Orange Lightning at the Edge of Everything

The morning after my first real breakup, I felt like a zombie—one of the walking dead from those cheesy Netflix dramas, except my tragedy wasn't supernatural. It was just Jordan ghosting me after three months of 'we're so good together' and 'you're different from everyone else.' Whatever.

I found myself running loops around the neighborhood at 7 AM, not because I suddenly cared about fitness, but because moving felt better than sitting in my room, staring at my phone. The orange gradient sky was just starting to brighten when I noticed them: cables snaking across the ground near the old communications building, thick black vines against the dying grass.

My mind kept replaying the party last night—watching Jordan laugh with someone else across the room while I stood there feeling small and invisible. That social suicide moment where your brain screams LEAVE but your feet stay planted.

A crack of lightning split the sky, sudden and violent, like the universe was telling me to get it together. The storm had been threatening all morning, purple bruises of clouds pressing down. But the lightning—electric and vivid—made everything feel sharp again. Real again.

I kept running, lungs burning, until my phone died mid-text to my best friend. No charger. No cable. Just me and this ridiculous sunrise and the realization that being seventeen sometimes means feeling like everything is ending, when really, everything is just starting.

The orange light hit the wet pavement like gold dust. I stopped running, finally, and stood there breathing, heart pounding against my ribs like it wanted out. And for the first time since Jordan's text—that three-word knockout punch, 'we need to talk'—I didn't feel dead. I felt something terrifying and perfect: alive.