Palm Sweats & Period 4

My palms were sweating. Again.

I wiped them on my jeans, leaving dark streaks on the denim. Great. Now I looked nervous AND messy.

"You're literally spiraling," Kai said, not looking up from their phone. We were sitting against the gym wall, watching the cross country team stretch on the field. "Just talk to them."

Easy for Kai to say. They weren't the one who'd been basically **running** away from Maya every time she tried to say hi for the past three weeks.

I checked my phone. Still no text back from the message I sent yesterday. My brain immediately supplied five different reasons why: she thinks I'm weird, she's busy, she hates me, she's laughing at me with her friends, or—

"Dude, stop dooming," Jordan said, dropping onto the grass beside me. "We've been over this. You're being a total ... what's that word?"

" situationship?" I offered.

"No. You're being a little **spy**," Jordan said. "You're watching her Instagram stories the second she posts them. You know her schedule better than your own. It's giving ... intensity."

I flushed. That was fair. I'd become an expert at not getting caught viewing, staying exactly one viewer below the visible count. It was an art form, really.

"I can't help it," I muttered. "I just—it's like I need something to settle my stomach before I talk to her. Maybe I should take more of those **vitamin** B gummies my mom got me. They're supposed to help with stress."

"Bro," Kai said finally looking up. "Your anxiety gummies aren't gonna help. You need to actually—"

Then Maya walked past.

Our eyes met.

I held up my hand in what was supposed to be a casual wave but came out as this weird claw motion because my palms were so slippery. She stopped. She smiled. She actually smiled.

"Hey!" she said. "You're in my English class, right? We were supposed to peer edit today but you dipped during lunch."

I'd dipped. I'd literally panicked and left because I couldn't handle the thought of sitting next to her while she read my terrible essay about existentialism in The Giver.

"Yeah, sorry about that," I managed. "I had to ... run."

"You're on the track team?" she asked, and her eyes lit up. "That's actually sick."

We talked for ten minutes. About nothing. About everything. About how Mr. Harrison's breath always smells like coffee and tragedy. About how she just moved here from Oregon and the humidity was ruining her hair.

When the bell rang, she said, "Sit with me at lunch tomorrow?"

"Yeah," I said. "For sure."

After she walked away, I looked at my friends. Both of them were grinning like idiots.

"Your palms are literally dripping right now," Kai noted.

"Shut up," I said, but I was smiling too.

Whatever. I'd take sweaty palms over this stomach feeling any day.