Goldfish in the Dead Zone

The zombie apocalypse didn't come with brains and carnage. It arrived slowly, through sophomore year algebra, until Maya was walking through hallway battles with dead eyes and zero serotonin. She'd become a functioning member of the walking dead—surviving on three hours of sleep and her mom's insistence that vitamin D supplements would fix everything.

"You look rough," Leo said, sliding into the cafeteria seat beside her. "Rough like, 'just crawled out of a grave' rough."

"Thanks, Leo. Really validating my entire existence."

He grinned, pushing his beanie back. The hat was his security blanket, like Maya's oversized hoodies were hers. They were both hiding from the world in different ways.

"Seriously though," Leo said, "you need to do something wild. Something that makes you feel alive again."

Maya's phone buzzed. Her sister: "Goldfish is floating sideways again. Please don't let him die before I get home from college."

"Wait," Leo said, reading over her shoulder. "You still have that goldfish? The one from the fair? That thing has survived, like, seven near-death experiences. It's basically immortal."

"Frank? Yeah. He's resilient. Unlike my will to live."

"What if," Leo said, eyes lighting up, "we gave Frank a Viking funeral? Not with fire, obviously. But like... a proper send-off into the wild. Into the creek behind the school."

"You want to liberate my sister's goldfish into questionable urban runoff?"

"I want to liberate YOU from zombie mode."

It was ridiculous. It was exactly the kind of stupid impulsive decision their parents would lecture them about. But something in Maya's dead chest sparked to life.

They snuck out during lunch, Frank swimming in his suspiciously cloudy bowl tucked inside Maya's backpack. Leo produced a mini boat made from a folded homework assignment—poetry, fittingly.

"Any last words?" Maya asked the fish.

"He's a goldfish, Maya. His entire emotional range is 'hungry' and 'not hungry."

Frank was released into the muddy creek with zero ceremony. He didn't even look back, immediately disappearing into the murk like the ungrateful survivor he was.

Maya's hair frizzed in the humid air. Her makeup had probably smudged. But for the first time in months, she wasn't thinking about algebra or college applications or the crushing weight of expectations.

"We just liberated a fish," she said, starting to laugh. "We're literally criminals now."

"Welcome back to the land of the living," Leo said, bumping her shoulder with his.

The zombie apocalypse wasn't over. But maybe, just maybe, Maya had found something better than survival: a reason to stay awake.