Undercover at the Party

Maya felt like a total zombie as she dragged herself through Taylor's front door. Three hours of sleep thanks to that zombie show marathon will do that to you. The bass from the speakers was already giving her a headache, but she'd promised Jenna she'd come.

"You made it!" Jenna squealed, grabbing Maya's wrist and pulling her further into the chaos. "I need you to be my wingwoman. Ethan's finally here."

Great. Maya was now officially on spy duty. Her mission: distract Ethan's friends while Jenna worked her magic. She adjusted her denim jacket like it was some kind of tactical gear and prepared to infiltrate the target zone.

The problem was, Maya didn't know how to talk to boys. Like, at all. Her brain immediately supplied approximately zero cool things to say, while simultaneously cataloging everything that could go wrong. This was fine. Everything was fine.

"Hey," said a voice behind her. She turned to find a guy in a hoodie that had definitely seen better days. "I'm Leo. You look like you're plotting someone's murder."

Maya blinked. "Close. I'm supposed to be running interference while my best friend flirts with your friend Ethan."

Leo's eyebrows went up. "Jenna's making her move? Finally. We've been taking bets on when she'd actually do it."

"Wait, you knew?"

"Maya." Leo gestured between them. "We've been in the same history class since September. You sit three rows back from me. You think we haven't noticed you and Jenna analyzing our every move during group projects?"

Maya felt her face heat up. "So we're terrible spies. Got it."

"Eh." Leo shrugged. "Could be worse. Could be what happened to Taylor's cable last weekend."

"What happened to Taylor's cable?"

"Her little brother tried to hook up his gaming console and somehow managed to rewire the entire setup into the neighbor's system. They got free premium channels for three days before anyone noticed."

Maya snorted, then covered her mouth. "That's terrible."

"It's pretty great, actually." Leo checked his phone. "Hey, want to get out of here? This party's giving me a headache, and there's this zombie movie marathon playing at the downtown theater."

Maya glanced toward Jenna, who was deep in conversation with Ethan, both of them smiling like idiots. "Yeah," she said, feeling something in her chest loosen. "Yeah, I'd like that."