Static

The bass thrummed through Jordan's chest like a second, panicked heartbeat. Another house party, another night standing against the wall while everyone else seemed to know the secret choreography. You're supposed to want this, right? The validation, the music that makes your teeth rattle, the careful curation of your own existence.

'You good?' Marcus appeared beside him, solo cup in hand, looking genuinely concerned. Which made it worse.

'Yeah, just—gotta get some air.'

The backyard was dark, quieter. Jordan sat on the porch steps, watching lightning fork across the sky in the distance, the storm still miles away. His phone buzzed. Texts from the group chat he'd left on read, flooding with memes and inside jokes that felt like they were in a different language now. Some friend he was—drifting away from people he'd known since middle school, unable to explain what was wrong because he didn't know himself.

That's when he saw it: a fox, copper-bright and impossibly still, watching him from the edge of the woods. Its eyes caught the distant lightning like amber headlights.

Jordan held his breath. The fox tilted its head, almost curious, before turning and vanishing into the dark.

'What are you looking at?'

Jordan jumped. Maya. She'd transferred in sophomore year, kept to herself. Always reading at lunch, always with headphones.

'Fox,' he said, feeling stupid as soon as it was out. 'There was a fox.'

She didn't laugh. Just sat beside him on the steps. 'Cool.'

They watched the storm creep closer, lightning flashing every thirty seconds now, the air thick with that electric-before-rain feeling. Something unspooled in Jordan's chest.

'I feel like I'm faking it,' he said, the words slipping out before he could stop them. 'Like everyone got the handbook on how to be a person and I missed the meeting.'

Maya nodded slowly. 'Same. I thought it was just me.'

The first fat drops hit the pavement. They didn't move.

'Maybe,' Jordan said, watching another streak of lightning illuminate the whole yard, 'we're not doing it wrong. Maybe nobody actually knows what they're doing.'

Maya smiled. 'Wild theory, but I'm listening.'

They sat there as the sky opened up, two people who'd spent months in the same classrooms without really seeing each other. The fox was gone, but something else had taken its place—something real.

'Want to go back inside?' Maya asked.

'Honestly? I'd rather stay here and get soaked.'

'Me too,' she said. 'Me too.'

And just like that, Jordan didn't feel like such a stranger to himself anymore.