The Cable Car Confession

Maya's hair was doing that thing it always did when she was nervous — frizzing out like an electrocuted poodle. She kept trying to smooth it down with her palm, but the humidity was winning.

"You look fine, Maya. Literally no one is looking at your hair," Layla said, scrolling through her phone without looking up.

That was the problem, though. Maya wanted *someone* to look at her hair, at her, at *anything* besides their phones. But here they were, suspended in a cable car halfway up the mountain, and Layla was more interested in her Instagram feed than in the fact that Maya was about to have a full-blown panic attack.

The cable jerked. The car swayed. Maya's stomach did that awful drop thing.

"Did you feel that?" Maya asked.

"Feel what?" Layla finally looked up. "Oh my god, are we moving?"

"No, that's the problem."

The cable car had stopped. Completely. They were dangling above nothing but pine trees and the distant glimmer of a lake, water shimmering like crushed diamonds in the afternoon sun. And they were stuck.

"This is fine," Layla said, her voice cracking. "This is totally fine."

Maya started laughing. She couldn't help it. The absurdity of it all — the bad hair day, the friend who'd been drifting away for months, now trapped together in a metal box suspended by a cable.

"What's so funny?" Layla demanded.

"Everything. Nothing. I don't know." Maya wiped her eyes. "I've been wanting to tell you something for weeks, and I thought, you know, maybe at the party. Maybe over coffee. Not stuck in a cable car."

Layla's phone slipped from her hand and clattered to the floor. "What?"

"I'm not going to college with you. I'm taking a gap year."

The silence that followed was heavier than the humid air. Below them, water lapped against the shore of the lake, distant and peaceful, while up here, everything was suddenly, terrifyingly uncertain.

"Oh," Layla said softly. Then she started laughing too. "That's what you were freaking out about? Maya, I thought you were gonna say you were in love with my boyfriend or something."

"Gross, no."

"Then we're good." Layla picked up her phone and dropped it in her bag. "Actually, can I come with you?"

"What?"

"The gap year thing. I've been wanting to take one, but my parents..." Layla looked out at the water, then back at Maya. "If you're doing it, maybe they'll let me too."

The cable car jerked again, then resumed its smooth ascent. Maya's hair was still a mess. Everything was still messy. But for the first time in months, the space between them didn't feel quite so far apart.