Cable Knitting and Dead Moments

Maya felt like a zombie. Not the cool, glittery kind from Jenna's makeup tutorials, but the actual shambling, brain-fried variety that comes from four hours of AP History cramming and exactly zero hours of sleep. Her phone buzzed with another group chat notification she couldn't bring herself to answer.

The cable TV flickered—again—and died, leaving her staring at a black screen that reflected her own exhausted face back at her. Perfect. The one night she'd planned to actually relax, and the universe had other plans.

"You okay?" Her mom poked her head in the doorway, holding something fuzzy and alien-looking.

"Fine. Just tired. And the cable's out again."

"Here." Her mom set down the strangest cat Maya had ever seen. It was a sphinx cat—naked, wrinkled, with enormous ears and an attitude that suggested it knew exactly how ridiculous it looked. "Mrs. Henderson's emergency. Her sister's in the hospital."

The sphinx cat, whose name turned out to be Zeus, stared at Maya with ancient, judgmental eyes.

"What am I supposed to do with it?"

"Love him? Feed him? I don't know, Maya, just—keep him alive until tomorrow."

Maya sat on her bed, and Zeus climbed into her lap like he owned the place. His weird, naked body was surprisingly warm. For a long moment, they just sat there: the exhausted teenage zombie and the sphinx cat who looked like someone's unfinished art project.

"You know what, Zeus?" she whispered, scratching behind his enormous ears. "Middle school was a lie. Nobody tells you that being sixteen feels like being a zombie trapped in a sphinx's riddle."

Zeus purred, a sound like a tiny engine.

"But at least we get each other, right?"

The cable remained stubbornly dead. Her AP History notes remained unread. But for the first time all week, Maya didn't feel like a zombie anymore. She felt like exactly who she was supposed to be: a tired girl holding a weird cat, watching the black screen of a television that had finally given her permission to just breathe.