Green Smoothie Apocalypse

Maya pressed her phone against her forehead, wishing she could disappear. The group chat for Jordan's party was blowing up, and she still hadn't RSVP'd. Three years of high school, and she was still the girl who overthought everything.

"You going?" asked Leo, sliding into the cafeteria seat beside her. He was currently sporting a suspicious green stain on his chin.

"I don't know," Maya muttered. "Last time I went to a party, I spent two hours hiding in the bathroom playing on my phone."

"That's called character development," Leo said, wiping at the green stuff. "By the way, your mom's "detox" plan is attacking me. This spinach smoothie is plotting revenge."

Maya laughed despite herself. Her mom had been on a health kick since Maya's older sister left for college, insisting the whole family drink her "electric green energy blends" every morning. Maya usually smuggled hers into the kitchen sink.

"Anyway," Leo continued, "you should come. Jordan's doing this whole zombie apocalypse theme in his basement. He's been planning it for like, three months."

Maya's stomach did that thing it always did when she thought about parties—a mix of excitement and pure terror. She'd been working on her special effects makeup all summer, practicing zombie transformations on YouTube tutorials. It was her secret thing, something she didn't talk about because it felt too weird, too intense.

"I'm not really a party person," she said, which was code for "I'm afraid I'll say something awkward and everyone will silently judge me forever."

"You literally taught yourself how to make realistic bite wounds using liquid latex and tissue paper," Leo pointed out. "You're cooler than you think."

Maya felt her face heat up. "You saw my Instagram?"

"Maya, I follow your makeup account. Your zombie transformations are sick. Jordan would lose his mind."

Something shifted in Maya's chest. A tiny lightning bolt of courage.

Friday night found her standing in Jordan's basement, surrounded by strobe lights and fog machine haze. She'd spent two hours transforming herself into a半-faced survivor—peeling skin, exposed muscle, dead eyes that told a story. People kept stopping her, asking who did her makeup.

"I did," she said, each time getting a little louder, a little prouder.

Around midnight, someone accidentally knocked over a table of snacks. Green goop everywhere—guacamole, spinach dip, alien-looking sludge. Instead of panic, the room erupted in laughter. Someone shouted "REAL ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE" and suddenly everyone was covered in green, dramatically fake-dying across the basement floor.

Maya looked around the room, at people she'd barely spoken to in three years, all covered in green slime and laughing so hard they couldn't breathe. She caught Leo's eye across the room. He gave her a thumbs-up.

She pulled out her phone and snapped a selfie: half-zombie face, green-splattered shirt, genuine smile. Caption: "Officially came out of my shell. Also covered in spinach dip."

She hit post, then slipped her phone back in her pocket. She didn't need to check the likes. She was too busy fake-limping toward the karaoke machine.