Vitamin F (For Fake)

Maya stood in front of the bathroom mirror, her phone lighting up with notifications from the party downstairs. Someone had posted a TikTok of her earlier—awkward laugh, wrong answer to a question she didn't hear, hair frizzing at the temples. The comments section already had three fire emojis and a "cringe af."

She swallowed the vitamin D gummy her mom left on the counter. That woman was convinced her daughter was deficient in everything, including personality.

Downstairs, the bass thumped against Maya's chest. Earlier, Jake—the cute one from calculus—had actually asked what she listened to. She'd panicked and said "everything" like a total loser, then spent twenty minutes explaining why she didn't have Spotify. Because her parents made her pay for her own data. Because she'd spent her savings on that abandoned cat she'd secretly been feeding behind the convenience store for three months before it vanished. Because she was a mess.

Now, Chloe's voice carried up the stairs: "—and then this fox literally walked right across the patio! Like, raw dog nature in the suburbs, so iconic."

Maya gripped the sink. This was it. The moment everyone pretended to be drunk or high or wildly entertained by urban wildlife, and she just stood there knowing that fox probably had a family and that the cat behind the Quick Mart had vanished right around the time the neighborhood started complaining about "wild animals" and someone's dad probably did something about it, and she should have done something, should have said something, should have—

"Maya?" Jake's voice in the hallway. "You good?"

She opened the door. He stood there holding a red cup, looking concerned and unfairly cute under the amber glow of the sconce light.

"Yeah," she said. "Just needed a sec."

"Cool." He leaned against the doorframe. "Chloe's losing it over that fox. Everyone's going outside to look for it."

The fox. The cat. The vitamin. The whole mess of it.

"Actually," Maya said, before she could talk herself out of it, "I've been feeding this cat behind the Quick Mart? For months? And I'm actually really worried something happened to it because everyone started complaining about wildlife and—"

Jake's eyes widened slightly. Then he smiled. It wasn't a pity smile. "That's lowkey really wholesome."

"It's not, though, I literally abandoned it—"

"No, I mean," he said, "you've been doing that for months? That's kinda sick. We should go check on it."

Maya blinked. "Now?"

"Now." He held out his hand. "Unless you want to stay here and listen to Chloe yell at trees."

She took his hand. They slipped out the back door, past the commotion, into the cool October night where somewhere, a fox moved through the shadows and somewhere else, a cat waited, and for the first time all night, Maya didn't feel like she was missing something.

She felt like she was exactly where she was supposed to be.