Papaya Moon Zombies

The **hat** was supposed to be my armor. A beat-up Dodgers cap pulled low, shield against the fluorescent lights of Jessica's basement transformation—makeover party they called it, but really it was just girls becoming someone else's version of pretty.

I sat on the bathroom counter, **water** from the still-running faucet dripping onto my knuckles, my phone vibrating with seventeen unread messages from the group chat. The Miami humidity wrapped around the house like a wet blanket.

"You're not even trying," Jessica said, appearing in the doorway with her perfectly winged eyeliner and that smile that made everyone feel like they were either in or out. "The papaya face mask is literally supposed to help your skin glow, not make you look like you're about to throw up."

She held out the bowl. My abuela's recipe, modified with fancy ingredients I couldn't pronounce, now being served up like some exotic joke. The irony stung more than the mask would.

"My skin's fine," I mumbled, which was a lie. My skin was never fine—not compared to them, with their sun-kissed complexions and parents who paid for dermatologists instead of praying to saints for clear skin.

"You're being a **zombie**," she sighed, like being thoughtful about what you put on your face was some kind of personality defect. "Just try it. If it sucks, we wash it off. If it's amazing, you thank me later."

The thing about zombies—whether it was the movies we watched or the people we became trying to fit in—was that they didn't have to make choices. Something else made them move. Something else made them want.

I looked at myself in the mirror: the hat, the hesitation, the version of me that was always standing at the edge of things. Then I slid off the counter, reached for the papaya mixture like it was something brave.

"Fine," I said, fingers sticky-sweet with fruit and something that felt almost like courage. "But if I break out, I'm haunting you forever."

Jessica grinned. "Deal."

The water kept dripping. The hat stayed off. And somewhere between the tingling of my skin and the laughter echoing downstairs, I started to feel like maybe being alive—in all its awkward, messy, papaya-scented glory—wasn't the worst thing after all.