Three Percent Left

Maya felt like a zombie. Not the cool, Netflix kind—the actual walking dead kind, the kind that's had three hours of sleep and survived solely on iced coffee and anxiety. Her iphone battery glowed at 3%, a tiny red warning light blinking like a judgmental eye. She should've charged it last night. She should've done a lot of things last night instead of doomscrolling until 3 AM.

Now she stood at the bottom of the cafeteria pyramid—literally. Someone had arranged the tables in a terrifying three-tiered formation for the fall mixer, and somehow she'd ended up at the base level, near the recycling bins, watching the popular kids cascade downward from the apex like human champagne.

"Hey."

Maya jumped. A guy stood there, dark hair falling over his eyes, holding two cups of fruit punch. He looked familiar in that way where you've definitely seen someone around school but never actually learned their name.

"Hey," she managed back.

"I'm Liam. Chemistry?" He nodded toward her AP Chem hoodie. "We're lab partners. Have been for three weeks."

Oh god. She'd been lab partners with this guy for THREE WEEKS and had never actually looked at his face? The zombie apocalypse was real and it was her social life.

"Maya," she said, mortified. "Sorry. I've been... you know."

"In the fog?" Liam nodded understandingly. "Same. Think I watched my entire screen time report play itself back to me last night."

They laughed, and something shifted. Not dramatically—this wasn't a movie moment where the cafeteria went silent and someone started slow-clapping. But the air between them felt different, less staticky.

"Wanna get some air?" Liam asked. "I promise I'm not going to murder you. My mom raised a gentleman."

Maya glanced up at the top of the pyramid where her ex-best-friend-turned-enemy sat surrounded by her carefully curated squad. Then she looked at Liam, who was currently wearing mismatched socks and looked like he hadn't slept since Tuesday.

"Yes," Maya said, surprising herself. "Yes, I absolutely do."

Her phone died before they even made it outside. She didn't even care.