Orange Hoodie at the Pool Party

The hoodie was orange. Not a soft sunset orange, but a screaming traffic cone orange that my grandma would call "ghastly." I wore it every day, even when the cafeteria felt like a sauna. It was my armor against the hallway zombies—those kids who shuffled through high school with dead eyes and dead dreams, already ghosting through life before they even got their diplomas.

"You going to Jake's party?" Marcus asked, popping open his orange soda at our lunch table. "Everyone's gonna be there. Well, everyone who's not a total zombie."

I shrugged. "Maybe. If I can convince my mom I won't, like, die if I stay out past eleven."

The truth was, parties weren't really my thing. All that small talk and people shouting over music just to say nothing at all. But Jake had a pool, and more importantly, Jake's older brother was buying alcohol. Not that I drank. Still, there was something deliciously forbidden about just being there.

The hoodie stayed on even when I arrived. The house was already packed, bodies pressed together in the kitchen, someone's red solo cup spilling water on the linoleum. I found myself cornered by Hannah, who had spent the last three years pretending I didn't exist.

"Love the hoodie," she said, her words dripping with sarcasm. "Very... committed."

Before I could defend my fashion choices, the sliding glass door shattered. Everyone screamed.

No, not really. But that's how it felt in my head. What actually happened was Jake's dad burst in, eyes wild, shouting about the cops coming because of a noise complaint. The backyard flooded toward the back fence, people scrambling like their lives depended on it.

I ended up pressed against the side of the house, hidden behind a cluster of bushes, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird. Someone else was there too—Tyler, the quiet kid from my English class who sat in the back and wrote poetry in a notebook he thought nobody noticed.

"They're not actually coming," I whispered, suddenly breathless for reasons that had nothing to do with running. "Jake's dad just wanted everyone to leave."

"I know," Tyler said, and for the first time, he smiled. It transformed his whole face. "I'm not hiding. I'm just... not ready to go back yet."

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a orange, peeling it slowly in the darkness. The citrus scent cut through the smell of chlorine and teenage desperation.

"Want some?" he asked.

I took a segment, his fingers brushing mine. Electric.

We sat there for what might have been minutes or hours, sharing an orange in the shadows while the party died down around us. I told him about the hoodie—how I'd found it at a thrift shop and decided to stop caring what anyone thought. He told me about his poetry, how he wrote about everything but never showed anyone.

"You could show me," I said, and the words hung between us, heavy and promising.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

Later, when I finally walked home, I peeled off the orange hoodie and tied it around my waist. The night air was cool against my arms, and somewhere behind me, I could hear water splashing in Jake's pool as the real zombies finally went home.

I wasn't one of them anymore. Not really.