The Catfish Incident

Maya's palms were sweating so much she could practically water-ski on them. The Hernandez pool party loomed ahead — the social event of the summer, and somehow she'd gotten invited. Everyone would be there. Everyone including Leo, whose smile made her brain turn into static.

She'd spent three hours curling her hair. Her sister said she looked trying-too-hard hard. Her mom said she looked nice. Maya felt like a fraud.

"You got this, baddie," she whispered to herself, then immediately cringed. Who said baddie unironically?

The backyard was already packed when she arrived. Girls in bikinis that cost more than her entire wardrobe, guys doing cannonballs that displaced half the pool's water. And there he was. Leo. Poolside. Shirtless. Her palms went from sweaty to monsoon season.

She made her way to the snack table, deploying her signature move: looking busy and unbothered. She was aggressively studying a bag of Doritos when something brushed against her ankle.

A cat. A massive, orange tabby was winding through her legs like it owned the place.

"Oh hey buddy," she whispered, scratching behind its ears. At least the cat didn't judge her outfit choice.

The cat, clearly sensing a kindred awkward spirit, decided Maya was its person. It followed her everywhere. To the snack table. To the bathroom line. By the time she built up courage to approach Leo, she had an orange shadow.

"Hey Leo," she said, voice cracking approximately three octaves higher than normal. Great. Absolutely stellar.

"Hey! You're in my English class, right? Maya?" Leo actually smiled. Not static. Real. Warm. Her heart performed some kind of Olympic gymnastics routine.

The cat chose that moment to leap onto Leo's lap. Leo laughed — an actual sound, not a weird internal monologue — and started petting it. "Who's this little guy?"

"That's..." The Hernandez's neighbor appeared. "That's Mrs. Kim's cat. How'd he get here?"

Maya's palms had never been sweatier. "He kind of adopted me?"

Leo's eyes crinkled. "That's adorable."

Adorable. He called her adorable.

"Hey," Leo said, the cat now purring like a motorboat on his lap. "Want to get in the pool? This guy can be our wingman."

Her palms might have been sweating, her hair might have been frizzing in the humidity, and she might have accidentally adopted a runaway cat, but Maya grinned. "Absolutely."

Sometimes the best moments happened when everything went completely off-script. The cat, obviously sensing victory, settled in for the long haul. Plot twist: wingmen came in all species.