Vitamin C & the Midnight Fox

Maya stared at the neon orange bottle on her nightstand. Vitamin D supplements—because apparently her summer of "self-improvement" required actual supplements now. Her best friend Chloe had sent the care package with a sticky note: *For glowing skin AND glowing energy, bestie xx*

The truth was, Maya didn't feel glowing. She felt like the same awkward freshman who'd spent the last three months of eighth grade watching her friend group splinter into cliques she didn't fit into anymore. The swim team girls. The theater kids. The ones who somehow already had their lives figured out.

She was seventeen now, technically, but somehow still waiting for her life to actually begin.

A scratching sound at her window made her jump.

Maya slid the window open and a tangerine-colored cat hopped onto her desk like it owned the place. Not a kitten—a full-grown, judgmental-looking cat with one ear that had clearly seen some stuff.

"Seriously?" Maya whispered. "I'm not even a cat person."

The cat flopped onto her textbook and started purring like a motorboat.

Two weeks later, the cat—she'd named him Vitamin, because Chloe would find it hilarious—became her midnight ritual. He'd scratch at the window, she'd let him in, and they'd sit together while she doomscrolled through her friends' Instagram stories, watching them live lives that felt miles away from her bedroom.

Then she met Fox.

He sat at the back of her AP Bio class, all sharp angles and quiet intensity, wearing the same faded black hoodie three days a week. People called him Fox behind his back—his last name was actually Fawkes, but the nickname stuck because of how he moved through the hallways, like he was sliding through invisible cracks in the social ecosystem.

One Tuesday, Maya found him sitting on the bleachers during lunch, reading a paperback with the cover torn off. She was eating alone because Chloe had swim meet practice.

"That's my cat," she said, before she could overthink it.

Fox looked up. His eyes were amber-gold, strangely intense. "What?"

"The orange one. The one that hangs around the school. I think he technically belongs to someone, but he basically freeloads wherever he wants."

"Vitamin?" Fox said.

Maya stared. "How did you—"

"I've seen you with him. Behind the gym." A small smile. "He talks a lot, by the way. Very opinionated about his meal preferences."

Maya laughed before she could stop herself. And for the first time since summer began, something in her chest unlocked.

They sat together on the bleachers every Tuesday after that. Fox was weird and quietly funny and knew everything about everyone but chose to know almost no one. He told her his real name was Julian, that he'd moved here freshman year when his mom got a job at the college, that he didn't mind being Fox because it was better than his middle school nickname.

"Which was?"

"I will literally pay you five dollars to never ask that question."

The vitamin supplements sat unopened on her desk. Vitamin the cat became a regular. And Fox—Julian—became the person she texted when she couldn't sleep, which was often.

One night in September, standing under the bleachers while rain drummed against the metal above them, Maya realized something.

She wasn't waiting for her life to begin anymore.

"You know," Julian said, "Chloe sent me those vitamin gummies too."

Maya blinked. "Wait, you know Chloe?"

"She's the one who told me about the cat. And the Tuesday lunch spot." He shrugged. "She said you needed someone who'd get the weird stuff."

Maya thought about the friend group that had splintered, the summer she'd spent feeling alone, the cat who'd appeared at her window like magic.

Then she thought about Chloe, who'd apparently been plotting from the start.

"Your best friend's a fox," she said.

Julian laughed. "Yeah. She really is."

Vitamin the cat chose that moment to trot out from under the bleachers, shake rain from his fur like he owned everything in sight, and demand treats from both of them.

Maya dug into her backpack for the snacks she'd started carrying, just in case. Beside her, Julian was already pulling out his own stash.

They looked at each other. Then they laughed until their ribs hurt.

Somewhere along the line, Maya had stopped trying to glow and started actually living.