Signal Lost

Maya's palm was basically a waterfall. Which, gross, but also totally justified considering she was about to do the most terrifying thing in her sixteen years of existence.

"You gonna breathe anytime soon?" Chloe asked, not looking up from her phone. They were sitting in the bleachers, the Wednesday afternoon **baseball** game stretching out below them like some kind of cruel punishment invented specifically to torture freshmen.

"I'm breathing," Maya lied. "I'm breathing aggressively."

"Then do it already." Chloe finally glanced over. "It's just a text. Sam's not gonna reach through your **iPhone** and bite you. Probably."

Probably.

The logic was sound, statistically speaking. Sam had smiled at Maya yesterday in AP Bio. Had actually looked at her with those dark eyes and said, "Hey, nice PowerPoint," which was basically marriage material in the language of shy sixteen-year-olds everywhere. So Maya had done the only rational thing: spent three hours overanalyzing whether "nice PowerPoint" meant "I tolerate your existence" or "I'm secretly in love with you."

Now she was going to find out.

Her thumb hovered over the screen. Heart doing something genuinely concerning against her ribs. This was it. The moment that would define her as either the person who took a shot or the person who died alone with twenty-seven cats.

Her phone buzzed.

Maya nearly dropped it. A message. From Sam.

"hey so i was gonna text u but i got nervous lol"

Maya stared.

Chloe snatched the phone. "No WAY."

"Give it back—"

"Sam was nervous? About YOU?" Chloe was practically vibrating. "Maya. MAYA. You have to tell me everything. Was it the PowerPoint? It was the PowerPoint, wasn't it?"

Below them, someone hit a home run. The crowd went wild. But Maya wasn't watching the game anymore.

She opened her palm—still sweaty, still terrified—and typed back with hands that shook just enough to make it real.

"same. but i'm glad u said it first :)"

The three little dots appeared immediately.

Some signals don't get lost in the air. Sometimes they connect, perfectly timed, right when you least expect them to.

"wanna hang after the game?" Sam wrote.

Maya smiled. Texted back: "yes."

And somewhere in the distance, a baseball finally made it home.