Hat, Spinach, and the Undead Heart

Marcus pulled his dad's vintage fedora down lower, brim hiding eyes that hadn't slept properly since middle school. Being the new kid at Crestwood High for the second time in two years will do that to you. He felt like a zombie, shuffling through crowded hallways, invisible and half-dead inside.

"Yo, new guy," someone called. Marcus looked up to see Riley leaning against lockers, all effortless cool and perfectly messy waves. They'd sat next to each other in homeroom. "You coming to Tyler's party tonight?"

Marcus's brain short-circuited. Riley was talking to him. Riley, who somehow made apathy look aesthetic. "Uh, maybe?"

"Cool." Riley flashed a grin. "Wear the hat. It suits you."

Marcus floated through the rest of the day in a daze. By lunch, he sat alone with a cafeteria salad—his mom's attempt at getting him to eat "real food"—when disaster struck. He caught his reflection in the darkened window: a massive piece of spinach wedged between his front teeth, visible from across the solar system.

And he'd smiled at Riley like that.

He wanted to dissolve. Actually disappear. Instead, he heard himself laughing at the absurdity—this was his life now, the awkward rom-com protagonist nobody asked for. The spinach wasn't going to kill him. Neither would showing up to some stranger's party where he knew exactly zero people.

That night, Marcus stood outside Tyler's house, heart hammering like trapped bird wings, fedora in hand. Then he put it on. His dad's hat. The one his dad had worn to meet his mom at a party exactly like this, thirty years ago.

"You got this," Marcus whispered.

He walked inside.

Riley was by the snack table, and when they saw Marcus, something lit up behind their eyes. "You came."

Marcus grinned, spinach-free this time. "Yeah. Yeah, I did."

Maybe zombies could come back to life after all.