Vitamin Gummy Protocol

I'd been a spy for three weeks straight. Not the cool, CIA-kind with gadgets andaliases—more like the pathetic kind who watched their ex-best-friend's Instagramstories like they were classified intelligence.

Maya and I had been inseparable since seventh grade, until she leveled up her social status and left me behind. Now I watched from the sidelines as she sat at the senior table in our cafeteria, laughing with people whose names I couldn't remember.

That's when I noticed it: the vitamin routine.

Every day at exactly 12:17 PM, Maya would slip a neon orange gummy from her pocket and pop it like it was contraband. Then within minutes—POOF—she'd become this radiant, confident version of herself. The transformation was so consistent I started tracking it in my Notes app like a total creeper.

"You're gonna think I'm crazy," I told my only remaining friend, Leo, as we sat at our usual table near the vending machines. "But those vitamins are basically social steroids."

Leo raised an eyebrow. "You need a hobby. Or therapy."

"I'm serious! Something's weird about it." I'd become obsessed with figuring out what made those gummies so special. Were they infused with something? Was Maya self-medicating?

The next day, I made my move. I waited until Maya headed to the bathroom, then I followed—because subtlety wasn't exactly my strong suit.

"Okay, I know this sounds weird," I blurted as she washed her hands. "But what are those vitamin gummies you take every day?"

Maya froze. Then she turned to me with this expression I couldn't read.

"You've been watching me?" she asked quietly.

"I... yeah. I mean, we used to be friends, and you seem so different now, and I noticed the vitamins, and I was worried—"

"They're regular vitamins, Lily," she said, but her voice cracked. "My mom got me these gummy multivitamins because I was so stressed about starting high school. I only take them because they taste like candy."

I stared at her. "But you get all confident after—"

"That's not the vitamins." Maya's eyes filled with tears. "That's me faking it. I take them because they're something normal when everything else feels fake."

The truth hit me like a physical weight. I'd been spying on Maya, convinced I'd find some secret to her new popularity, when all along she'd been just as terrified as me.

"I miss you," I said finally.

"I miss you too," she whispered. "I didn't think you'd want to be friends with someone who's basically pretending to have it together."

"Welcome to the club," I said. "None of us have it together."

We sat on the bathroom floor for the next twenty minutes, two former friends who'd forgotten that the hardest thing about being a teenager wasn't keeping up appearances—it was finding someone you could stop pretending around.

The next day at 12:17 PM, Maya sat at my table. She still took her vitamin gummy, but this time she offered me one too.

"They taste like orange soda," she said.

And maybe they were just vitamins. But having my friend back? That felt like everything.