Static Connection

The sky outside the gym looked like bruised fruit, purple and angry across the horizon. Maya leaned against the bleachers, thumb fighting with her iPhone screen, refreshing Instagram for the third time in sixty seconds. No new likes. No new DMs. Just the same carefully curated posts from everyone pretending their lives were perfect.

"You gonna stare at that thing all night?" Jordan said, dropping onto the bleacher beside her. He had that look—the one that said he was trying too hard to be chill.

Maya rolled her eyes so hard it practically hurt. "At least I'm not pretending to study when I'm actually just watching dumb TikToks."

Jordan laughed, but it was weirdly genuine. "Fair. But seriously, you've been doomscrolling since practice ended. Everything cool?"

That was the thing about Jordan—he could be annoying, but he actually noticed stuff. Unlike her other "friends" who'd barely looked at her since she'd been benched last week.

"Just waiting for my mom," she said, which wasn't a total lie. Just not the whole truth.

CRACK.

Lightning split the sky outside, so bright it turned everything white for a heartbeat. The gym lights flickered. Someone screamed. Then—BOOM—the sound hit like a physical thing.

Maya's phone slipped from her hand. Time moved weird, like slow motion but also too fast. Jordan lunged for it at the same time she did, and their hands knocked together. The phone skittered across the bleacher and dropped through the crack to the concrete below with a sickening crack.

"No no NO," Maya breathed, dropping to peer through the gap. Her iPhone lay face-down on the floor. The screen looked like a spiderweb of shattered glass.

Jordan was already moving, sliding under the bleachers to grab it. When he emerged, dust on his forehead, her phone in his hand, the screen flickered weakly then went completely black.

"I'm so sorry," he said, and he actually looked like he meant it. "That sucks."

Maya stared at the dark screen, waiting for the panic to hit. For the I'm disconnected, I'm missing everything feeling. But weirdly, it didn't come. Instead, she just felt... light. Or maybe lightning-struck.

"It's whatever," she heard herself say. "I mean, it's broken. But whatever."

Jordan's eyebrows went up. "You're not gonna freak out?"

"Why would I?" She shrugged, and realized she meant it. "It's just a phone. It's not like anyone was actually hitting me up anyway."

Jordan was quiet for a second. Then he said, "My friends are having a party Friday. You should come. If you want."

Maya looked at him—really looked at him. Not as Jordan the annoying lacrosse bro, but as Jordan, the person who'd noticed she was down, who'd tried to save her phone, who was actually sitting here talking to her instead of everyone else who'd basically ghosted her since she stopped being starting varsity.

"Yeah," she said, surprised by her own voice. "Yeah, I think I'd like that."

Outside, another flash of lightning lit up the sky. This time, Maya didn't even look at her phone to see who was posting about it. Some things were better experienced in real time anyway.