Palm Sweats and Truth or Dare

The county fair smelled like fried dough and desperation, exactly like my sophomore year. I stood in front of the mechanical bull, sweat making my palms slick against my phone case. Behind me, Jenna's laugh rang out — that fake one she used whenever something was actually awkward.

"You're not gonna ride it?" Marcus called out, leaning against the railing with that I'm-so-cool smirk that made half the school want to date him and the other half want to throw milk at his head.

"That's such bull," I muttered, but my heart was hammering like I'd just chugged three energy drinks. This was supposed to be the summer I stopped being invisible, the summer I finally told Jenna how I felt about her since seventh grade.

The truth was, I'd been basically low-key spying on her Instagram stories for months. Pathetic? Maybe. But when your crush posts a sunset captioned "some people" and you spend three hours wondering if you're one of those people, dignity becomes optional.

"I'll do it if you do it," Jenna said suddenly, stepping up beside me. Her eyes were bright, and I noticed she'd changed her nail polish — a electric blue that matched the streaks in her hair. "Unless you're scared."

"I'm not scared." The lie tasted like copper.

Her hand brushed mine, and my palms went nuclear. That contact thing people talked about in movies, where time slows down and your brain plays romantic music? That wasn't happening. Instead, I was hyper-aware of everything: the neon lights reflecting off the carnival rides, the distant screams from the tilt-a-whirl, how Jenna smelled like vanilla and something expensive.

"That's straight-up bull," I said, pointing at the leaderboard. "Nobody's lasting longer than thirty seconds on that thing."

"Challenge accepted," Marcus said, pulling out his wallet. "Twenty bucks says neither of you make it past twenty."

I climbed onto the mechanical bull, my legs shaking. The operator winked, cranking up the speed before I was ready. The machine lurched, and I was flying, the world spinning into lights and laughter and the feeling that maybe, just maybe, this was exactly where I was supposed to be.

I lasted 18.7 seconds. Jenna lasted 23.

"Not bad," she said afterward, high-fiving me with genuine smile, not the fake one. "Want to get cotton candy and talk about how Marcus is full of bull?"

"Absolutely."

And just like that, the summer started looking different.