Dead Girl Walking

I looked like a zombie. Not the cool, glowing skin kind from movies—more like I'd been dead for three days and someone forgot to bury me. Fifth period lunch with Lucas had drained every drop of cool I possessed. My hair: doing whatever it wanted. My outfit: safe, boring, practically screaming "I'm trying too hard to not try."

The pool party at Jace's house started in twenty minutes and I was currently spiraling on my bedroom floor.

"You're going," Chloe said through the phone, barely containing her secondhand embarrassment for me. "You literally talked to Lucas for forty minutes about zombies. He likes you. You're swimming tonight whether you're ready or not."

"I can't swim," I lied, because lying was easier than admitting my hands shook at the thought of showing up to my first real social thing since moving here.

"You're on the swim team, Maya. Don't make me come over there."

Fine. Whatever. I'd show up, stand near the snacks, pretend I wasn't freaking out, and leave before anyone noticed I didn't belong.

But the universe had other plans. A fox—actually, like, a real fox—trotted out of the woods as I walked up Jace's driveway. We both froze. It tilted its head, judging me. I felt seen. Then it bolted, leaving me wondering if I'd hallucinated the whole thing from nervous exhaustion.

"Maya!" Lucas waved from the pool's edge. He was grinning. He was also shirtless. My brain short-circuited. "You made it."

"Yeah," I managed, already regretting everything. "Something like that."

"In or out?" Jace called from the deep end.

Everyone was looking. This was it—the moment that defined me. The new girl. The weird girl who talked about zombies during lunch. The girl who'd rather literally die than be judged by a bunch of teenagers who'd forget I existed by Monday.

But Lucas was still looking at me. Waiting. Not with that expression everyone used when they wanted you to do something embarrassing—just curious. Like he actually wanted to know.

I kicked off my flip-flops.

"In," I said, and cannonballed into the deep end before I could overthink it into something else.

The water was cold. My clothes were heavy. But when I broke the surface, Lucas was laughing, and for the first time since moving here, I didn't feel dead anymore. I felt—maybe, possibly, terrifyingly—alive.