Dead Inside But Awake

The cafeteria noise hit me like a physical force. Another Monday morning functioning on three hours of sleep, feeling like a literal zombie shuffling through the AP Bio hallway. My mom's new health kick meant my lunchbox was stuffed with spinach salad that smelled suspiciously like grass, but hey, at least she'd finally stopped forcing those horse-pill vitamin supplements on me every morning. Small wins, right?

Then I saw him—Tyler at the usual table, laughing with his varsity jacket crew like they owned the place. We'd been practically inseparable in middle school, but ever since high school hit, I'd been ghosted harder than my will to exist during finals week. I hovered awkwardly by the trash cans, spinach suddenly feeling like the heaviest thing in my backpack.

Outside, the sky went dark like someone had dimmed the cafeteria lights. A crack of thunder rattled the windows. Everyone whipped out phones to check the weather app—classic high school priorities. But I saw it first: lightning striking the old oak tree in the courtyard, brilliant and terrifying and absolutely gorgeous.

In that flash, everything looked different. The zombies around me weren't mindless anymore—they were just people, tired and trying to figure it out like me. Tyler wasn't some untouchable god; he was just a guy who maybe got scared when things changed too.

My phone buzzed. Unknown number. "Hey, it's Tyler. Saw you by the window. That lightning was sick. We should hang sometime."

My dog Buster greeted me at the door like I'd been gone for years instead of seven hours. I dumped the spinach in the bowl—Buster would eat anything—and pulled out my phone. Typed back: "Yeah, totally. Saturday?"

Maybe Mondays weren't completely hopeless. Maybe I wasn't completely dead inside. And maybe, just maybe, this whole growing-up thing wouldn't be the apocalypse everyone made it out to be.