Surveillance on the Trail

Alex's lungs burned as his Nikes hit the dirt path, running harder than usual because today was THE day—student council speeches at lunch. He'd been obsessively checking Maya's Instagram stories for weeks, basically cyber-stalking her at this point, a lowkey spy operation his friends would roast him for endlessly. "Dude, just talk to her," Tyler had said yesterday, shoving Alex's shoulder. "You're not even subtle."

But Alex couldn't just TALK to her. His throat closed up every time she looked at him with those intense dark eyes, like she could see right through his awkwardness. So he ran. Every morning at 6 AM, rain or shine, vitamin gummies chomped dry because they were supposedly good for stress (lol, yeah right).

Today the fog was thick, the world muffled and gray, and Alex was deep in his head replaying how badly he'd stumbled through his speech rehearsal last night when—

A massive shape emerged from the mist.

Alex froze. It was a bear. A LITERAL bear, like, twenty feet away, looking at him with bored curiosity like he was just another weird high schooler disturbing its morning.

His phone buzzed in his pocket—Maya had posted a new story. The bear huffed, turned, and lumbered away, and Alex just STOOD there, heart pounding, thinking about how he'd almost died before even delivering his terrible speech.

He got to school late, sweating through his hoodie, and there she was at his locker, holding something out.

"You dropped this on the trail," she said, and Alex's brain short-circuited because MAYA had seen him? Almost dead from a bear encounter? She handed him his student council speech draft, crumpled and muddy. "I was running behind you. Like, WAY behind you. Did you actually see a bear?"

Alex stared at her, then down at the muddy paper, and for some reason started laughing. "Yeah. Yeah, I did."

Maya's eyes crinkled. "That's terrifying and also kinda metal." She paused. "Your speech, though... it's actually pretty good?"

"You read it?"

"It was lying right there." She grinned. "I mean, someone had to make sure you didn't die AND give a bad speech on the same day."

Alex's face burned, but for the first time, he didn't want to run away.