Electric at the Deep End

I'd been a zombie all week—three tests, a breakup text that felt like a gut punch, and my mom asking if I'd "considered" community college. What even was that supposed to mean?

Now here I was at Jessica's pool party, standing ankle-deep in the shallow end while everyone else played night games. The pool lights made the water glow like something radioactive, and I was fully prepared to spend the entire night being awkwardsauce in the corner.

Then the sky tore open.

Lightning forked across the horizon like cracked glass, and suddenly everyone was scrambling out of the water. But not me. I stood there, letting the rain mix with pool water on my skin, feeling weirdly alive for the first time in days.

"You're gonna get yourself struck by lightning," a voice said.

I turned to see Maya—actual Maya, who'd sat behind me in bio since freshman year and never said more than "here" for attendance.

"Maybe that's the plan," I said, then immediately cringed. Lame.

But Maya laughed. Actually laughed. She stepped into the pool beside me, her sundark soaking through instantly. "You know what my little sister says? That zombies are just people who forgot how to be alive."

Another lightning strike illuminated everything in harsh white. I could see her properly then—the messy bun, the gold flecks in her eyes, how she wasn't looking at me like I was weird.

"So what's the cure?" I asked.

She splashed me. "This. Whatever this is. Being dumb in the rain while everyone else runs for cover."

We stayed there until the storm passed, talking about everything and nothing—how she felt like a zombie in her AP classes, how I was terrified of ending up like my dad, how neither of us knew what we were doing but we were pretty sure everyone else was faking it too.

By the time we got out, pruned and shivering, the party was basically over. But for the first time all week, I didn't feel like walking dead anymore.

"Same time next storm?" Maya asked, and I knew I wasn't the only one who'd just come back to life.