Riding Lessons

Maya's **iPhone** buzzed in her pocket, third time in five minutes. She ignored it. The notification could wait. Her whole life could wait.

"You're up next, chica," Carlos said, leaning against the metal fence. His varsity jacket looked wrong here, surrounded by hay and manure and the kind of people who said 'y'all' unironically. "Unless you're scared."

"I'm not scared," Maya said, though her hands were sweating. "Just... assessing the situation."

The situation was this: Spring Faire, junior year, and somehow she'd let Carlos talk her into riding Mechanical **Bull** #7, which apparently had a reputation for throwing riders hard enough to earn it the nickname El Destructor. The bull stood there, all hulking black metal and fake horns, looking vaguely judgmental.

"You know what they call people who overthink everything?" Carlos raised an eyebrow. "Boring."

Maya glared at him. The thing was, she WAS boring. Safe. The girl who sat in the back of AP Chem, who curated her feed so carefully it barely looked like a real person anymore, who'd never once done anything that might end up on someone's Snapchat with a caption like 'OMFG NO WAY.'

Her phone buzzed again. Probably the group chat discussing whether Tyler had actually winked at her in history or just had something in his eye. God, she was tired of caring.

She climbed onto the bull. The operator, a guy with a handlebar mustache and teeth that had seen better days, nodded at her. "Hold on tight, sweetheart. This don't mess around."

"I'm not your sweetheart," she muttered, grabbing the rope.

Then the bull jerked forward, and Maya's world tilted sideways.

She held on for three seconds. Three seconds of violent, jerky motion that felt like being shaken by a giant angry toddler. Then she was airborne, flying sideways—

—until something landed hard on her stomach. A cat. A literal calico cat, ancient and grumpy-looking, that had apparently been sleeping near the fence and now stared at her with what Maya swore was pure contempt.

"You okay?" Carlos was laughing so hard he had to brace himself against the fence. "That was... poetic justice."

Maya lay there on the dirt, cat pinning her down like a judgmental paperweight, and started laughing. Not the polite laugh she used at dinner parties, but real, actual laughter that made her ribs hurt.

Her iPhone screen was cracked. Tyler was probably flirting with someone else. And she'd just been defeated by both mechanical livestock and an elderly feline.

"Yeah," Maya said, scratching the cat behind its ears. It deigned to purr. "I'm actually good."