Three Seconds of Spinach

Maya's first mistake was trusting the cafeteria pasta. Now she had spinach wedged between her front teeth, and Leo—the Leo with the perfectly messy curls and dimples that could stop traffic—was walking right toward her.

"Hey, you coming to watch me crush it at padel today?" Leo asked, leaning against the locker next to hers. He smelled like citrus and confidence.

Padel. Of course. Maya had pretended to know what that was last week when Leo's friend group was talking about it, nodding along like she hadn't just Googled it five seconds later. Tennis but shorter, with walls. Cool, totally normal.

"Wouldn't miss it," she said, keeping her lips pressed together in what she hoped passed for a smile.

The truth was, Maya had spent her entire life orbiting the edges of friend groups, never quite landing. But Leo had actually noticed her when she'd been running extra laps in gym because her partner had ditched her. He'd said something about how she didn't quit, and suddenly she was Leo's friend, invited to things, included in group chats that actually moved.

But the old crowd still pinged her with memes and inside jokes. They'd watched her drift away like a goldfish forgetting it had been fed, then wondering why it was still hungry. That's what Connor had called her when she stopped sitting with them at lunch—Maya the goldfish, always swimming somewhere else.

"My dad's making me miss baseball practice for this padel thing," Leo continued, stretching his arms behind his head. "Coach is gonna kill me."

Baseball. That was more Maya's speed—or at least, the version of herself she'd been trying on lately would have known something about baseball. But this new Maya? The one Leo had somehow decided was worth talking to? She had no clue.

"That sucks," Maya managed, still not opening her mouth fully. "Hey, I gotta—bathroom."

She practically sprinted down the hallway, heart pounding harder than when Connor had publicly announced she was "too good for them now" in the middle of English. May bolted into the bathroom and frantically picked at her teeth with her fingernail until finally—finally—the spinach dislodged.

Her reflection stared back: hair frizzy from gym, a faint smudge of chocolate on her chin, eyes wide with that same panicky expression she'd worn since seventh grade.

Maya exhaled. The old Maya would have run home, avoided Leo forever, maybe transferred schools.

But the new Maya—the one who'd been running toward things instead of away since Leo noticed her—washed her hands and walked back to her locker.

Leo was still there, somehow looking even better than before.

"Ready?" he asked, like she hadn't just abandoned him mid-conversation.

Maya smiled. A real one, teeth fully visible, nothing to hide.

"Born ready."