The Mechanical Bull Prophecy

Maya's palms were sweating so bad she could practically wring them out like a sponge. Behind her, the pool party at Jake's house raged on—some sophomore she didn't know was cannonballing into the water with a shout that made the entire deck shake.

"You going to do it or what?" Chloe asked, popping her gum. The Instagram caption basically wrote itself at this point: *local disaster vibes.*

The mechanical bull sat there like something out of a fever dream, because apparently Jake's dad owned a rental company and why wouldn't you have one at your sixteenth birthday party in the suburbs.

"I literally can't," Maya said. "I have zero coordination. My PE teacher said I run like a newborn giraffe."

"That's cap and you know it." Chloe grinned. "Remember when you carried that entire cheer routine after Taylor sprained her ankle? You got this."

The thing was, Maya didn't feel like she had this. She felt like everyone was watching, which they absolutely were because the bull was positioned right in front of the sliding glass doors like some kind of social execution device.

"One ride," Chloe said. "If you fall off in under three seconds, I'll never ask you to do anything stupid again."

Maya looked at the bull. The bull looked back at her with its creepy plastic eyes.

"Fine."

She climbed on, wrapped the rope around her hand, and nodded at Jake's cousin who was operating the controls. The first few seconds were gentle, almost peaceful. Then the bull started spinning.

Maya's world became centrifugal force and panic and somewhere someone screaming "Werk it!" and then she was airborne, flying through space in the slowest moment of her life, right toward the pool.

She hit the water with a splash that definitely qualified as iconic.

When she surfaced, gasping, everyone was cheering. Literally everyone. Even Taylor, who'd been giving her side-eye all semester.

Maya wiped her soaking wet face and laughed so hard her ribs hurt. Sometimes the most ridiculous moments became the ones that actually mattered. Sometimes you had to literally fall off a fake bull into suburbia's most above-ground swimming pool to realize you weren't as awkward as you thought.

"Again," she said, paddling toward the ladder. "I'm doing that again."