The HDMI Cable Incident

Maya's hair was doing that thing it always did when she was lying about something important—a tiny frizz halo around her forehead. I'd been her best friend since sixth grade, when we'd bonded over stolen juice boxes and mutually terrible taste in music. I knew her tells better than I knew my own Netflix password.

"So, you're really grounded?" I asked, gesturing with the HDMI cable I'd brought over for movie night. "Because your mom seemed totally chill when I texted her.".

Maya's hand flew to her hair, then dropped. "Maybe it's not grounding. Maybe I just—"

"Spy Mode engaged," I said, dropping onto her bed. "Spill. Now."

She sighed, the kind that carried the weight of approximately seventeen dramatic secrets. Then she turned her phone screen toward me.

I squinted. "Is that... Tinder?"

"Bumble," she corrected miserably. "And I've been talking to this guy for like, three weeks, and he wants to meet tomorrow, but I don't know how to—"

"Maya," I said slowly. "You used a fake age, didn't you?"

"I said I was sixteen!" she wailed. "That's basically true! In, like, emotional years!"

"You're fourteen, you literal disaster." I couldn't help it—I started laughing. "This is peak chaos behavior, even for you."

She cracked a smile. "So what do I do?"

I thought about it. Really thought about it—about the way she'd been extra jumpy all week, the secret phone checking, the hair fussing. She wasn't just being sketchy. She was scared.

"We fix your profile," I said finally. "And we wait. Because if this guy's worth it, he'll still be interested when you're actually sixteen. If not? Then he's just some rando on the internet who doesn't deserve your chaos energy."

Maya's palm found mine in the dark, squeezing tight. "You're the best friend ever."

"I know," I said, grabbing a handful of popcorn. "Now plug in this cable before I die of boredom."

Some secrets were too big for fourteen. But the ones that fit in a dark bedroom, tangled in HDMI cables and shared popcorn? Those we could handle.