Spinach Smile

The bathroom mirror showed exactly what I feared: a vibrant green chunk of **spinach** wedged between my front teeth. Classic. I'd spent twenty minutes perfecting my eyeliner for lunch with Leo, and now I looked like I'd been eating lawn clippings.

"Dude, you good?" Maya called from the hallway. "We're gonna be late."

I groaned, scrubbing at my teeth. "Spinach incident. Give me a sec."

Maya appeared behind me in the reflection, her curly hair already messier than it had been when she'd arrived. She'd been staying over way more since her parents' divorce finalized last month. Not that I minded. Maya was the kind of **friend** who'd drive forty minutes just to bring you ice cream when you were ghosted by someone you'd talked to for three days on Snapchat.

"Leo's not gonna care about your teeth," she said. "He literally wore Crocs to homecoming."

"That's different. That's, like, a personality statement. This is just... tragedy." I finally dislodged the spinach and checked my smile. "Okay. Passable."

We walked to the cafeteria where Leo was already at our usual table, somehow managing to look both asleep and intensely focused on his phone. The guy was perpetually operating on **zombie** mode—he stayed up until 3 AM every night playing Valorant or watching obscure documentaries about fungi.

"What's up, legend," Leo mumbled without looking up.

Maya grabbed a seat across from him. "Did you finish the chem worksheet?"

"Half of it." Leo finally looked up, blinking like he'd just emerged from a crypt. "The math part was making my brain hurt. Also, I think I might be failing." He paused. "Why are you smiling so weird?"

My stomach dropped. "What?"

"Like, your smile. It's very... intentional." Leo squinted. "Wait, do you have something in your—"

I didn't hear the rest. I was already sprinting back to the bathroom.

Behind me, I heard Maya laughing. "It's fine! It's character development!"

Some days, being a teenager felt like an endless series of small humiliations strung together by homework and awkward conversations. But as I scrubbed at my teeth again, listening to Maya's genuine laugh echoing down the hall, I figured there were worse ways to survive high school than with friends who'd still love you even when you had vegetables stuck in your smile.