The Pyramid Scheme

My hair was the color of a traffic cone — bright, aggressive orange that screamed for attention when I desperately wanted to disappear. Welcome to freshman year at Palmetto High, where the social hierarchy arranged itself like a perfectly constructed pyramid, and I was somewhere in the basement, probably beneath the foundation.

"You know what your problem is?" Maya said, sliding into the seat across from me in the cafeteria. She had this way of looking at people like she was reading their entire life story in their palms. "You're trying to climb the wrong pyramid."

I poked at my untouched lunch. "What does that even mean?"

"The popular kids? That pyramid's already capped. But there's other pyramids, Sky." She leaned in closer. "I'm starting a skincare line. Organic, vegan, aesthetically pleasing. We could be at the top of THAT pyramid."

I should've known better. But Maya was magnetic — the kind of person who made you believe that orange hair wasn't a curse, but a brand. We spent three weeks mixing face masks in her garage, using actual orange peels because they were ""aesthetic."" We sold them to desperate freshmen who wanted skin that didn't look like it was actively fighting a war against puberty.

For a hot minute, it worked. We weren't invisible anymore. People knew our names. But the pyramid turned out to be, well, a pyramid scheme. Maya's older sister ratted us out to the principal, and suddenly we weren't entrepreneurs — we were just two kids selling unapproved skincare products.

But standing outside the principal's office, waiting for our parents, Maya grabbed my hand. ""The peels,"" she said, grinning. ""We should've sold those separately. That's where the real money was."

I started laughing, couldn't stop. My hair was still orange. I was still at the bottom of every social pyramid that mattered. But sometimes the wrong pyramid leads to exactly the right person.