Static

Maya gripped her iPhone so hard her knuckles turned the same color as her faded orange band tee. Three notifications lit up the screen, but she couldn't look. Not yet. The bass from somewhere upstairs reverberated through her chest cavity—too loud, too much, everything too much.

"You good?"

She jumped. Kai stood there, holding two cups of something suspiciously neon. They'd been sort-of friends since sixth period English, the kind where you nod in hallways but never actually hang outside school.

"Yeah," Maya lied. "Just waiting for my..." She gestured vaguely at her phone. "Mom."

Kai nodded like this made perfect sense. "Parents, am I right?" They passed her a cup. "It's fruit punch. Probably."

The punch was definitely not fruit punch. Maya coughed, and Kai laughed—an actual laugh, not the performative one everyone else was doing all night. Their eyes crinkled at the corners.

"So," Kai said, leaning against the wall beside her. "How long are we gonna pretend we're not both hiding in the bathroom?"

Maya's face burned. She checked her phone again—still no message from Jordan, her supposed best friend who'd abandoned her for the cool kids twenty minutes after they arrived. The orange punch swirled in her cup, reflecting the strobe lights from the other room.

"I don't do parties," she admitted quietly.

"Me either." Kai tilted their head. "Hey, wanna see something cool?"

They led her through the crowd, past people Maya recognized from school but didn't actually know. Out the back door, onto a porch that smelled like rain and something citrusy. The sky opened up—sudden, lightning painting the ceiling of clouds in electric violet. Rain came down like it had somewhere else to be.

"My phone!" Maya scrambled to dig it from her pocket, but Kai caught her wrist.

"Let it get wet. Seriously." They pulled her into the downpour, hair plastering to their forehead, orange neon shirt from the party spilling light across their grin. "When else are you gonna do this?"

Maya stood there, soaked, lightning flashing again like the universe was taking a picture. Her phone buzzed in her hand—Jordan finally, probably wondering where she'd gone. She didn't check.

"You're right," she said, and laughed. Actually laughed.

They stood in the rain until the party shut down, until they were shivering, until something shifted between them—friendship maybe, or the beginning of something more. Maya's iPhone sat in her pocket, dark and forgotten, while the world turned electric.