The Truth in My Palm

My hair was doing that thing again—frizzing up like I'd stuck a fork in an electrical socket. I smoothed it down for the millionth time, my palms sweating so bad I could practically fill a water bottle.

"You good, Maya?" Lena whispered, elbowing me in the ribs.

"I'm literally having a panic attack," I whispered back, but I grinned because that's what you do when your best friend drags you to your first high school house party and you've been crushing on Jordan Chen since seventh period English.

Jordan was across the room, laughing at something that definitely wasn't funny. My stomach did that embarrassing flip thing.

So naturally, I decided to become a total spy.

I started fake-casually drifting toward their circle, like I was just admrying the extremely cool drywall or whatever. I was two feet away when—

A dog. An actual golden retriever puppy came BOLTING out of nowhere, straight at Jordan's legs.

"Whoa!" Jordan stumbled backward, directly into me.

We both went down. I landed flat on my back with Jordan basically on top of me, and the puppy immediately flopped onto Jordan's chest, tail going a hundred miles an hour.

"I am so sorry," Jordan said, pushing themselves up and then grabbing my hand to help me up. Their palm was warm and slightly damp and they held onto my hand two seconds longer than necessary. "I'm Jordan, by the way. Like you don't already know that, I sit two rows behind you in—"

"English," I finished, my face literally on fire. "I'm Maya."

"Maya from English," Jordan repeated, like they were testing how it felt in their mouth. "Cool. Cool cool cool."

The puppy chose that moment to lick my ankle.

"That's Buster," said some random sophomore. "He's not even supposed to be inside."

Jordan and I looked at each other and started cracking up. Not polite laughter—actual, bent-over, can't-breathe laughter. My hair was definitely ruined. My makeup was probably everywhere. I'd spilled someone's mysterious red Solo cup drink down my shirt.

But Jordan was still holding my hand.

"So," Jordan said, once the laughing died down. "I was gonna get some food from the kitchen. You wanna—"

"Yes," I said way too fast.

Lena caught my eye from across the room and gave me a thumbs-up. I smoothed my frizzy hair one last time and let Jordan lead me toward the kitchen, the puppy following us like a tiny, furry, very chaotic wingman.

Sometimes your worst disasters turn out to be exactly what you wanted. You just have to let yourself fall down sometimes.