Thunder and the Perfect Hair Day

Maya's **hair** was supposed to be perfect today. She'd spent forty-five minutes with the curling iron, creating these effortless beach waves that took zero effort, obviously. Now she was huddled under the snack bar shelter at summer camp, watching the sky turn that weird purple-green color that meant **lightning** was about to ruin everything.

"Your phone's gonna die," Sasha said, scrolling through her own **iPhone** like she was conducting important research instead of just stalking her crush's Instagram stories. "Also, you look like you're about to vibrate out of your skin."

"I am NOT," Maya lied,心跳 doing gymnastics. Because Lucas was supposed to be at the **padel** courts today. The Lucas. The one whose smile made her brain turn into static. And instead of cute-casual in her new flowery shorts and perfectly imperfect hair, she was about to be drenched and tragic.

The first crack of thunder made practically everyone jump. Someone screamed - definitely not Maya, okay, it was totally someone else.

"Dude, your **hat**," Sasha said suddenly.

"What about it?"

"You're literally clutching it like it's a flotation device."

Maya looked down at her hands. White-knuckled grip on her dad's old baseball cap, the one she'd stolen because it smelled like him and made her feel safe when she was eleven and now she was fifteen and still carrying it around like a emotional support baseball cap. This was embarrassing. This was SO not main character energy.

Then she saw him. Lucas. Jogging toward the shelter, soaking wet, **hair** plastered to his forehead in these adorable little spikes that were definitely NOT effortless but somehow worked anyway. He shook his head like a golden retriever, water droplets flying everywhere.

"Everyone okay?" he asked, and Maya's brain short-circuited because he was looking RIGHT AT HER.

"Fine," she squeaked. "Great. I mean - I'm not worried about the **lightning** or anything."

Lucas laughed. It was better than she'd imagined. "Same. I was just about to absolutely crush it at **padel** too. My backhand is elite today."

"Show us sometime," Sasha said, sending Maya a look that definitely meant she was going to hear about this later.

"Yeah," Maya found herself saying, pulling her **hat** onto her head - backward, because she felt reckless all of a sudden. "Show us your elite backhand. If you're not too busy getting struck by **lightning** or whatever."

Lucas was grinning now. "Challenge accepted. But first -" he pulled out his own **iPhone**, "does anyone want to see this video of my dog trying to eat a vacuum cleaner? It's literally the funniest thing ever."

"Obviously," Maya said. And when she sat next to him on the bench, watching tiny videos and pretending not to notice his shoulder pressing against hers, she decided maybe the perfect **hair** day wasn't so important after all.