? This might.

Maya stood up, grabbed her bag, and actually smiled for the first time all day. "Yeah," she told Chloe. "I'm going to the party."

Some situations you didn't just survive. You handled them.