The Charging Station

Maya's palms were sweating. Like, actually sweating—gross, clammy, the kind that makes you wipe your hands on your jeans five times and still feel like you've got secret slime leaking everywhere.

"You good?" Liam asked, giving her that look. The one that said I'm worried but also this is awkward and I don't know what to do.

"Yeah, just... battery's dying." Maya waved her phone like that explained everything. Which it kinda did, if you knew how her dad was about literally everything ever.

They were at Alexa's house. THE Alexa. whose Instagram was basically a curated museum of teenage perfection. Maya had spent forty minutes on her eyeliner alone. Forty minutes she could've spent doing literally anything else.

And now she was sitting on the floor next to the TV, because apparently that's where the outlets were, holding a fraying cable like it was some kind of lifeline. Which it kind of was. 7% battery. 6%.

A cat wandered into the room. Orange tabby, looked judgmental as hell, like it knew Maya was a fraud and wasn't afraid to expose her.

"That's Pumpkin," someone said. Maya looked up to see this girl with ripped fishnets and this energy that just—vibrated. "She only likes people who are miserable."

"Rude," Maya said, and then the cat actually rubbed against her leg.

"Okay, sometimes she's wrong," the girl admitted, dropping down cross-legged beside her. "I'm Riley."

"Maya."

"I know," Riley said. "You're in my English class. You sit by the window and draw foxes in your notebook when you think no one's looking."

Maya's face burned. "They're not—"

"They're cool. Better than my doodles, which are mostly just curse words in bubble letters." Riley grabbed the cable from Maya's hand. "Here, this one's trashed. I have a charging bank in my room if you actually want your phone to survive."

They ended up on Riley's bed, watching TikToks on Riley's fully-charged phone while Maya's slowly revived. Maya didn't even care about the party anymore.

"You come to these things a lot?" Riley asked, like she actually wanted to know.

"First time," Maya admitted. "My friend kind of made me."

"Same," Riley said. "Alexa's my cousin. My mom was all, 'family bonding, go socialize,' and I was like, 'I'd rather literally die.'"

Maya laughed. Like, actually laughed, not the fake one she'd been doing all night.

"Wait," Riley suddenly sat up. "You want to see something?"

She pulled out this ancient-looking polaroid camera from her drawer.

"Okay, bear with me, but what if we took the worst possible party photos? Like, intentionally terrible. Double chins, messy hair, doing ugly faces. And then we make Alexa hang them up somewhere."

"As a prank?"

"As ART," Riley declared, dramatically. "As a statement against aesthetic perfection. Also as a prank."

Maya grinned. "I'm in."

Her palms weren't sweating anymore. Her phone was at 23%. And she was making plans with a fox-drawing-recognizing, prank-planning, cat-negotiating human.

Turned out the best part of the party wasn't the party at all.