Social Media Spy Games

My mom's new wellness phase meant our kitchen counter looked like a pharmacy — bottles of weird supplements everywhere. The vitamin D gummies were actually decent, but everything else tasted like compressed grass and regret. "Maya, take your vitamins!" she'd call, already late for work. I'd pocket them and dump them in the neighbor's yard later. That neighbor had this cat — this massive, judgmental orange tabby who watched me like I was the one doing something suspicious.

Which, technically, I was.

Because right now, I was hunched over my phone in third period, scrolling through Alex Rivera's Instagram for the seventh time today. My best friend Priya called it my "background process." I called it research. There's a difference between being a stalker and being thorough, you know?

"You're literally spying on him," Priya whispered, tapping my shoulder. "That's weird. That's like, creepy weird."

"It's not spying," I hissed back. "It's gathering intel. There's a difference."

My palms were sweating, which happens when you're fifteen and your entire personality is nervous energy. I wiped them on my jeans, probably leaving gross streaks. Whatever.

The thing about Alex was that he posted these cryptic photos — sunsets, half-empty coffee cups, lyrics from songs I'd never heard. It was like he was speaking a language I couldn't quite understand. And maybe that was the appeal. Maybe I liked that he was unreadable.

Or maybe I was just overthinking everything because I'm fifteen and that's my full-time job.

Priya reached over and closed my phone with one finger. "Okay, spy girl, we're doing something else. We're going to that palm reader booth at the festival this weekend."

"You hate that stuff."

"Yeah, but you're obsessed with whether you and Alex are 'meant to be,'" she air-quoted. "So let the lady with the crystal ball tell you to chill."

That weekend, the palm reader lady peered at my hand like she was decoding ancient hieroglyphs. "You worry too much," she said. "Your head is always somewhere else. You miss what's right in front of you."

I wanted to be like, "Wow, insightful, that's literally everyone," but instead I just nodded like she'd revealed the secrets of the universe.

Monday at school, I was back at my desk, about to open Instagram for my morning recon, when Alex dropped a folded note on my desk. Heart rate: approximately 9000. I opened it like it was a bomb.

"I saw you at the festival," it said. "You looked nice."

I looked up. He was three rows over, pretending to be super interested in his history textbook. But his ears were red. Like, noticeably red.

And maybe the palm reader was right — maybe I'd been so busy worrying about whether I was good enough, whether I was interesting enough, whether I said the right things or posted the right stuff or laughed at the right jokes — that I'd missed what was actually happening.

Or maybe it was just the vitamin D gummies finally kicking in.

I wrote back: "You too." Simple. Low-stakes. My palms were sweating again, but for once, I didn't wipe them off.