Fox Mode Activated

I walked into homeroom feeling like a **zombie**—three hours of sleep, half-caf vanilla latte doing absolutely nothing, and another day of pretending to care about AP Euro when my brain was still stuck at 2 AM, overthinking a text I'd sent to Jordan. "Whatever," I muttered, sliding into my usual seat near the window.

That's when I saw her—new girl, Chloe, crouched behind the bleachers during lunch, phone pressed to her ear. Not the sneaky kind of crouching either. More like the I'm-up-to-something-and-loving-it kind. **Fox** energy, you know? That sneaky-brilliant vibe that makes teachers nervous and other kids want to be her friend or be her. I'd been stuck in "go with the flow" mode since middle school, but she was out there making waves.

Turns out, she was livestreaming. Not the cringe makeup tutorial kind either. She was narrating the school's social hierarchy like it was a nature documentary. "And here we see the **goldfish** memory of the popular crowd," she whispered into her phone, barely stifling a laugh. "They forgot they hated each other yesterday and now they're besties again. The ecosystem is wild today."

I almost snorted my chocolate milk out my nose.

She caught me watching. Winked. "You're next on the documentary, mystery girl."

"I'm Maya," I said, suddenly aware I'd been staring like a total creep. "And I'm not that interesting."

"Everyone's interesting," Chloe said, sliding onto the bench next to me. "You're just in zombie mode, same as everyone else. But I bet there's a fox hiding somewhere under all that academic exhaustion."

She was right. Not about the fox part—I wish I was that cool—but about the zombie mode thing. We'd all been walking through high school like it was a level we couldn't beat, eyes half-open, just trying to survive till graduation. But Chloe? She was playing the game on hard mode and loving every glitch.

"You know," I said, surprising myself, "I do have a plan. For after graduation."

"Let me guess," Chloe grinned, pulling out her phone again. "Something that doesn't involve being a zombie in a 9-to-5?"

"Something like that," I smiled, feeling genuinely awake for the first time in months. "And maybe it's time I started practicing."

She hit record. "Perfect. Documentary continues: mystery girl's origin story begins NOW."

Fox mode, activated.