Vitamin Gummies & Truth Bears

Maya's iPhone buzzed for the third time in two minutes. Another notification from the group chat that used to be her people. Before this week, she'd been part of the squad since kindergarten—joined at the hip with Jordan and Chloe through every awkward phase, from unicorn backpacks to the unfortunate chunky highlights phase of seventh grade.

Now she was scrolling alone in her bedroom, watching them make plans at the mall without her.

"You need some serious self-care," her older sister Zara had said earlier, pressing a bottle of neon gummy vitamins into her palm. "These have vitamin D and stuff. Mood boosters. And stop ghosting your friends."

Maya had rolled her eyes. "They ghosted ME. I didn't do anything."

"Exactly," Zara said. "You didn't do anything. That's the problem."

What Zara didn't get was that doing nothing was Maya's whole brand. She was the chill one. The low-maintenance friend. The one who never caused drama or made things weird. Until Jordan's birthday party last weekend, when Maya finally admitted—after everyone else had gone home—that she'd been crushing on Jordan's older brother for like, two years.

Chloe had looked at her with this expression Maya couldn't read. "Bro, that's literally his best friend. You can't do that."

Then the group chats started happening without her.

Her phone lit up again. Jordan: "we need to talk. bear with us here"

Maya's stomach did that awful flip thing. But she grabbed her keys and headed to their spot—the abandoned playground behind the elementary school where they'd spent countless nights analyzing crushes and decoding Instagram stories.

Jordan and Chloe were sitting on the swings, looking guilty as hell.

"So," Jordan started. "We talked to Levi."

Maya's face burned. "You WHAT?"

"We didn't say it was YOU," Chloe rushed. "We just asked what he'd think if someone liked him. And he was like, 'I'd be pretty chill about it actually.'"

Jordan pulled something from their pocket—a stuffed teddy bear from the prize machine at the arcade, with a stupid grin sewn on its face. "And we may have won this for you. As a peace offering. Because we're idiots who excluded you instead of just, you know, talking to you like normal friends."

Maya stared at them. "Wait—you froze me out because you were trying to protect me from rejection?"

"We were processing," Chloe defended. "Emotionally."

Maya cracked up. It was the most ridiculous thing she'd ever heard. But when she stopped laughing, her palm was suddenly itchy with tears she didn't know she was holding back.

"You guys are the worst," she said, grabbing the bear. "But also, thanks."

Her phone pinged—Levi's name on her lock screen. "Jordan told me everything. I'm cool with it if you want to hang out sometime?"

Maya looked at her friends, then at the bear, then at her phone. Sometimes the worst weeks led to the best everything. "Vitamin D for real," she whispered to herself. "Mood boosted."