The Summer Everything Unraveled

The spinach smoothie sat on the kitchen counter, looking like something that had already been digested. My mom stood there with arms crossed, in that stance that meant she wasn't messing around.

"You're doing the summer cleanse, Maya. Your skin will thank me."

"My skin is fine, Mom. I'm sixteen, not dying." I grabbed the glass and chugged it, trying not to taste the betrayal. She'd been doing this ever since The Incident™—aka, the time she caught me crying over Jackson Miller's Instagram story with another girl. Now she was on a holistic mission to fix my broken heart through leafy greens and positive affirmations.

I retreated to my room, but the universe wasn't done with me. No WiFi. No cable. Just the spinning wheel of death on my screen and the dreaded message: CONNECTION LOST.

"Seriously?" I yelled at the router. "Today?"

The cable company said they'd send someone between 8 AM and whenever they felt like it. This was fine. Everything was fine. I was just socially paralyzed and digitally stranded in suburbia.

Then my phone buzzed. Jackson's mom: "Could you watch Buster for us? We're heading to the lake for the weekend, and I know you're good with dogs."

My thumbs hovered over the keyboard. This was it. This was my chance to prove I was totally over him, that I could spend three whole days in his house without spiraling. Besides, I needed the money. Saving up for concert tickets wasn't easy when your parents stopped your allowance after they caught you buying "inappropriate" crop tops.

"Sure!" I replied, adding a praying hands emoji for good measure. "Buster and I are gonna have a blast."

Buster, Jackson's golden retriever, was basically a furry, slobbering anxiety generator. The first thing he did when I walked through the door was pee on the rug. The second thing was eat a shoe. The third thing was stare at me with judgmental eyes, as if he knew exactly why I was really there.

"You're not helping," I told him, scrubbing the rug with cleaning spray. "And for the record, I'm NOT here to snoop through Jackson's room. That would be pathetic."

Buster sneezed.

By day two, I'd learned that being stuck in your crush's house with no WiFi and no cable will make you do questionable things. Like eat an entire pint of ice cream while watching their childhood home videos. Which was how I discovered that Jackson Miller, who now drove a motorcycle and wore leather jackets, had once dressed up as a princess for Halloween and cried because the tiara kept falling off his head.

"Oh my god," I whispered. "This is gold."

Buster wagged his tail, clearly approving of my emotional growth.

But it wasn't until day three, when I was curled up on Jackson's couch reading one of his books (The Perks of Being a Wallflower—of course), that Buster started whining at the door. Not his normal hey-let-me-out whine, but something different. Something panicked.

I followed him to the backyard and found him digging frantically near the fence. "Buster, no! Bad boy!"

Then I saw it. A clump of fur, matted and scared. A smaller dog, maybe a stray, trapped under the deck.

The next two hours were a blur. I called animal control. I comforted the scared pup. I fed Buster treats for being a hero. I texted Jackson's mom because what was I supposed to do, handle this alone?

Jackson called me. Not texted—called.

"You saved a dog?" His voice sounded different than I remembered. Less cool-guy posturing, more... genuine.

"Buster found her," I said, my heart racing for reasons that had nothing to anxiety. "I just called for help."

"That's amazing, Maya. Seriously." He paused. "Hey, when we get back, can I take you for coffee? Like, as a thank you?"

I looked at Buster, who was currently sleeping beside the rescued pup (who we'd nicknamed Lucky). I thought about the spinach smoothies my mom kept making. I thought about how everything that felt like a disaster—no cable, being stuck in this house, the awkwardness—had somehow unraveled into something okay.

"Yeah," I said, realizing I was actually smiling. "I'd like that."

Maybe my mom was right about some things. But not the smoothies. Those were still terrible.