Dead Battery Summer

I felt like a **zombie**. Not the cool, apocalypse-fighting kind. The high-school-student-who'd-just-been-ghosted kind. Three days after Maya stopped replying to my texts, I was still scrolling through our old conversations at 2 AM, thumb moving on autopilot, eyes burning, heart somewhere in my throat.

My **iPhone** sat on the nightstand, dead. I'd forgotten to charge it again. Mom kept saying my phone addiction would be the death of me, but honestly? The silence was kind of nice.

"Oliver! You're going to be late!" Mom's voice drifted up the stairs.

I dragged myself out of bed. Saturday. **Baseball** camp. Coach Reynolds had made varsity captain last year, and somehow, through a cosmic joke I still didn't understand, he'd decided I had "potential." Whatever that meant.

The walk to the field took me past Maya's house. I didn't mean to look, but I did. Her curtains were closed. Was she still sleeping? Was she hanging out with someone else? Someone funnier? Someone who didn't overthink everything?

Our family's golden retriever, Buster, trotted alongside me, his tail wagging like he didn't have a care in the world. I wished I could be a **dog** sometimes. Just exist. Get pets. Chase tennis balls. No unanswered messages keeping you up at night.

"You're not gonna believe this," said Jamal, jogging up beside me. "Maya's at the field."

My stomach did this thing where it tried to exit my body through my throat. "What?"

"Her little brother's in the pee-wee league. She's watching his game." Jamal punched my shoulder. "Dude, this is your chance."

I wasn't ready. I wasn't prepared. My hair was doing that thing in the back, and I was wearing my lucky baseball socks that were actually just unlucky because they'd never seen a win.

But when I saw her sitting on the bleachers, everything I'd practiced saying evaporated. She looked sad. That was the last thing I expected.

I walked over, Buster trailing behind me like a fuzzy emotional support animal.

"Hey," I said. Brilliant. Absolutely articulate.

Maya looked up, and her eyes widened. "Oliver. I... I've been meaning to text you."

"It's okay," I said, even though it wasn't okay. "My phone died anyway."

"My phone died too," she said quietly. "That's why I wasn't replying. I dropped it in the sink, and my dad took it away as punishment. I've been going crazy thinking you were mad at me."

We sat there for a moment, two zombie-teenagers, destroyed by technology and communication breakdowns.

Then Buster decided this was the perfect moment to shake water all over both of us from his morning dip in the creek.

Maya laughed. Really laughed. And I realized something: dead batteries, wet dogs, imperfect timing—maybe that's what being sixteen was supposed to feel like. Messy, complicated, and completely worth it.