Lightning in My Palm

I'd been operating on zombie mode for three days straight, thanks to that Fortnite marathon with Jayden and Marcus. My parents were clueless—just thought I was 'sleeping in' like a typical lazy teenager. They didn't understand that summer nights were basically illegal if you spent them unconscious.

Now here I was, at Chloe's end-of-summer blowout, feeling like my brain had been replaced with cotton balls. I clutched my phone so tight my palm left sweat marks on the case. Classic me.

"You look like you need this." Chloe's older sister Sam appeared out of nowhere, pressing a neon gummy into my hand. "Vitamin C boost. My mom's obsessed with wellness crap." She winked, already moving toward someone else like a social butterfly on a mission.

The gummy was shaped like an orange. I ate it anyway.

Then the basement lights flickered and died. Someone screamed—playfully—and suddenly we were all plunged into darkness, illuminated only by the storm outside. lightning cracked across the sky, turning the moment into something electric.

"Anyone wanna play Truth or Dare? Ancient, I know, but we're literally sitting here like zombies anyway." That voice—low, confident, definitely not from our usual friend group.

I couldn't see who'd spoken until another lightning flash revealed him leaning against the doorway frame. New guy. Transferred from somewhere up north. His name was Leo, something like that.

My stomach did that thing it does when you're thirteen and someone cute acknowledges your existence. I wiped my palm against my jeans for the third time.

"Truth or Dare?" he repeated, eyes scanning the circle like he was actually interested.

"Truth," I heard myself say before my brain could intervene.

Grinning like he knew exactly how nervous he was making me, Leo leaned forward. "What's something you've never told anyone about yourself?"

The lightning flashed again, and in that split second of brightness, I realized something important: being a zombie didn't mean you were dead. It just meant you were waiting for your moment to wake up.

"I still sleep with a stuffed turtle," I said, and the darkness swallowed my humiliation. But somewhere in that storm-lit basement, I felt more alive than I had all summer.