The Palm Reader's Prophecy

My palms were sweating so much I could practically water-ski on them. Which was ridiculous, considering I was just sitting across from Jordan at the school carnival, while she pretended to read my future.

"You're going to meet someone special," Jordan said, tracing her finger along my hand. Her cat-eye glasses kept sliding down her nose. "But first, you have to stop spying on yourself."

I blinked. "What?"

"You know what I mean." She looked up, and for a second I forgot how to breathe. "You're always watching yourself, like you're a separate person. Like you're a goldfish in a bowl, constantly checking if you're still swimming right."

My face burned. Jordan—the Jordan I'd been lowkey crushing on since seventh grade—had just casually explained my entire existential crisis.

"I call it Main Character Syndrome," I deflected, trying to play it cool. "Can't help it if I'm the protagonist."

She laughed, and I felt like I'd won something. "Whatever you say, spy boy. But seriously, your lifeline says you're overthinking everything."

A stray cat jumped onto the table between us, knocking over Jordan's crystal ball (plastic, from the dollar store). We both laughed, and in that moment, I wasn't monitoring my reactions or calculating how to look interested but not desperate. I was just... there.

"Your cat has terrible timing," I said.

"He's not my cat," Jordan said, scratching behind its ears. "He just shows up when things are about to get interesting."

The carnival lights flickered on around us. Someone's phone started playing that TikTok song everyone was obsessed with. I looked at my hand in Jordan's palm, then at her face, and realized she wasn't looking at my lifeline anymore.

"You know what I actually see?" she whispered.

My heart did that embarrassing flutter thing. "What?"

"Someone who should probably stop overanalyzing everything and just say hey."

The cat purred like it knew something I didn't.

"Hey," I said.

Jordan grinned. "See? That wasn't so hard, was it?"