Signal Lost

Maya's phone screen froze mid-text, the loading wheel spinning like a taunt. Not again. The family's ancient cable internet had been ghosting her all week, always at the worst possible moments.

"You good?" Jordan asked from the other end of the cafeteria bench. He was wearing that fox beanie she'd secretly been obsessed with since September—rust-colored, slightly flopped over one ear, giving off effortless cool energy that made her stomach do little flip things.

"Cable's being trash again," Maya groaned, stabbing at her screen. "I was literally about to send that meme to Kai."

Jordan raised an eyebrow. "Kai from English? Still playing that game?"

Maya felt her face heating up. It wasn't a game. She was finally going to shoot her shot—Kai had been dropping what she was 90% sure were hints all semester, and this weekend she'd finally slide into the DMs. But now, with the internet cutting out every five minutes like it was personally sabotaging her love life, she was spiraling.

"Whatever," she muttered, trying to play it cool. "It's not that deep."

But it was deep. Everything felt deep when you were seventeen and your entire romantic future depended on whether you could maintain eye contact without looking like a total awkward mess. The fox beaniethat was Jordan's thing, but Kai? Kai was something else entirely. He had this orange backpack he carried everywhere, bright enough to spot from across the quad, and Maya had built up a whole mythology around what it meant.

Maybe she was overthinking it. Maybe she just needed better wifi.

"Dude," Jordan said, reading her mind with that annoying sixth sense older cousins always had. "Just talk to him. At school. Like, with your actual face."

Maya snorted. "Yeah, 'cause that's not terrifying."

But when she spotted the orange backpack by Kai's locker on Monday, she didn't overthink it. She didn't let the cable internet or her overactive brain or the fear of rejection stop her. She just walked up, said hey, and somehow—somehow—by Friday they were sitting on the bleachers, sharing an orange soda, and Maya was laughing so hard she forgot she'd ever been nervous.

The cable could wait. Her signal had finally come through.