Screenshot at Sunset

Maya's palms were sweating, and it wasn't just because it was ninety degrees at the baseball field. Her phone buzzed in her pocket—again—for the fifth time in ten minutes. The iPhone screen lit up with another text from Jordan: *r u coming? the squad is by the snack stand*

She wasn't. She couldn't. Her orange converse scuffed against the metal bleacher as she shifted, trying to look absorbed in the game even though she understood exactly zero of what was happening on the field. Something about bases and innings and why everyone screamed when the guy in white hit the ball with the wooden stick.

"Maya!" A familiar voice. Sophie slid onto the bleacher beside her, dropping two bottles of freezing cold water with that satisfying plastic crunch. "You've been sitting here alone for like, twenty minutes. What's the vibe?"

"Just... thinking." Maya accepted the water gratefully, pressing it to her flushed cheeks. The condensation dripped onto her favorite denim shorts—the ones she'd spent forty minutes ironing this morning because first impressions at high school baseball games were apparently the new hill she was choosing to die on.

"About Jordan?" Sophie raised one perfectly sculpted eyebrow. "About how you ghosted everyone's group chat after Jordan made that joke about your—"

"I didn't ghost. I needed space." But even as she said it, Maya's thumb hovered over her phone screen. The orange sunset was painting the whole sky in streaks of coral and tangerine, the kind of golden hour that made everything look cinematic and slightly unreal—like a TikTok filter she hadn't applied yet.

"Space from your best friend since sixth grade?" Sophie's voice softened. "Maya, they were joking. You know that, right?"

Did she? The joke had stung—something about how Maya was always trying too hard, always overthinking everything, always staging her life like it was content for an audience that wasn't even watching. The worst part was that some of it was true.

Her phone buzzed again. Jordan had sent a photo: the whole crew squeezed onto a selfie bench at the snack stand, everyone making goofy faces, holding up—

Maya's breath caught. They were all holding orange sodas, her favorite, even though they complained it tasted like liquid candy. A note at the bottom: *we got u one but it's probly warm by now *

Something in her chest cracked open.

"You know," Sophie said, nudging her shoulder, "real friends don't make you choose between being yourself and being with them. They just... wait."

On the field, the guy in white swung his bat and connected. The crowd roared. The baseball soared through that orange sky like it was trying to touch the sunset before falling back down.

Maya's thumb moved before she could overthink it. *coming. save me a soda.*

"Race you," Sophie said, already halfway down the bleachers.

Maya grabbed her iPhone, slipped it into her pocket, and ran. The water bottles clinked together in her hand. The sunset blazed ahead. And for the first time all night, she wasn't performing anything—she was just showing up.