Three Seconds of Air

Maya's iPhone 13 buzzed against her nightstand for the third time in five minutes. Another Snapchat notification from Kyle. The bubbles in her stomach did backflips.

"You coming to the party tonight?" the text read.

Maya stared at the glowing screen, her thumb hovering over the keyboard. She'd been running from this moment since freshman year—literally running, as in track practice every afternoon, and metaphorically running, as in avoiding anything that might shatter her carefully constructed normalcy.

Her little brother's goldfish, Goldie Hawn, bobbed against the glass of its bowl on Maya's desk. The fish stared back with its perpetually surprised expression, swimming in endless circles. Three seconds. That's what they said about goldfish attention spans. Sometimes Maya felt like that's all she had—three glorious seconds of confidence before the doubt rushed back in.

She thought about Kyle, with his easy laugh and the way he looked at her in AP Bio like she was actually interesting, not just the girl who sat third row and never raised her hand. She thought about last week's track meet, when she'd placed second in the 400-meter dash and he'd been the first one cheering at the finish line.

Her phone buzzed again. "Party starts at 9. Promise I'll save you a cupcake."

Maya groaned into her pillow. Social situations were like that 400-meter race—the buildup was excruciating, the middle was chaos, and somehow she always survived the finish line breathless and wondering why she'd been so terrified.

She sat up and grabbed her phone, fingers moving before she could overthink it. "I'll be there."

Hit send. Heart pounding. Three seconds of pure panic followed by three seconds of pure exhilaration.

Goldie Hawn did a particularly enthusiastic lap around her bowl.

Maya pressed her face against the cool glass of her window, watching the sunset paint the sky in shades of apricot and lavender. She was still running—from awkwardness, from embarrassment, from the possibility of looking foolish—but maybe, just maybe, she was running toward something too.

Her iPhone dinged with Kyle's response: a simple confetti emoji.

And just like that, Maya decided to stop swimming in circles and actually go somewhere.