The Cable Apocalypse

Maya's hair wasn't cooperating. Again. She'd spent forty-five minutes trying to perfect the effortless waves that looked so natural on Kiara's Instagram stories, but hers just looked like she'd stuck her finger in an electrical outlet.

"You're overthinking it," her little brother Leo called from the hallway, still in his pajama pants and Minecraft tee. "It's just movie night. Not the Met Gala."

"Easy for you to say," Maya muttered, attacking her hair with the curling iron again. "Your crush isn't going to be there."

Kiara's Halloween horror marathon. The whole squad was going—well, except for Tyler, who was allegedly "busy" but had posted a Snapchat from the skate park two hours ago. Whatever. Maya was trying to be chill about it. She and Tyler were just friends now. Mostly. Kind of.

Her phone buzzed. Kiara: **running late!! be there in 15 can we start with the scary stuff first??**

Maya's stomach did that annoying fluttery thing. She grabbed her hoodie and bolted down the stairs, nearly crashing into her mom, who was futzing with the TV.

"Cable's out again," her mom sighed, pointing the remote at the blank screen like it was a weapon. "Your father swears he paid the bill, but apparently Xfinity has other opinions."

"Mom! Kiara's coming over!"

"We can still stream, sweetie. Calm down."

Maya was absolutely not calm. She was currently spiraling because Kiara was going to be here any second and Maya's hair was still doing whatever it wanted and now they couldn't even properly binge the zombie apocalypse trilogy they'd been planning for weeks.

But then the doorbell rang, and Kiara burst in with a grocery bag of snacks and her chaotic energy, and somehow the cable situation became Kiara hooking up her laptop to the TV with an HDMI cable she "totally just happened to have" (she definitely planned this), and they ended up watching some indie zombie mockumentary on Netflix while eating too many Sour Patch Kids.

And when Maya's phone buzzed—**Tyler: hey what're you doing?**—she typed back **watching zombie movies with kiara, wyd** without even thinking about it, and then deleted the "wyd" because that was too much, and hit send.

Three minutes later, Kiara's Netflix froze. "Classic," Maya laughed, and for the first time all night, she actually wasn't worrying about her hair at all.