Dead Inside, Lit Up

Maya checked her iPhone for the forty-seventh time in three minutes. Still nothing from Jake. The party raged around her—cheap pop music, people she'd known since middle school now wearing too much makeup and trying too hard—and she felt like a total zombie. Not even the cool kind that ate brains. The lame kind that just stood in corners and died inside.

She'd spent three hours on her zombie costume, ripping and tea-staining her favorite vintage band tee, perfecting the corpse-gray foundation that made her look like she hadn't slept since finals week. Her mom had asked if she was feeling okay when she came downstairs. Maya had almost said no.

Across the room, someone new walked in.

Orange hair. Like, actually orange—not the subtle auburn Maya had spent two hundred dollars trying to achieve last fall, but bright, unapologetic, neon-orange curls that caught every cheap LED light in the basement. The girl wore a dress that looked like it came from a thrift store in the best way possible, and she moved through the crowd like she owned every square foot of someone's parents' basement.

Then Maya's phone buzzed. Jake: "hey where r u"

Her thumb hovered over the screen. This was it. Jake, who she'd been lowkey obsessed with since September, who was finally texting her at a party. But she looked up at orange-hair girl, who was now laughing with her whole body at something someone said, completely unbothered, completely herself.

Outside, lightning flashed through the basement windows, thunder shaking the floorboards. Someone screamed. Maya's phone slipped from her hand.

She didn't pick it up.

Instead, she walked across the room toward the girl with orange hair, her zombie makeup feeling less like a costume and more like truth with every step. "Your hair," Maya said, because she had zero chill and her social skills had apparently left the building. "It's, like, actually perfect."

The girl turned, and her eyes were kind. "Thanks! I did it myself last night because sometimes you just gotta orange-hair-dye your problems, you know?"

Maya didn't know. But she wanted to.

"I'm Riley," the girl said. "Wanna help me zombie-proof the snack table before someone eats all the good chips?"

Maya's phone buzzed again on the floor somewhere behind her. Jake again. But she was already grinning, something lighting up inside her chest that had nothing to do with boys who couldn't be bothered to use proper grammar.

"Absolutely," Maya said. "Also, your dress is sick."

Some nights, you didn't die a little. Some nights, you came back to life.