The Pyramid Scheme

Maya's laptop screen cast a blue glow across her face as she sat cross-legged on her bed, heart racing like she'd just downed three espressos. The coaxial cable dangling from her wall wasn't actually connected to anything — her parents had cut the internet weeks ago after "the incident" at school.

She was technically grounded forever, or at least until senior year started. But tonight, she had a mission.

Her phone buzzed. jace: you got the stuff?

Maya: obviously. who do you think i am

She'd been the school's unofficial tech support since freshman year, which was honestly kind of pathetic when she thought about it. But now her skills were about to pay off. Jace needed her to help him hack into the school's grading system and fix his GPA before college applications went live. Okay, that sounded bad when she put it that way. But he'd literally do anything for her. He'd carried her books that time she sprained her ankle. He'd defended her when Tyler made that comment in AP Bio.

Her cat, Bubbles, jumped onto the keyboard.

"Dude, not cool," Maya whispered, shoving him aside. Bubbles purred like he'd just accomplished something major.

Outside her window, something moved. Maya froze.

Her dad's old spy gear — the night-vision goggles he'd bought on eBay during his midlife crisis phase — sat on her desk. She grabbed them and peered through the blinds. Nothing. Just the old oak tree swaying in the wind. She was being paranoid. Probably.

Back to business. She connected to Jace's hotspot and opened the backdoor into the school server she'd discovered last year (totally by accident). The file structure appeared like a pyramid of folders within folders, each level deeper than the last. Grade records. Discipline files. Something called "STUDENT INCIDENT REPORTS."

Her cursor hovered. She shouldn't. She really, really shouldn't.

But curiosity was her fatal flaw, always had been. She clicked.

And there it was — her own name, linked to an incident she'd successfully suppressed since eighth grade. The time she'd been caught spying on the popular girls' sleep party, trying to understand how they moved through the world so effortlessly. How they knew exactly what to say, what to wear, who to be.

She'd wanted that confidence so badly it made her chest hurt. Two years later, she'd built her own identity — coder, hacker, the girl who could fix anything — but she still felt like an imposter sometimes. Like everyone else had gotten a manual on how to be a teenager and she'd been absent that day.

Bubbles rubbed against her arm, purring.

Maya closed the file. Some secrets were better left buried.

jace: maya?? you there??

Maya: yeah. sorry. can't do it.

jace: what why

Maya: i just can't. sorry jace.

She disconnected before he could respond. The coaxial cable still dangled uselessly from the wall, and she was still grounded, and Jace would probably hate her now. But for the first time in forever, Maya felt like she actually knew who she was — someone who made mistakes, but who also knew when to stop making them.

Bubbles curled up beside her as the first light of dawn painted her ceiling pink. Some nights changed you, even if nobody else ever knew why.