The Pyramid Scheme

I'd been spying on Jordan's Instagram stories for twenty minutes when my mom knocked on my door. I quickly closed the app like I'd been caught watching something illicit—which, technically, I had. The popular kids' feed felt like a different dimension. Parties I wasn't invited to. Inside jokes I'd never understand.

"Sweetie, the stray cat is back," Mom said. "He's under the porch again."

The cat. We'd been calling him Barnaby even though he obviously belonged to someone else—he was too well-fed, too glossy-coated to be truly feral. He just preferred our porch to wherever he actually lived. I couldn't blame him. Sometimes you needed to be somewhere that wasn't really yours.

Senior year was three months away and I was still firmly at the bottom of the school's social pyramid. You know the type—exists in every high school. The pyramid had layers. At the top: athletes, rich kids, people whose faces you saw on everything. Middle: band kids, theater kids, academic achievers. Bottom: everyone else. The invisible ones.

I sat on the front steps with Barnaby, who purred like he'd been waiting for me all along.

"You got it easy, cat," I said, scratching behind his ears. "Nobody expects you to climb anything."

Then my phone buzzed. Jordan—the actual Jordan, whose Instagram I'd been stalking—had messaged me. Hey, I saw your photography portfolio. It's actually really good. You should submit to the art showcase.

I stared at my screen. This didn't happen. This was the stuff of cheesy Netflix originals, not actual life.

The sky chose that exact moment to crack open. Lightning splintered across the horizon, turning everything purple-white for a heartbeat. Barnaby bolted. And I sat there, frozen, while rain started hammering the driveway.

The pyramid had shifted. Not a lot—but enough. Sometimes lightning does strike. Sometimes the person you've been watching from afar actually sees you back.

I texted Jordan back. My hands were shaking but I did it anyway.

Thanks. I'll think about it.

And for the first time in forever, I didn't feel like I was spying on someone else's life. I felt like I was starting to live my own.