Spinach Lips and Social Suicide

Leo's first mistake was agreeing to help at his grandmother's farm the summer before freshman year. His second mistake was thinking he could pull off talking to Maya—the girl who'd sat behind him in homeroom all year without him ever saying a word—while his breath smelled like a barn.

"Hey, Maya!" Leo called, his voice cracking spectacularly as he waved with one hand while trying to corral three escaped chickens with the other. The chickens had other plans, scattering like feathered chaos across the dirt path.

Maya stopped, her friends giggling. She was wearing that perfect sundress, the one with tiny sunflowers that made her look like she belonged in a magazine, not in the middle of Cow Pie Central, population: Leo's dignity.

"Leo?" She raised an eyebrow. "What are you... doing here?"

"Farm sitting!" he said, way too loudly. "For my grandma. She's at... aunt... thing..." His brain had officially left the chat.

That's when the barn door burst open.

A cat—Barnaby, his grandmother's immortal orange tabby—came tearing out with something green clamped triumphantly in his jaws. Not a mouse. Not a bird. A entire head of spinach, leaves trailing behind like bizarre green streamers.

Barnaby bee-lined for Maya's sandals.

"NO! Barnaby! DROP IT!" Leo lunged, tripping over his own feet and landing face-first in the dirt.

But Barnaby had a mission. The cat launched, spinach and all, directly into Maya's personal space. Maya shrieked, jumping back—and straight into the path of the farm's angriest resident: Bessie the bull, who'd apparently decided today was the day to test the fence integrity.

The fence held. Maya's composure didn't. She was now pressed against the rails, staring down a literal bull while covered in spinach shrapnel, while Leo lay face-down in the dirt, offering muffled explanations about farm safety.

"Are you... okay?" Leo finally managed, spitting out dirt.

Maya looked at him. Then at the bull. Then at the spinach decorating her dress like festive green confetti.

She started laughing. Not mean laughter. The real kind, doubled-over, hair-falling-out-of-place laughter.

"Your cat," she gasped, "just threw spinach at me. To save me from a bull."

"Technically," Leo said, sitting up and wiping dirt from his forehead, "Barnaby was probably running from the bull too. We're all just collateral damage here."

Maya's friends were recording. This was it. The end of his social life before high school even began.

But Maya just shook spinach leaves from her hair and smiled at him—really smiled, not that polite half-smile she gave everyone.

"Well," she said, "at least nobody can ever say my first day meeting you properly was boring."

"Properly?" Leo echoed.

"You never actually spoke to me in school," she said, shrugging. "I was waiting for you to notice I existed."

Leo's brain short-circuited. "You were... waiting for me?"

"Why do you think I sat behind you every single day in homeroom?" She stepped closer, careful to avoid the spinach on the ground. "I even memorized your schedule. That's not creepy, right?"

"No," Leo breathed, "that's... perfect."

Barnaby sat nearby, purring like a tractor, while Bessie the bull huffed dramatically behind her fence. The sun beat down on the most embarrassing, wonderful moment of Leo's life.

"Want help cleaning up?" he offered.

"Only if you promise to introduce me to your cat properly," she said. "And explain why he has a personal vendetta against salad."

Leo's summer was suddenly looking a whole lot less catastrophic.