Foxfire at Midnight

I felt like a walking zombie after finals week—three days of energy drinks, four hours of sleep total, and my brain was basically mush. Maya found me face-planted on a textbook at 2 AM.

"Dude, you need to decompress before you actually become undead," she said, shaking my shoulder. "We're going night swimming. Now."

Our town's pool was technically closed, but Maya's older sister was the assistant manager, which meant we had illegal access to chlorine-scented freedom. The air was thick with July heat as we crept through the back fence, flip-flops squelching against dew-soaked grass.

The water hit like liquid ice. I gasped, suddenly awake, paddling toward the deep end where the pool lights turned everything underwater into an ethereal blue-gold universe. Maya floated on her back, staring up at the sky.

"We're gonna be seniors next year," she said softly. "Then college. Then what?"

"Hopefully not actual zombies," I joked, but her question hung in the humid air like something heavy and unspoken.

That's when I saw it—a fox, sleek and copper-colored, standing at the pool's edge. It watched us with eyes like polished amber, curious and unafraid. For a moment, time stretched thin and strange. The fox dipped its head, almost like a nod, then vanished into the shadows.

"Did you see—" Maya started.

"Yeah."

We floated there for a long time, the water holding us up, neither of us saying anything about graduation or applications or how everything was about to change. Some things didn't need saying.

"You're my best friend, you know that?" Maya whispered finally, her voice small against the crickets.

"Yeah." I kicked toward the surface. "I know."

We swam until dawn tinted the sky pink and gray, two zombies about to face the world, together.