Foxfire in the Lightning

I felt like a **zombie** roaming through Jake's basement party, half-dead from three hours of pretending to care about Kevin's Spotify wrapped and whether Maya was actually flirting with him or just being Maya. The air smelled like cheap body spray and desperation. I'd been chawing on my third **vitamin** D gummy of the day—Mom's convinced I'm deficient from spending too much time indoors—which honestly just made me feel like I was supplementing my personality along with my nutrition.

Then I saw the fox.

It wasn't even inside, obviously. I'd escaped to the backyard to breathe, and there it was: a sleek orange shadow moving through the garden like it owned the place. It stopped, looked at me with these wild, unbothered eyes, and I felt this weird spark. Like it was daring me to stop being so basic.

**Lightning** cracked the sky open, sudden and blinding, and for a second I could see everything—the fox, the distant glow of the party, my own trembling hands. In that flash, something clicked. I'd been moving through high school like it was a level to beat, grinding away at quests I didn't even care about. But this fox? This fox was just living.

My phone buzzed—group chat blowing up about something that felt huge five minutes ago. I didn't check it.

The fox vanished into the darkness like a secret. I stood there as the storm broke, rain pouring down, finally feeling something real. Not good, not bad—just awake. Inside, they were all still being zombies together. Out here, getting soaked and suddenly okay with it, I think I might've actually started existing.