The Night We Got Disconnected

The storm outside was going full **pyramid** scheme — promising so much drama but delivering zero actual excitement. Just rain lashing against my window while I stared at my **iPhone**, watching Leo's stories from Jake's party that I hadn't been invited to.

"Maya, dinner!" my mom yelled.

"Not hungry!" I shot back, my thumb doomscrolling through TikToks like my life depended on it.

**Lightning** flashed, and suddenly my screen went black. No low battery warning. Just dead darkness.

"You have GOT to be kidding me."

I scrambled to find my charging **cable**, but it was hopelessly tangled in a knot that would make a boy scout cry. My hands shook as I tried to untangle it, tears stinging my eyes because I was THAT pathetic — crying over a dead phone like it was my whole entire world.

Then something brushed against my ankle.

I screamed.

A huge orange **cat** sat there, blinking at me like I was the weird one. It was Mrs. Henderson's cat, Barnaby, who I'd literally never seen outside before.

"You escaped too?" I whispered.

Barnaby meowed and head-butted my knee, and suddenly I was crying for real. Not because Leo hadn't invited me to his party, not because my phone was dead, but because I was sixteen years old and the most exciting thing that happened to me all week was a runaway cat.

The power flickered and died. Total darkness.

Barnaby purred loud enough to wake the dead, and I realized I wasn't alone. Not really.

"You know what?" I told the cat in the dark. "Screw Leo. Screw his party. Screw all of it."

I grabbed my hoodie and followed Barnaby into the hallway. My phone sat dead on my bed, but for the first time in forever, I didn't care.

Sometimes you need to lose connection to find it again.