Static Between Us

The old cable had been fraying for months, dangling behind the TV like Dad's abandoned dreams. Tonight was the playoffs — the kind of baseball game that made teenagers pretend to care about sports just to fit in at school tomorrow.

Maya's fingers hovered over her iPhone, refreshing the group chat that had gone suspiciously quiet. Tyler hadn't replied in three hours. Three hours.

Outside, lightning cracked the sky in half, illuminating her部屋 in a strobe-flash panic. The power flickered. Of course. Of freaking course.

"Maya!" her little brother yelled from downstairs. "The TV's dead!"

She ignored him, fingers running across her screen as she typed and deleted three different texts. _Hey, are we still watching together? Too desperate. _Yo, game starting lol. Too casual. _Everything okay with your mom? Too... real.

The window rattled. Another lightning strike, closer this time. The rain started hammering against the glass like it had personal beef with her evening plans.

Then her phone buzzed.

*Tyler: Sorry, mom took my phone. Catch you tomorrow?*

Maya stared at the screen. Catch her tomorrow. When the game would be over. When the moment would've passed. When everyone at school would be debriefing about that crazy ninth-inning home run or whatever, and she'd be standing there nodding along like she'd been part of it.

Her thumb hovered over the keyboard. Running through her head were all the things she wanted to say — that she'd spent two hours doing her eyeliner, that she'd pretended to understand baseball stats for weeks, that this was supposed to be their thing.

Instead, she typed: *No worries. Good luck with everything.*

Downstairs, the cable box sputtered back to life. The game blared through the house — commentators going wild, crowds roaring, the unmistakable crack of a bat.

Maya set her phone on her nightstand and walked to the window. Lightning split the sky again, beautiful and terrifying and absolutely indifferent to her plans. Somewhere out there, Tyler was dealing with real problems. Real life.

She picked up her phone one last time and opened a new message.

*Maya: Actually, I don't really get baseball. But I get wanting to be there anyway. I'm here if you want to just... exist.*

Send.

The lightning flashed again. Behind her, the crowd on TV went absolutely feral.

She smiled, just a little. Tomorrow, she'd fake her way through the conversation like everyone else. But tonight? Tonight she was done pretending.