The Party Wall Protocol

The bass thudded through Maya's chest as she hovered near the dip station. Her phone buzzed — a text from Chloe, the one person she actually wanted to see.

"Where r u??"

Maya typed back, then deleted it. Typed again. The screen glowed in the dim light of Sarah's basement, illuminating her social paralysis like a spotlight. This is what happened when your best friend transferred schools sophomore year. You became the person who stood alone at parties, clutching your **iPhone** like it was a lifeline to somewhere else.

"Hey!"

A guy from AP Chem materialized. Cute, in a way that made her stomach do that annoying flutter thing.

"Hi," she managed. Her voice came out weirdly high.

"You having fun?"

Was she? She surveyed the scene: people grinding, someone yelling about beer pong, the general chaos of Friday night. "It's... yeah."

She needed air.

Upstairs, she found Sarah's childhood bedroom — a shrine to who Sarah used to be, before everything got complicated. There was a poster of a **goldfish** on the wall, its mouth frozen in a permanent O of surprise. A single bowl of actual goldfish sat on the desk, swimming in endless circles.

Maya sat on the bed and something crunched under her pillow. A notebook.

She shouldn't look. She definitely shouldn't look.

She opened it.

Page after page of lists. "Things I'm scared of." "People I miss." "Who I want to be." And sketches — tons of them — of this weird **sphinx** creature, over and over, like Sarah was trying to figure something out through repetition. The sphinx had riddles in its speech bubbles: "What do you hide when you show everything?" "Who are you when no one's watching?"

The door clicked.

Sarah stood there. Then closed the door behind her.

"You weren't supposed to see that."

"I'm sorry," Maya said. "I was just —"

"It's fine." Sarah sank onto the floor, back against the bed. "It's just embarrassing, right? Like, who sketches mythological creatures when they're seventeen?"

"I think it's cool," Maya said honestly. "The riddles. They're... deep."

Sarah laughed, this real laugh that cracked something open between them. "Okay, so here's the thing about parties. You know how everyone's acting like they've got it together? Like they're not secretly terrified?"

"Yeah."

"It's all a **bear** act, you know? Like, we're all just pretending to be big and scary and grown-up, but actually we're just these awkward kids trying to figure out how to be people."

Maya looked at her — really looked at her — and something shifted.

"I think I needed to hear that," she said.

"Yeah," Sarah said. "Me too."

They sat there while the party raged downstairs, two people finding each other in the quiet, neither of them pretending anymore.