The Night We Didn't Die

Maya's phone buzzed at 2 AM. *r u coming?* The message from Savannah glowed against her ceiling. Maya groaned. Tomorrow was the AP Bio final, and she'd been studying so long she felt like a literal zombie—her brain was mush, her eyes burned, and she'd caught herself staring blankly at her ceiling fan for ten solid minutes.

But it was the last Friday before graduation. If she didn't go now, when would she?

*outside* she texted back, already pulling on her hoodie.

The group met at the old abandoned Miller property at the edge of town. Someone—probably Jordan—had constructed a pyramid of empty cans in the middle of the overgrown driveway. A can pyramid. Seriously.

"We're doing the haunted house," Savannah announced, like this was totally normal and not breaking-and-entering.

Maya's stomach did that thing again. That lightning-strike feeling whenever Lucas was around. He stood slightly apart from everyone else, hands shoved in his pockets, his profile sharp against the streetlamp. He hadn't even looked at her since That Incident at Homecoming.

"Nobody's actually going in there," said Chloe, who was wearing designer pajamas like she'd prepared for a sleepover, not a felony.

"Chicken?" Jordan raised an eyebrow. Chloe narrowed her eyes, and Maya felt the whole pyramid of their social dynamics shifting. Chloe: popular, untouchable, perfect. Jordan: chaos agent who lived to watch things burn. Maya: invisible, usually, until tonight.

"I'll go," Maya said, before she could talk herself out of it. Everyone turned to look at her. Lucas finally met her eyes, and something flickered there. Surprise?

They squeezed through the rotting back door. The house smelled like mildew and secrets. Floorboards groaned. Then lightning flashed outside—actual storm lightning—and through the dusty window, Maya saw it: a fox, sleek and coppery, watching them from the garden with ancient knowing eyes.

"Did anyone else see—" she started, but Chloe grabbed her arm and hissed, "SHH."

They all heard it then. Footsteps. Not theirs. Something dragged across the floor upstairs.

They ran. They scrambled out the back door, tearing through the overgrown yard, laughing and screaming and not caring if they woke up the whole neighborhood. They collapsed on the sidewalk, chests heaving, Chloe's designer pajamas covered in mud.

"We almost died," Jordan wheezed, grinning like he'd won.

Lucas dropped down beside Maya, close enough that their shoulders brushed. "That fox was a sign," he said quietly. "We're good now."

The others were already comparing battle scars, taking selfies with the evidence of their adventure. Maya looked at Lucas, really looked at him, and he smiled—actually smiled—and in that moment, everything shifted again. The social pyramid didn't matter. The zombie exhaustion didn't matter. The lightning-strike feeling in her chest wasn't nerves anymore.

"Yeah," she said. "We're good."