Dead Inside and Wide Awake
Maya smoothed her hands against her denim shorts for the tenth time, her palms sweating like she'd just run a marathon. The house party thumped with bass that vibrated in her chest...
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Maya smoothed her hands against her denim shorts for the tenth time, her palms sweating like she'd just run a marathon. The house party thumped with bass that vibrated in her chest...
Maya felt like a zombie. Three days at her uncle's "wilderness retreat" meant zero service, which meant her iPhone was basically a very expensive mirror. Her parents had promised t...
The charging cable lay abandoned on my nightstand, its white cord curled like a sleeping snake. Tonight was the Richards' pool party, the kind of event that existed in the group ch...
First week at Oak Creek High and I was already operating on zombie mode. Summer had destroyed my sleep schedule—doom-scrolling TikTok until 3 AM will do that—and now I was shufflin...
The mid-July sun beat down on Diamond Creek High's baseball field, the kind of heat that makes everything shimmer and blur. I wiped my palm on my jeans for the third time—nervous s...
Maya's iPhone buzzed in her palm, third time in five minutes. *You coming?* She stood outside the baseball field gates, gripping her phone like it was a lifeline. Her orange high-...
The vitamin D supplements sat on my nightstand, mocking me. Mom swore they'd help with my 'energy levels' now that I'd actually decided to join a sport. Cross country. Me, the pers...
Maya pulled the brim of her dad's old fedora lower over her eyes, feeling ridiculous. This was it — the new Maya. The Maya who didn't sit alone at lunch reading manga while everyon...
I stood by the refreshments table at Jordan's party like a zombie—literally frozen, socially dead, watching everyone else live their best summer lives while I plotted my escape. Mi...
Maya's phone died at 2:47 PM—exactly twenty-three minutes before Jessica's pool party actually got interesting. She'd been hovering near the snack table, nursing a cup of fruit pun...
Maya had perfected the art of the cafeteria spy. You know the type — phone angled juuuust right, AirPods in but playing nothing, eyes scanning like she was conducting field researc...
The papaya sat in my lunchbox like a radioactive orb—Mom's attempt to make me "culturally sophisticated" at Taylor's pool party. I was seventeen, not a food critic, and definitely ...