The Vitamin D Incident

Maya's iPhone screen glowed at 2:00 AM, her reflection staring back—dark circles under eyes that had seen too many TikTok fails and not enough sleep. Her hair, once gloriously curly after that expensive salon treatment, now hung in a rebellious frizz that no amount of conditioner could tame.

"You look like a bear that woke up mid-hibernation," her little brother Leo had announced that morning, chewing his gummy vitamin with judgment. "A grumpy bear."

Maya had thrown a pillow at him.

Now, staring at her phone, the group chat exploded. Jake—the human equivalent of bull in a china shop, all broad shoulders and zero spatial awareness—had posted something. Again. The whole school was witness to his latest social media catastrophe: attempting a skateboard trick over what appeared to be an actual bull statue outside the community center. The caption read: "Bullseye or bull-oney? You decide."

Maya's thumbs hovered. Should she laugh? Should she ignore it? Her best friend Chloe had already reacted with 😬😬😬.

The truth was, Maya had been crushing on Jake since seventh grade, when he'd defended her from some eighth-grade bullies who made fun of her braces. But this was high school now, and social dynamics were about as predictable as a bear with a migraine.

She typed something, deleted it. Typed something else.

Meanwhile, her mom was still in that phase where she believed gummy vitamins could solve literally everything. Breakup? Take your vitamin C. Failed math test? Definitely the Vitamin D deficiency. Maya's bathroom counter looked like a rainbow pharmacy.

Her phone buzzed. Jake had DM'd her.

"Hey, saw u left me on read. That bad huh?"

Maya's stomach did that thing it did whenever her name was called in class—like it was trying to exit her body through her throat. She stared at her frizzy hair in the black mirror of her turned-off screen, thought about bears and hibernation, about bulls and china shops, about vitamins that couldn't fix the things that actually hurt.

She picked up her phone and typed: "Next time maybe don't attempt stunts near property you could damage? Also that emoji string was not helping."

Three dots appeared. Disappeared. Reappeared.

"Wanna come over and help me plan something less stupid?"

Maya's face softened into something she hadn't felt in weeks—maybe since she'd started worrying about her hair and her vitamins and whether Jake Harris thought she was cool. She grabbed a handful of gummy vitamins on her way out the door. Some nights, you needed all the help you could get.

Besides, bears didn't hibernate forever. Even the grumpy ones.