The Last Text

Maya's iPhone clung to 3% like it was holding onto life itself, which, honestly, it kinda was. She'd been staring at Jordan's text for twenty minutes — 'u coming to the party?' — fingers hovering, overthinking every possible reply like her life depended on it.

'Just chill,' she muttered to herself, even though her heart was doing gymnastics. Everyone was at Tyler's house. The party of the year. And she was here, paralyzed by three tiny words and the weight of every conversation they'd had (or hadn't had) since seventh grade.

Thunder rattled her window. The storm outside matched the chaos in her head.

Her phone died. At 2%.

'You have GOT to be kidding me.' Maya scrambled for her charging cable, that ancient frayed thing she kept meaning to replace because it only worked at exactly the right angle. She jammed it in, nothing. Wiggled it left, nothing. Wiggled it right — boom, charging icon. If she didn't breathe.

Lightning flashed, illuminating her room in strobe-light bursts. Suddenly her phone lit up too — Jordan calling. The universe had a weird sense of timing.

She answered, voice weirdly shaky. 'Hello?'

'Maya? You okay? You haven't replied and the weather's getting crazy and I know storms freak you out since that one time in sixth grade —'

He REMEMBERED?

'Yeah, I'm fine,' she said, and realized she actually was. 'Phone died. My cable's basically held together by hope and duct tape at this point.'

Jordan laughed, and it was different from his usual everything-is-chill laugh. Softer. 'I can come pick you up? If you want to come? Or we can just, like, exist in the same space and not talk to anyone.'

Maya's chest did that thing where it felt too full and too empty at the same time. 'I'd like that.'

'Cool. Cool cool. I'll be there in ten.'

Another flash of lightning lit up her window. Maya grabbed her still-charging phone, replied to his text — 'yes, coming' — simple, no overthinking. Some storms, she realized, weren't meant to be weathered alone.