The Midnight Streamer

Maya's palms were sweating. Again.

She wiped them on her jeans, leaving dark streaks on the denim. Three hundred and forty-two people were watching her livestream. Three hundred and forty-two people who had no idea she was broadcasting from her phone, propped precariously on a stack of old textbooks, because her parents still thought she was "asleep."

"Yo, MayaBean, you good?" someone typed in chat. "You look mad nervous."

She wasn't good. The ethernet cable she'd secretly spliced from the router to her room was fraying at the connection point. Every time she shifted her weight, the stream lagged. If her parents found out she'd spent her college fund on a gaming PC instead of the SAT prep course they thought she was taking—well, she didn't even want to think about it.

Something soft brushed against her ankle.

Maya jumped, knocking her phone askew. Chat went wild with ???s and WTFs.

It was Barnaby, her mom's cat, winding around her legs like he owned the place. Which, honestly, he kind of did. The cat leaped onto her desk and planted himself directly in front of the camera, tail flicking with what looked suspiciously like judgment.

"Omg the cat is the real star here," someone commented. "Give him his own stream."

"CAT_LIVES_2024 has donated $5: Cat deserves better content creator."

Maya felt the hysterical laughter bubbling up in her throat. Here she was, trying so hard to be this cool, confident streamer, but her actual life was a messy room, parental lies, and a cat who didn't care about her carefully curated aesthetic.

"Hey chat," she said, her voice cracking slightly. "Real talk? I'm terrified."

Barnaby chose that moment to start chewing on the cable.

"NO, Barnaby, DON'T—"

The screen went black.

Maya sat there in the sudden silence, heart running a marathon against her ribs. She waited for the disappointment, the embarrassment. But instead, she found herself laughing. Really laughing, bent-double at her desk while Barnaby looked at her like she'd lost her mind.

Her phone buzzed. Stream disconnected. But before it died, she'd seen the final chat message:

"Realer than any stream I've watched. We're here for YOU, not the perfect gaming. Do it again tomorrow?"

Maya smiled, her palms finally dry for the first time all night. Yeah. She could do this. Messy cable, judgmental cat, and all.