The Farmyard Fail

Maya stared at her cracked iPhone screen, thumb hovering over Leo's text. 'u comin 2 the party?' She should've been getting ready for Jessica's rager—the one everyone would be posting about all weekend—but instead she was stuck at her grandparents' farm, wearing muddy boots and holding a bucket of something that smelled like trouble.

'Just go collect the eggs,' her grandma had said, waving toward the pasture like it was NBD. 'The bull's gentle as a kitten.' Yeah, right. The massive animal stared at her with eyes that definitely did not say 'gentle kitten.' They said 'I will absolutely end your social life before it even starts.'

Her phone buzzed again—Leo was typing. Maya's heart did that stupid flutter thing it always did. She'd been trying to get his attention since homecoming, and he'd finally noticed her TikTok edits. Now he was inviting her to THE party. The one where stuff actually happened.

The bull snorted.

Maya inched backward, phone still clutched in one hand, egg bucket in the other. The electric fence had been off when she crawled through it—she'd checked. Twice. But somewhere between here and there, something had clearly changed.

'Hold up, big guy,' she whispered, channeling way more confidence than she felt.

He pawed the ground. Maya's Instagram feed flashed through her mind—all those aesthetic party pics she'd never be in if she got trampled by livestock today. She was literally about to become a headline: 'Local Teen's Friday Ruined by Beef.' Her friends would clown her forever.

Her phone slipped from sweaty fingers.

Time literally stopped. The bull charged. Maya scrambled for her phone—she couldn't lose it, her entire LIFE was on there—and grabbed something green and leafy instead. A massive handful of spinach. Her grandpa's prize-winning organic crop that he'd been cultivating since before she was born.

She threw it.

The bull skidded to a halt, confused, and began munching the spinach like it was fine dining.

Maya snatched her phone from the mud, heart pounding, and scrambled through the fence just as Leo's text came through: 'party's lame tbh. wanna facetime instead?'

She grinned, wiping mud from her screen. Some stories were way better than party pics anyway.