The Zombie Protocol
Maya's hair was supposed to be caramel highlights. Instead, it looked like a raccoon had exploded on her head. The DIY kit promised salon results. It delivered emotional damage. "...
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Maya's hair was supposed to be caramel highlights. Instead, it looked like a raccoon had exploded on her head. The DIY kit promised salon results. It delivered emotional damage. "...
Leo sat in the bleachers, his fingers tapping nervously against the cracked **iPhone** screen. Maya was three rows down, laughing with her friends, her bright smile making his ches...
Maya's fingers flew across her phone screen, barely noticeable against the backdrop of her dark room. 2:47 AM. Her Discord server was blowing up. "U up?" messaged Jordan, the cute...
I never thought my life would change because of a goldfish named Cornelius. Let me back up. I'm Maya - the girl who sits in the back row, the one nobody really notices. Freshman y...
My palms were sweating. Like, actually sweating. I wiped them on my denim shorts for the third time, leaving dark patches that made me look even more nervous than I already felt. ...
Maya's hair had taken on a life of its own. The humidity at Jayden's beach party was turning her carefully styled curls into something resembling a frizzy explosion. She ran her pa...
Maya's iPhone was basically her fifth limb. She refreshed Instagram for the third time in five minutes, watching the likes trickle in like slow-motion rain. Her selfie from the mal...
The fedora was ridiculous. I knew it, Marcus knew it, the entire cafeteria knew it. But I'd spent two weeks' allowance on it at the thrift store because I thought it made me look l...
Maya's goldfish, Fin, floated belly-up at exactly 7:43 PM. She'd failed him. He'd survived three weeks of her neglect—overfeeding, under-feeding, that one time she tried to serenad...
I felt like a **zombie** walking into the cafeteria—three hours of sleep will do that to you. AP Bio was absolutely brutal with that surprise lab report, and now I had to survive t...
The papaya sat in my lunchbox like an exotic accusation. Mom had packed it again—her latest attempt to expand my cultural horizons beyond pizza pockets and Doritos. I'd been doing ...
Maya's hair refused to cooperate that morning — a frizzy rebellion against the 6 AM alarm that had dragged her out of bed. She was operating on pure **zombie** mode, shuffling towa...