The Friday Night Protocol

Maya felt like a **zombie** as she stood outside Jake's house, heart hammering against her ribs. This was it—her first real high school party. The bass thrummed through the door, and she could already see kids from AP Bio through the front window. Her best friend Priya grabbed her hand.

"You got this," Priya said, though her own smile looked glued on. "Just act natural."

Natural. Right. Because pretending to be someone else always felt so authentic.

Inside, the air smelled like coconut *something* and nervous sweat. Someone's phone was connected to a speaker via a tangle of charging **cable** that everyone kept tripping over. Maya instinctively reached to fix it—she couldn't help herself, that stupid urge to make things neat—then caught herself. Being organized was for people who didn't get invited to parties. Or so she'd heard.

She spotted Caleb from her history class looking devastating in that way that made her forget how to form sentences. He was surrounded by the kind of people who said things were "based" or "mid" and actually knew what those words meant in context. Maya felt painfully uncool.

Then she saw it—a scrawny orange **cat** sitting on the back porch, watching the chaos through the glass sliding door with judgment in its green eyes. Something about that cat felt more real than anything inside.

Maya slipped outside. The California air was cool, and a **palm** tree swayed above her, its fronds cutting silhouettes against the moonlight. The cat approached cautiously, sniffing her sneakers before allowing a single chin scratch.

"Not a party person either?" she whispered. The cat purred like a small engine.

The sliding door opened. A girl with wild curls and combat boots—what was her name, Riley?—stepped out. Instead of going back in, she sat on the porch steps and pulled out a sketchbook.

"That's Charlie," Riley said, nodding at the cat. "He's basically the host. Jake just pays the mortgage."

Maya laughed, surprised. "You come here a lot?"

"Every Friday." Riley shaded something on her page. "It's easier than pretending to care about beer pong. You draw?"

"No, I'm—" Maya stopped. She was going to say she wasn't creative, that she was just the organized friend, the planner, the one people asked for notes and schedule reminders. But that wasn't entirely true anymore, was it? "I mean, sometimes. Not well."

"**Fox**es," Riley said, holding up her sketchbook. It was Charlie, mid-stretch, captured in loose, confident strokes. "I'm obsessed with them. Something about being underestimated."

Maya sat beside her. The bass from inside thudded against the glass, but out here, under the palm tree with a judgmental cat and a stranger who got it, she finally breathed out. The zombie feeling faded. She wasn't pretending anymore.

"Can I try?" Maya asked.

Riley tore out a blank page and handed over her pencil. "Warning: I'm a harsh critic."

Maya started drawing, and for the first time all night, she didn't worry about whether she was doing it right.