The Ethernet Incident

Maya's phone buzzed with a notification that made her stomach drop. Twenty minutes until the District Meet livestream started, and she was the new announcer. First live gig. No pressure.

She sat cross-legged on her bedroom floor, throat tight. The ethernet cable snaked across her carpet like a lifeline—her mom refused to pay for better WiFi, and Maya wasn't about to let lag ruin her moment. She'd practiced her intro speech twenty times. She'd researched every runner's stats. She was ready.

Then her cat, Nacho, decided now was the perfect time to demonstrate his parkour skills.

One moment, Maya was double-checking her microphone levels. The next, a furry orange blur launched himself off her bookshelf, landed directly on her ethernet cable, and—SNAP.

"NACHO, ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!"

Maya stared at the broken connector. Her phone, which had been connected to WiFi because she couldn't afford a proper streaming setup, flashed NO CONNECTION.

Panic exploded through her chest. She had nineteen minutes. She needed internet. She needed to not humiliate herself in front of the entire school.

She was running down the stairs before she even finished processing the thought, shouting to her mom that she'd be right back. The library. The library had free WiFi and was only three blocks away.

But the universe wasn't done messing with her yet.

Halfway there, her phone slipped from her sweaty grip and skittered under a parked car. Maya dropped to her knees, ignoring the gravel digging into her skin, and reached blindly until her fingers brushed the case.

She arrived at the library breathless, hair wild, knees scraped, with exactly eight minutes to spare. Connected to the library WiFi. Opened the streaming app. Her hands were shaking so hard she could barely hit GO LIVE.

But then something weird happened. The camera turned on, and she looked at herself—flushed cheeks, messy hair, totally authentic—and thought: screw it. This was real.

"What's up, Riverside High!" she said, voice cracking slightly before she found her rhythm. "Maya Rodriguez here, live at the library because my cat literally destroyed my home internet five minutes ago. Today's gonna be chaotic, let's GO!"

The chat exploded. Comments rolled in—"NACHO IS A LEGEND," "WE STAN A QUEEN WHO IMPROVISES," "THIS IS SO REAL." And somewhere between laughing at her own disaster and calling the race, Maya forgot to be nervous.

Her phone died halfway through the third race. She walked home feeling lighter somehow, like something inside her had shifted. Nacho was asleep on her pillow like he hadn't almost ruined her life.

"You're still my favorite," she whispered, scratching behind his ears. "But we're getting WiFi, Nacho. We are definitely getting WiFi."