The Fox Emoji Incident

Maya's heart was running a marathon before her feet even moved. She stared at her phone screen, finger hovering over send. The text to Jason—aka varsity basketball's finest—had taken her forty-five minutes to craft. Smooth. Casual. Not desperate.

Then her phone glitched.

One second she was typing "hey, want to study together?" and the next—BAM—her dumb autocorrect replaced "study" with something else entirely. Something involving the fox emoji and words that absolutely did not belong in the same sentence.

Lightning struck outside her window just as her thumb slipped and hit send.

No. NO. The message delivered. That cursed fox emoji, which her friends had nicknamed her "signature" because she used it ironically so much, was now immortalized in a text to Jason. A text that could not be unread. A text that could not be unsent.

Maya considered faking her own death. Or maybe transferring schools. Or possibly moving to a remote island where cellular service didn't exist and she could live out her days as a hermit who never accidentally sent weirdly suggestive texts to basketball players.

Her phone buzzed.

Jason: lol

Maya's stomach dropped through the floor. This was it. Her social life was over. She'd be known as Fox Girl forever. They'd make memes. She'd have to change her name and move to Alaska.

Jason: u coming to lex's party tonight?

Maya blinked. What.

Maya: wait you're not weirded out

Jason: nah it's funny. you're like the only person who doesn't try too hard

Maya stared at her ceiling, processing. All those months she'd tried to be chill, to not seem desperate, to play it cool—and the one time she completely faceplanted, that's when he noticed her?

Life made zero sense.

Her little sister burst into her room wearing a fuzzy bear ear headband from her dance recital. "MOM SAYS DINNER'S READY AND WHY ARE YOU SMILING AT YOUR PHONE LIKE THAT"

"Get out, bear ears!"

"YOU'RE THE FOX EMBLEM GIRL NOW I HEARD SCREAMING"

Maya grabbed a pillow and threw it. So much for her cool girl reputation. But somehow, as lightning flashed again across the rainy sky, she found she didn't even care.