Wild Hair, Wild Heart

Maya stared at her reflection in horror. Her hair, which she'd spent two hours perfecting for the Fall Fling, now looked like she'd stuck her finger in an electrical socket. Thanks to Mittens. Her cat had decided her newly straightened bangs made an excellent nap spot—and then gotten stuck.

"May! You ready?" Her best friend Chloe yelled from downstairs. "Tyler's picking us up in ten!"

Maya's hands shook. Tyler was Chloe's boyfriend, and his best friend Kai would be there. Kai, who'd smiled at her in chemistry yesterday. Kai, who she'd been low-key obsessing over since September.

She grabbed her brother's baseball cap and jammed it over her head. It looked ridiculous with her dress, but it was either that or show up looking like she'd lost a fight with a balloon.

The dance was already popping when they arrived. The gym pulsed with bass, bodies moving under flickering lights. Maya kept tugging at her hat, feeling like a fraud. Everyone looked perfect. She looked like she was hiding something—because she was.

Then she spotted the mechanical bull in the corner. Because apparently, high school dances needed mechanical bulls now?

Kai was already in line, laughing with his friends. When he saw Maya, he waved her over.

"You riding?" he called. "Or are you too scared?"

Something shifted in Maya's chest. All semester, she'd been sitting on the sidelines, watching instead of participating. Too scared of messing up, too worried about what people thought.

She took off the hat. Her wrecked hair sprang free, wild and electric and completely unfixable.

"Watch me," she said.

The bull bucked beneath her, relentless and unforgiving. Maya held on, hair flying everywhere, people cheering. She lasted twelve seconds before tumbling into the inflatable mat.

Kai helped her up, grinning. "That was awesome."

"I looked insane,"

"You looked alive, Maya."

Later, they sat by the bleachers, sharing the punch that tasted like red dye #40 and regret. Mittens was probably sleeping peacefully on her pillow right now.

"So," Kai said, "next Friday? There's this bonfire at Miller's Creek."

Maya smiled, hair still a disaster, heart pounding in a completely different way now. "I'm there."

Sometimes the best moments happen when everything goes wrong. Sometimes you have to let your hair get a little wild. And sometimes, you just gotta grab life by the horns—or in Maya's case, by her awful, amazing, cat-ruined hair.