Goldfish, Lightning, and the Living Dead

The party was dead. Not like, chill dead—like actual zombie apocalypse dead. Everyone sat in Maya's basement, faces illuminated by the blue glow of their iPhone screens, thumbs moving in synchronized despair. I'd been staring at the same notification for twenty minutes.

"Dude, you're acting like a goldfish with its three-second memory," Maya said, flopping beside me on the couch. "Forget about it."

Easy for her to say. Maya was Maya—popular, effortless, the kind of person who could wear mismatched socks and make it a trend. Me? I'd just accidentally sent a screenshot of my crush's Instagram story TO my crush himself. The notification sat there: *delivered.*

Outside, lightning cracked the sky open, and the power died.

The basement plunged into darkness, and suddenly thirty iPhones weren't enough to save us. People started panic-texting, but service was already fried. That's when it happened—people actually started talking. Like, with their mouths.

"Who wants to play truth or dare?" someone shouted.

An hour later, we were huddled in a circle, sharing secrets that no DM could contain. Marcus admitted he still slept with his childhood stuffed animal. Priya confessed she'd never watched an episode of Euphoria. I told them about my crush—and how I'd ruined everything with that screenshot.

"That's it?" Maya laughed. "Bro, he replied like three minutes after you sent it."

I checked my phone, which had somehow charged to 3%. There it was: *haha same let's hang out tmrw?*

The power came back on. But nobody picked up their phone. We just sat there, laughing so hard our chests hurt, while the storm raged outside. Sometimes the world has to end—or at least lose WiFi—for the living to stop being zombies.