The Saturday Night Meltdown

Maya's bedroom floor was a war zone of rejected outfits. In twenty minutes, she'd be at Tyler's house—the party everyone would be talking about on Monday—and she was currently staring at her reflection in full panic mode.

"You look fine," her best friend Kai said over FaceTime, voice muffled through Maya's phone speaker. "Like, actually fine. You're spiraling."

"I look like a traffic cone," Maya groaned, tugging at the bright orange crop top she'd impulsively bought with her babysitting money. "Why did I think this color was a vibe? It's giving construction worker, not it-girl."

Her cat, Mittens, chose that exact moment to leap onto her dresser, knocking over a carefully arranged display of perfume bottles. The crash echoed through her room like a judgment bell.

"Mittens!" Maya hissed, scrambling to save her vanilla-scented body spray before it rolled onto the pile of clothes.

"That's a sign," Kai said. "The universe—or at least your cat—is telling you to change. Put on the black dress. You always feel confident in that."

Maya hesitated. The black dress was safe. The black dress was what she always wore to blend in, stay unnoticed in the background of group photos, exist without anyone really seeing her. But she'd promised herself this would be the year she stopped being wallpaper.

She grabbed the vintage beret she'd thrifted last weekend—her statement piece, her armor. The hat sat perfectly, tilting just enough to say I put effort into this but I'm not trying too hard.

"I'm wearing the orange," Maya said, surprising herself. "And the hat."

"Bold choice," Kai said, but she was grinning. "Bold looks good on you, though."

Maya studied herself in the mirror. The orange was bright. Unavoidable. The kind of color people noticed. Her heart raced, but not from panic this time.

"Yeah," she said. "Yeah, it does."

She grabbed her phone and headed for the door, Mittens watching with unimpressed eyes from atop the perfume graveyard. Saturday night awaited, and for the first time, Maya was ready to be seen.