The Orange Jacket Protocol

Maya's lunch table strategy was simple: find the corner seat, put in headphones, and pretend she was definitely too busy to notice that nobody had invited her to sit with them since August.

Then she found the cat.

It was behind the school's loading dock—this tiny, scrawny thing with matted gray fur and one ear that refused to stand up. Maya had been hiding back there after almost crying in pre-calc because Sarah had "forgotten" to save her a spot at their table again. Again.

The cat blinked at her with suspicious yellow eyes.

"Yeah, I know," Maya whispered, sitting on an old crate and breaking off a piece of her orange. "My life is pathetic too."

The cat took the orange segment like it was a five-star meal.

That became their thing. Every day after fourth period, Maya would grab whatever she'd saved from lunch and head to the loading dock. She named the cat Pyramid because she'd been learning about ancient Egypt in World History and because the triangular shape of the cat's ears made her think of something that had stood the test of time.

Which was poetic and deep and everything Maya needed right now.

The problem with secrets, though, is that they're heavy. And Maya was already carrying around enough social anxiety to crush a lesser person.

She should've known it wouldn't last.

"What are you doing back here?"

Maya nearly dropped her phone. It was James—James who sat with the popular crowd, James who was on student council, James who had never spoken a single word to her in three years of school.

"Nothing," she said, instinctively stepping in front of Pyramid like a defensive goalkeeper. "Just getting some air."

James stared at her. Then at the cat. Then back at her.

"Is that... is that a cat?"

"His name is Pyramid."

"You named the stray cat behind the school Pyramid?"

"It's a reference to ancient Egyptian architecture, you wouldn't understand."

James surprised her by sitting down on the crate next to her. Pyramid—usually skittish around strangers—walked right up to him and started purring like a broken motor.

"Traitor," Maya muttered.

"I used to come back here too," James said quietly, scratching behind Pyramid's ears. "Freshman year. Before I... figured stuff out."

Maya looked at him—really looked at him. For the first time, she noticed the dark circles under his eyes, the way his smile didn't quite reach his eyes in the hallways, the careful performance of everything.

"Figured what stuff out?"

"How to play the game." James looked at her. "You know—the social pyramid. Everyone's in their layer and you're supposed to know exactly where you belong."

"And where do you belong?"

"Somewhere I don't actually want to be." James held out his hand to Pyramid, who sniffed it approvingly. "My grandma had an orange tree in her backyard. She used to say the sweetest fruit is always the hardest to reach."

"That's oddly specific."

"I'm oddly specific." He stood up, brushing off his jeans. "You want to eat lunch inside tomorrow? I save a spot at our table. It's not as lonely back there as you'd think."

Maya looked at Pyramid, who had curled up in a patch of sunlight and looked approximately one million times more relaxed than she felt.

"I'll think about it," she said.

"Cool." James smiled, and this time it actually reached his eyes. "See you tomorrow, Maya."

As she walked back inside, still wearing her vintage orange jacket—the one her mom said made her look like a traffic cone but which made her feel like herself—Maya realized something.

Pyramids were built by people who didn't know any better. But you didn't have to live inside them.

She fed Pyramid the rest of her orange on Wednesday. By Friday, she was eating lunch at James's table, and yeah, it was awkward at first, but sometimes the sweetest fruit really is the hardest to reach.

And sometimes you have to climb a whole pyramid to find the people who get it.