The Bull, The Boy, The Backup Phone

Maya's pockets felt suspiciously light. She patted them down anyway, like maybe the laws of physics had changed in the last thirty seconds.

"No. No, no, no." She spun around in the middle of the county fairgrounds, her heart doing that thing where it forgets how to rhythm. "Please tell me I did not just drop my iPhone in a literal pile of bull manure."

Her best friend Sophie doubled over laughing, somehow still managing to look Instagram-perfect with her sunset-orange hair gleaming under the carnival lights. "This is peak Maya energy. Only you would lose your phone at a rodeo."

"It's not funny!" Maya hissed, scanning the dirt near the livestock pens. "My mom is gonna actually murder me. That phone was my life."

A group of guys from West High wandered past, including Lucas—the one with the stupidly perfect jawline and the tendency to wear flannel in ninety-degree weather. Sophie elbowed Maya. "Speak of the devil."

Maya's face burned hotter than the roasted nuts cart nearby. She'd been messaging Lucas for weeks, the kind of nervous-making, stomach-flipping texting situation that her therapist called "building social connections" and her friends called "down bad."

"What's up?" Lucas asked, all casual, like he wasn't the person Maya had spent three hours drafting a response to last night.

"Maya lost her iPhone," Sophie announced, because having a best friend meant never having to announce your own embarrassing moments.

"In the bull pen," Maya added miserably.

Lucas's eyebrows went up. "That's... unfortunate timing, actually."

He pulled something from his pocket—familiar, black, with a slightly cracked screen. "This yours? I saw it fall near the fence when we walked by earlier. Thought someone'd come back for it."

Maya just stared at it. Then at him. Then at her traitorous best friend who was grinning like she'd just orchestrated the entire universe.

"You—" Maya started.

"—saved my social life," Maya finished, because wow, that was smooth.

Lucas shrugged, doing that thing where he looked at the ground instead of at her. "Figured you'd want it back. We can—you know—I can show you where the best churro stand is? If you want?"

Sophie somehow teleported three feet away. "I need to go literally anywhere else."

Maya clutched her recovered phone, all the unsent messages and nervous drafts and everything still there. "Yeah. I'd like that."

The bull in the nearby pen snorted, judgmental and perfect, as Maya's summer suddenly got a whole lot more interesting.