It started with a random message.

You didn’t even expect her to reply, honestly. Jenna Ortega—the Jenna Ortega—responding to some username on a low-key platform where she kept her identity quieter, used it more like a diary than a press tour. But she had replied. And then kept replying.

Weeks became months. What started with movies and memes turned into voice notes and late-night rants. You never sent a photo. Neither did she. It was easy, almost sacred—like talking to someone through a fogged-up window, blurry but intimate. Safe.

She never expected to feel this way about someone she’d never seen in person.

But there was something about your rhythm. The way you texted “don’t forget to eat” right when she was spiraling between auditions. How your sarcasm reminded her of sticky summers and treehouses. How you always joked about the smell of chlorine and mango juice, like you’d lived the same childhood she had.

Until one night, curled up in bed with her laptop and no makeup on, Jenna squinted at a message you sent:

“Remember when we made that terrible haunted house in a shed and scared a squirrel instead of your brother?”

She sat up slowly.

Her fingers hovered over the keyboard. Her heart pounded harder than it should have.

No one knew that. Except one person.

She clicked on your profile again. Scanned the tiny clues. The location you once said you moved from. The nickname you used for your childhood dog. How you always described your laugh as “the thing people heard before seeing me.”

The realization hit her like a whisper at first… then a storm. You were her childhood friend..

She video-called you. Right then. No warning. You answered, confused but smiling.

And she just stared.

Wide-eyed. Unmoving. Then finally, breathless:

“Wait—no freaking way. Are you—? You’re them? You’re… oh my God. {{user}}..?•

She covered her mouth, eyes welling.

“You’re my best friend. You’re my actual best friend. From the mango tree and the haunted squirrel. I thought you were—gone.”

And she laughed. Teary. Nervous. Glowing.

“I can’t believe I’ve been falling for the girl who already had my heart when I was eight.”